If you Google around for “Pavilion DV7″ you’ll see four star and five star reviews.

This is a ZERO STAR review.

Why?

Because, it took me over four hours to do a restore on this laptop.

Why did I have to do a full system restore on a brand new laptop?

Because the hard drive bombed out after just five months.

To be fair that’s not HP’s fault; the hard drive in question is a Western Digital Scorpio 640GB drive.

What IS HP’s fault is the fact it took two tries over the span of four hours to get this laptop back on the road with the new hard drive and system restore DVDs.

That is an inordinately long amount of time.

Why did it take two tries? Because the first restore option I tried told me the process of reformatting/partitioning the hard drive had completed successfully (after some 30-40 minutes) which led me to reboot.

That’s when I hit a boot error — boot device not found.

That’s interesting. How did the system restore complete successfully to a boot device that doesn’t exist?

So I used the next option which worked. For over three hours.

Putting aside the absurd restore process it’s actually a nice computer at a nice price.

But as with my recent experience with an HP desktop, I have to give HP a failing grade on the service and support side.

(Added Bonus — Why you should ONLY trust essential repairs and service to a professional)

Often in the IT world I’ve come across computer owners who turns to a computer pro like me only as a last resort.

That last resort usually comes after their neighbor’s daughter’s boyfriend took a shot at the failed hard drive and… failed.

Or took a shot at trying to reinstall Windows from a Windows CD he bootlegged off the Internet…and failed miserably.

Or tried his hand at removing dozens of virus and spyware infections and was humiliated by his failure.

Often times the well-intentioned lad (or Gal Geek wannabe) leaves the computer in worse condition than it was originally found.

I confess I fell for this same lure of free or almost-free repairs. But not computer repairs. Car repairs.

My wife’s friend’s husband, so I was told, was a mechanic. So a year ago he did a brake job on my Lincoln and changed the oil. The old battle wagon was at 98000 miles so she was due.

I supplied the parts and he supplied the labor. What a deal! I saved a bundle and got an almost free ride, right?

WRONG!

Last week while driving on Interstate 81 in Scranton at a brisk 75 MPH on the way home, the front right tire blew out.

It is well known that a blow out at that speed from a front tire puts the car at risk for several reasons:

Suddenly slowing down from 75 MPH down to 5 MPH makes it real easy for the car behind you to rear-end you; at full throttle.

Driving at that rate of speed when the car’s elevation abruptly dips

The potential loss of control of a vehicle traveling at that speed could have easily seen us swerve into an adjoining lane and slam into the car next to us.

Fortunately, nothing so dramatic as to belong in a Hollywood blockbuster occurred.

I safely got us to the side of the road and yours truly, the King of All Geeks, put technology immediately to work.

First some low tech – turn the blinkers on.

Then some high tech – I fired up my iPhone and called for roadside assistance. A tow truck was at our car in about 30 minutes and a nice chap by the name of Joe Merrell put on our donut, smiled and told us there was no way we were getting home on just the donut tire he put on.

“Why not?” I asked. He pointed to the blow out tire and said “This tire fell apart at the seams. You needed a wheel alignment a long time ago, poppy. Your other tire is ready to blow too. No way you get to New Jersey on that. Plus you got your little girl in the back seat. That’s no chance you want to take.”

He was right. Fortunately, a PepBoys location was just a couple of miles away. Slapping a 20 dollar bill in Joe’s hand and thanking him profusely for potentially saving my family’s life, the old battle wagon limped her way on her to PepBoys at a conservative 50 MPH.

I’d called ahead and they were expecting me. I’d been nervous on the phone; it was 4:30 on Sunday. Did they close at 5 or 6, I worried. Would we need to stay the night and kill all of Monday waiting on car repairs?

No and no.

We were back on the road in just about an hour with two new front tires, a fresh oil change and my brake light no longer lit.

Did I mention that the brake warning light lit up within two weeks of my wife’s friend’s husband’s brake job?

Well, it did. The problem was that I was low on brake fluid. For a year. I simply ignored the alarm as I knew there couldn’t POSSIBLY be a problem with the brakes because he just took care of that, DIDN’T HE?

They couldn’t do the wheel alignment all new tires usually need because I needed new struts. Struts, I was told, should be replaced every 50,000 miles. Wait a second, shouldn’t my wife’s friend’s husband warned me about that when he performed my 98,000 mile service? I was coming right up at that magic number of 100,000 (which is 50,000 x2).

