The problem came in when he asked my rate (not free) per hour, and then said “well, I know a shop on Fredericksburg Road where their sign said $29.95 labor flat rate to fix anything, plus parts.”  When I pointed out to him that their rate only applied to hardware issues, not software, and said you get what you pay for in a consultant (or should), he hesitated to make an appointment saying he would call me later. Of course, no phone call the next day.

This prompts me to explain how most computer consultants work, or at least those I am aware of. This should not be considered a solicitation of business for myself over the other fine consultants listed in the PC Alamode.  Most consultants charge by the hour for their time.  We only have our experience and our time to sell, plus the occasional piece of hardware or software of course.  The more experienced consultants will know how to fix problems without needing the manual in front of them, and thus will be able to resolve your problems more quickly.  “More quickly” translates into a shorter number of hours, which translates into lower bill when all is said and done.   Unfortunately there are still a few consultants out there who pretend to know more than they actually do, and thus run up their bill for the customer by taking twice as long to fix the problem, if they actually fix it permanently.

The good news for me, and others like me, is that we then get to charge to fix the problems created or left behind by these other not so competent consultants.  About a year ago, one of my customers, an Alamo PC member, decided suddenly to upgrade his Windows ME system to the newer Windows XP Home system.  Because I was out of town that week, he chose another consultant at random out of the paper (not the the PC Alamode magazine) who then spent over five hours loading Windows XP onto his existing computer.  When done, the computer ran slower than ever before, leaving the customer very unsatisfied with the results.  Upon returning from vacation, the customer contacted me and said “come fix this thing”. I arrived on site to inspect the computer and discovered he had upgraded a computer that barely met the minimum standards for Windows XP.  The computer had a Celeron 300 processor with 64mb of memory and a 4gb hard drive. After the XP installation, there was less than 100mb of free space.

The solution?  Upgrade the computer’s motherboard, CPU, memory and hard drive.  In other words, jack up the monitor and slide another computer under it.  We had him up and running the next day with the new / upgraded computer and even talked Microsoft into allowing him to activate XP (again) on the new computer without buying a new license.

This past week, I had another customer who decided he wanted to use a USB external Hard Drive with a copy of Norton Ghost to back up his primary hard drive for safety purposes.  He asked me to oversee the installation of the hardware and software and then teach him the process of backing up.  Now this is normally a quick and painless process, but not this time.  His Intel P4 2.5ghz system for some reason was loading its only BIOS set of USB drivers that conflicted with Ghost’s USB drivers.  Yes, the external USB drive was 2.0 compliant (faster transfer than USB 1.1), and the motherboard supported and recognized the drive as 2.0 compliant, but Ghost would not work.  After multiple General Protection Faults and Sector Read Errors (talk about scary) during the imaging attempts, we called Symantec’s Tech Support and paid them their blood money to help ($30). We eventually learned about the driver / IRQ conflict through a trial and error process, which left the Symantec Tech scratching his head and saying “I’ve never seen this happen before.”  Actually, I couldn’t see him scratch, but he did sound puzzled on the phone.   The motherboard had to have the “Legacy USB Support” disabled before Ghost would work at all.

After we succeeded in getting his computer and Ghost to recognize the drive and work properly together, the customer sent out this message to another discussion group that he belonged to…

As you can see, backing up to external drives might be easy, or not, but when you need an expert to help you, it will probably cost you a bit more than $29.95 plus parts.  For the cost of my assistance, he could have used that off-site backup service for a year and broke even, or considering the cost of his external hard drive and lost time from work, came out ahead of the game.

Sometimes what you see with a good computer consultant is just the tip of the Iceberg.  You can’t see all the years of experience they have learned by fixing other customer’s problems, which allows them to fix your computer’s problems faster today.

Don’t forget…if you haven’t updated your anti-virus program since last month’s article you are at risk of catching some of the newer viruses that have been released this month.