Lisa Hendrickson is the owner of Call That Girl. She is an Outlook Expert and Microsoft 365 Consultant.
Many of you have stopped printing pictures in the past few years and just keep your pictures on your computer. I too am one of those people. I was thinking the other day while I was retrieving a 6 year history of family pictures off a crashed hard drive how important those pictures are.
Why are we not printing these pictures and putting them in albums to share with our family and guests when they come over? Are those days now days gone by? The photo album memories I have from my childhood are precious! My mom and Aunt just shared an hours worth of laughs last night going through their storage. Will our future’s be full of “where is that hard drive with the Hawaii photo’s on them”…and then to find a computer to install the hard drive on to view them! (in 50 years, who knows how we will be using computers).
I recommend for those that are storing all of their pictures on their computers to upload them all to Walgreen’s or another company and get them all printed. It’s good for your photo albums and as a secondary back up! I uploaded all of my pictures two years ago and it cost $20 to have them all printed.
Just my two cents on this folks!
….Ponders many of my clients when a repair may be costly. Here is what we think at Call That Girl!
If you are a heavy user on your laptop, expect a 3-5 year life on the computer. My system lasted 2.5 years without a serious crash. My system is in the process of getting fixed by another company because I cannot fix what is wrong. If it’s going to be under $150, I will probably fix it. If over, I will opt for a new one. (edited to add: what is wrong with it that I cannot fix it? The motherboard is fried, and no…Call That Girl does not work on laptop motherboard issues).
I always recommend to clients this bit of advice:
New laptops are around $500 (basic laptop)
New desktops are around $400 (Dell has many that are cheaper)
If you have a desktop that is 5-7 years old, I would not put in anymore than $150 – $200 into it.
If you have a laptop that is 3-5 years old, I would not put in anymore than $150-$200 into it.
Many folks think just buying a new one is the best answer for even cheap repairs, but you have to remember that buying a new computer can have some costs or new problems that are unexpected.
As you can see, buying a new computer sometimes isn’t worth it….with the extra costs, it may be costly. If you ever have questions, feel free to contact us and we can try to help.
My computer that crashed last weekend is still in the shop! I think that it’s hardware. I’m too busy to figure it out right now…so I’m still using my mom’s laptop (the Green Dell Inspiron 1521). Thank you Mom! I think that I should buy a new one because I think I deserve it, don’t you think so? 🙂 This is a great question for my next blog “Should I just buy a new computer over fixing the broke one”.
Call That Girl has to report that we are thrilled to see the viruses are on “spring break” for awhile. While we usually see many virus infected computers in the shop, this week was somewhat easy for virus repair. When you are working in a business like computer repair, when the viruses are hot, we are busy. VERY BUSY…but when it’s slow, we have the time to work on other things, such as process/procedures and a new marketing plan for an opening of a 2nd location! Yes folks, you heard it here first….(((spoiler))). We are looking to open a location in Rochester, Minnesota in May/June.
Conor my marketing intern has been working on a marketing plan for the last two months. It is now finalized and I will be now working on finding a location and getting the new shop set up. Why Rochester? Why not! Rochester has 100,000+ Mayo Clinic patients that come to this city, and we are ready to help and support those traveling folks.
Next up, I met with a secret marketing partner on Wed night and plans will be formalized this week on this new adventure. I will expose this secret weapon in an upcoming Week In Review. I spoke to the Minnesota Chapter of the American Marketing Association on Thursday evening. What a great crowd!! I try to book a speaking engagement once a month (great marketing) and I was completely shocked when they asked me to speak to their group last January. Call That Girl has some great marketing ideas and sharing them, is what we always do. We will be blogging here in April about our 2009 marketing ideas, what worked and what did not.
Week ended with a “Back up your stuff” special for $59. We have that sale on board until April 3rd, so if you want in, let us know via email or give us a call to book an appointment.
That’s it this week folks, next week I will attending the The Original Twin Cities Social, March 31st 5:00pm – 7:00pm
It’s at Cooper Pub in St. Louis Park! Since my office is almost next door, I will for sure be there!
