Category: GeneralHoly 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
If you are one of those folks getting a bit frustrated with Vista and want to upgrade, here are a few things to keep in mind. Just don’t buy Windows 7 and throw it in the drive and install it…until you have backed up the following:
I think there is an assumption that if you upgrade your Vista to Windows 7, that all of your stuff and programs will still be there. This is not verified by Call That Girl as we have read reviews out there and haven’t done an upgrade, only full installs. The reviews are not good about upgrades. What we do know is that if you do the full install, all of your stuff, data, programs are gone. You will need to have your disks ready to reinstall on the computer. Itunes too!
As I have said in past posts, I am all for moving to Windows 7. I have found very few problems with my testing to not recommend it. Your Vista computer should have enough hard memory (RAM) to be able to make Windows 7 run pretty smoothly.
If you are thinking of upgrading and want help, give us a call and we can certainly help you with this! Can we help you with this remotely? We sure can! No need to bring your computer to our office or have us come to your home, this should be fairly simple to do via the remote tools/internet.
Printer errors and slow computers…very common problem for many users lately. I have seen folks not only calling that their systems are slow, but they are getting odd errors too. For the most part, we can remove the problematic printer issues to make the system faster and get rid of the errors, but let’s review a few things for you folks.
All printers install HUGE software programs with the printer. So understand this, you go out and buy a new HP or Canon printer. You put in the disk and the install isn’t difficult, but you have to babysit it for almost 45 minutes! How annoying! Next up, the printer installs fine, works like a charm, but you can’t figure out how to scan/fax/etc because the software is not easy to understand.
Question…are you buying an all in one printer to save money or because you need all of those functions? I am highly recommending the following:
If you just need a printer, shop around. Buy something affordable, ink is cheap to replace and won’t cost you a bundle to get repaired. Usually a home user can get away with a $75 dollar printer. Our rates to fix a printer is the standard $75, so trust me…I don’t put too much time into troubleshooting a cheap printer!
To save you problems, if you don’t need the fancy software, skip installing it. Just plug the printer in the computer and then do a “add a printer” function and hopefully your comptuer will find it automatically (most do, especially the newer ones).
What does Call That Girl have for printers? haha…Ask my interns, I don’t allow printing! They get antsy and irritated I think, but that makes them do things electronically…save and share files. I have found too many scrap print jobs in my day to know that printing is not necessary for everyday things. We do have an old Lexmark in the workshop for scanning (but haven’t in months) and a nicer HP that my friend Mary borrowed us many months ago, but it hasn’t worked right since I re-did the wifi network and is almost out of ink, so I gave up on it and went back to my “no printing” policy. Seems to work fine, we are still a “No print” company!
If you are experiencing a problem with Norton and want assistance, feel free to submit a ticket by clicking here….we know both Comcast and Norton well and can help you with this, quickly and with an affordable rate. Get 20% off your call by mentioning this blog post.
As most of the Minneapolis/St. Paul readers of this blog know, our choices of getting high speed internet are limited to pretty much 2 corporations in town. Comcast and Qwest. As a residential computer repair tech, here is how I see the choices being made.
According to my website statistics, in the past month out of almost 4000 visitors, 1800 are cable users 951 are DSL. This also includes visitors from around the world too, so it’s not just local stats, but interesting nonetheless.
Now, on to my latest Comcast rant. According to their press relase dated Jan 20th, 2010
Call That Girl has a problem with this press release. Norton/Symantec is far from “Award winning” in our computer repair shop. Norton/Symantec is one of the antivirus programs that I see in the shop BY FAR more than any other. Not only are they not catching the latest Malware viruses, but the program is so slow for some users, that they call us to figure out why it’s slow…only to have me SHOW them, their Norton/Symantec is killing their computer. Of a slow painful death. I also have to add, I call it far from ROBUST. Sure it has all the bells and whistles, but it doesn’t work.
Mind you, I also wasn’t a fan of the McAfee product they used to give away either, but if I had to make a choice of one over the other…I would probably chose McAfee.
To close, I will add that Qwest used to (not sure if they do now) offer Windows Live One Care, but they probably won’t be in the future, as it’s being discontinued.
http://onecare.live.com/standard/en-in/default.htm?mkt=en-in
Microsoft’s replacement product though is is quite nice. Read my blog a couple down for a review on that.
If you are here and want to start your own computer repair business, check out my blog series about How to start a computer repair business
Check out my map from my Google stats, I have been watching this lately and am really enjoying see how far I am reaching across the globe. Green means someone from that country has been to my site here.
195 countries in the world, I have 76 on the list, I have a way to go…to really be around the world. It can be done!