And he also didn’t remind me about that 100,000 scheduled tune up I would surely need.

Swearing off the employment of any my wife’s friend’s husbands (or neighbors, cousins or well-intentioned strangers), I’m a PepBoys customer for life.

That’s because their technology makes my job as a car owner simple…

I registered for their points program earning me points towards discounts off future repairs.
Their website informs me of all the scheduled maintenance our two cars need — well in advance.
They can fully service both our cars — Lincoln AND Jaguar — since they invested in owning ALL of the major computers today’s technologically advanced cars need. I get similar alerts for service and maintenance via email reminder.

So what has this case study taught us, class?

First — We rely on our computers at lesst as much as we rely on our cars. Leave repairs and maintenance to the pros.

Friends and family may be well-intentioned and only wish you well, but we all know that the road to hell is paved with good intentions.

Second — Investments in technology (as Manny, Moe and Jack has shown us) leads to increases in sales, boosts customer loyalty and repeat business and reduces overhead. A triple crown win for the business owner and the customer or client.

I can even book a service session at their website.

Can your business create a similar success story from start to finish? If not, why not?

Ashlee Vance penned an article that appeared in the June 28th, 2010 edition of the New York Times.

The title? Suit Over Faulty Computers Highlights Dell’s Decline

You can read the article here.

It’s an eye-opening article. I can understand the faulty parts thing. Most computer manufacturers outsource most, if not all, of the production cycle. Do you think Microsoft manufactures the XBox in Microsoft-owned factories or that Apple employees in China crank out iPhones off the Apple assembly line?

No and no. These companies and so many others outsource the manufacturing process and are often unaware of faulty parts until customer complaints start rolling in.

The part of the Dell story that gets me riled is the flagrant attempt to cover up the hardware issues. That’s not the way to fix a problem.

Not to defend Dell but Apple and HP aren’t much better.

For years Apple refused to acknowledge a design flaw in the power adapters of older MacBooks.

The problem? The tip of the power plug that plugged into the Apple was ridiculously easy to break. Almost as bad? If you snagged the power cable, yanking it hard enough (like walking past a desk and tripping over the cable) it was actually possible to not only bend or break the tip of the power adapter but actually BEND THE POWERBOOK’S METALLIC CASE RIGHT WHERE THE POWER ADAPTER PLUGS IN!

How do I know? I’m the owner of one of those dented PowerBooks. Not only that, I myself have gone through five power adapters. The adapters are $80 apiece. In fairness to Apple, I only had to pay for two of them.

The only reason why it came to light is that Apple customers were converging on discussion forums and chat rooms comparing notes. The conclusion? The original design of the PowerBook adapter sucks.

That’s why the MacBook and MacBook Pro line now features the “MagSafe power port” which completely eliminates the power adapter problem found on older models. In a nifty way, I might add.

OK so Apple fixed the problem on new models and (somewhat) generously swapped out bad adapters for new ones (sometimes).

But Apple never fessed up. They covered it up.

That’s not necessarily a bad thing. As a businessman I can respect the need to not trumpet design flaws giving competitors a free and easy shot at me as nervous investors dump their stock sending the price of Apple stock plummeting.

Welcome to the real world, Ashlee Vance!

Other examples of bad computer hardware design? Sony laptop batteries. Sony laptops. HP laptop batteries. HP desktop computers (see my Blog post HP Computers – Unsafe at Any Speed) The list is as endless as it is impressive.

Let’s give HP another demerit for bad customer service. In my “Unsafe at Any Speed” post I documented the fact that HP wanted to overcharge 400% for a common replacement part AND to make matters worse – that part wouldn’t have the solved the problem I was inquiring about.

Not to beat up too badly on HP here let’s give them yet another demerit for poor technical support. I solved the problem myself by intuitively NOT following a single piece of advice HP gave me about their own computer.

Here’s my personal favorite – How the Dell Vostro 200 randomly reboots.

I have clients of my own experiencing these Vostro 200 random reboots and there is no recourse because the problem doesn’t officially exist. Yet the Vostro 200 random reboot issue is openly discussed on the official Dell forum I linked to in the previous paragraph.

So, no, Dell is far from perfect. But as we can clearly see, most computer makers are no better.