Yes, it happened to me last Sunday morning. I had spent many hours on Saturday working on a few work documents and even though my Mozy.com backs up daily, I had decided to do a manual back up. Took 6 minutes and I left the computer on for the night.
I wake up on Sunday morning to hear “beep…bloink”. You should have seen my eyes, bursting out of my head. What happens to my clients finally after 15 years of doing computer repair, happened to me. Thankfully I borrowed a laptop from family and I was up and running again, with all my documents/spreadsheets and Outlook pst files all as they were the day before.
We just had a newsletter about backing up, but due to my situation this past weekend, we will be running a “back up special”. Not everyone knows how to do computer back ups (even though they have an external hard drive) or how to go online and set up a data back up program. Call That Girl is seeing many computers in the shop that do not have their data backed up. This is something you need to think about now, rather than later. Yes, we can usually get your data off the hard drive, but there are times we cannot due to the hard drive being corrupted.
“Back up special” Special Price, $59
Here’s the rules:
We will back up:
Back up options
Call us to book an appointment at 612-865-4475 or email info@callthatgirl.biz
Holy moly, what a week for us at Call That Girl! Busy week doing a few fun things and a few not so fun things. We started off Monday with full calendar of remote support jobs. Many of my colleagues wonder how I can be so busy doing remote support, but to be honest…it’s very easy to do. When we get a call, I take down what is wrong and then I ask if their internet works. If so, then we can do the job remotely, no problem!
Tuesday was a big day for me, I had my second paid employee Becky start in the workshop, we will be adding her info on the “meet the crew” page here next week. My assistant Gina will also be added. Training Becky was interesting for me because I know how I work, how to train someone to work like me was another thing! I did enjoy seeing Becky troubleshoot and work on documentation that we have needed done for sometime now. I am excited to move forward with building the team up.
I went to the SHARP UpSwing event on Tuesday night in Oakdale. Running into over 10 clients there was awesome! I also got a chance to talk to Sheila Ronning, Owner of SHARP about some social networking strategies. While I’m name dropping, I also ran into one of my competitors who was so nice to hand me off a nice flash drive full of good repair applications, score for THAT GIRL!
Then on Wed I got a call from a major player in a market that I have been wanting to get into and they outreached to me to do some marketing together, I have to admit…I was thrilled! After following my marketing for a few months, they came to me to help. It’s very refreshing to have someone just say “Hey, here is a bunch of ideas for you, let’s do it!”
On Wednesday, I was also interviewed for a podcast from The Force Field, an internet podcast company. The interview was based on computer repair marketing techniques. It went so well that they are turning it into 2 podcasts, yay!
Then….(wow this week doesn’t end it seems), I found out I was an honorary nominee for the Women’s Press award, Favorite Independent Shop for Computer Emergencies. The results will come in May, wish me luck! http://www.womenspress.com/
Then….nope, this doesn’t end it seems. The nominations closed for the Minneapolis St. Paul Biz Journal’s award for “Women to Watch”…thank you everyone who voted for me! I really appreciate all the help. I hope I get on the list.
That’s it for this week, I hope you all enjoy the blogs, they are really picking up steam lately so I figured I better start filling you all in on what’s going on in my world! Oh and btw…I did about 30 computer repairs this week in addition to everything else. Who has a few hours of their life to borrow me? 🙂
Enjoy your weekend,
Lisa
Seriously, why unplug all your cords and drag your computer to a shop when we can more than likely fix your problem with remoting in via your internet? Did you know that 90% of the computer problems are software and not hardware?
If your internet works, we can probably fix it remotely.
If your computer is not working, try us anyway to get a few things attempted to get back on the internet. We are pretty savvy with “loss of internet” issues! (probably virus related anyway). We often troubleshoot computers that won’t power up and get them back on track with a few tricks of the trade. (Many are here in my blog if you look back a few pages).
We offer a quick fix of up to 15 minutes for $25. Can’t beat that now can you? $75 for a full hour.
Keep our phone number handy and next time you have problems, Call That Girl! 612-865-4475