So is Ashlee Vance right? Is Dell in decline? I don’t think so. Quite the contrary, actually. I see Dell positioned for a rebound.

I’m not saying that as an official Dell affiliate (full disclosure time – RoyalGeeks.Com IS an official Dell affiliate) I’m saying it from hands-on experience. Most Dell computers are super-easy to service, their server design is excellent and their customer support I’ve found to be excellent.

Remember the old adage – nobody’s perfect. Nobody. Balance the good with the bad and you’ll see more good than bad in anything – individuals, companies, cars and even breakfast cereal.

With fast new computers going for $499 (and entry-level models available for just $379) you may be asking yourself if it really pays to fix your old clunker or just put old Bessie out to pasture and go get yourself the latest model.

In some cases computer repairs can be too expensive making it cost prohibitive. Let’s face it; if your old computer blew its hard drive AND motherboard requiring $200 in parts and another $200+ in labor just to get that old PC “back on the road” we’d need to stop and think twice about fixing that computer.

Another variable in the computer repair formula is your time. If you have a computer problem but your hard drive is intact then it’s going to make sense 9 out of 10 times to repair your computer and/or get a good PC Tune-up. That’s because you’ll save HOURS of your time reloading all your software, locating all of your Word documents, Excel spreadsheets, important pictures, etc.

If your computer is anything less than a Pentium 4 @ 2GhZ I’ll be the first one to declare your old computer legally dead no matter what. Best you recycle it.

However, most computer repairs are less-involved and less expensive than you may think. And keeping yet another computer out of the local landfill is good for the environment.

(On a related note – check out this Going Green Blog to see how bad it can be to just dump your old computer)

Why not go green and save some green while you’re at it?

Consider the case of the Young at Art academy on Main Street in Matawan. Maria Milazzo had two computers giving me a veritable fruit salad of problems.

How much did it cost to repair both computers and make them BETTER than new?

About $500 – parts and labor. And that $500 investment put TWO computers back into service – better than they ever were.

That’s because that post-surgery both have larger hard drives and one has more memory.

The old Gateway laptop needed a new hard drive. No big deal. $79 in Staples for a 250GB hard drive. That’s double what it used to be.

The old HP Desktop also needed a hard drive. $99 in Staples for a 500GB hard drive. That’s double the space too.

Since the old desktop only had 512MB RAM we threw in a 1 GB RAM upgrade for $79. That triples the RAM and gives that old PC a new lease on life.

Computer repairs made sense this time. A lot of cents. Computer repairs might make good economic sense next time too. Just make the decision by the numbers.

Every Mac owner knows about the iLife suite of software that Apple ships with every Mac. iLife is an impressive collection of Music, Photo, Video and web software. Many Apple Macs are sold on the powerful offerings of iLife alone.

How many Windows owners know about Microsoft’s answer to iLife – Windows Live Essentials?

Far too few, it seems.

Windows Live Essentials is an incredible suite of totally free software that gives Windows Vista and Windows 7 owners many of the same features of iLife – and more besides.

Couple a Windows 7 Home Premium or Windows 7 Ultimate computer with Windows Live Essentials and you get a Mac-killer.

That’s because Windows 7 with Windows Live Essentials gives Windows owners the same features and capabilities as Mac users.

Here’s the ten cent tour:

Photo Gallery – Edit, organize, tag, and share your photos. Much more than a photo program, photo gallery also allows you to import movies you’ve shot with your video camera with direct capture via 1394 firewire cable.

Movie Maker - Create beautiful, memorable movies, then publish to the web in a few clicks or prep for burning to DVD. Movie Maker works perfectly with Photo Gallery to allow you to first capture movies from your video camera then get them ready for the “big screen”. Note — Use Windows DVD Maker (included with Windows 7 Home Premium and Windows 7 Ultimate) to create DVDs of the movies you make.

Mail – Access your e‑mail, contacts, and calendar even when you’re offline. Windows Live Mail is a very fine alternative to Outlook.

Features worthy of honorable mention include Messenger — instant message (IM) chat software, Writer – an excellent way to write blogs and Family Safety – an excellent alternative to expensive Internet content filtering software to keep kids safe while they’re on the Internet.

There’s also a toolbar but that’s no big deal — every other piece of software we install these days come with a toolbar.

Download Windows Live Essentials here

Last week some mighty nice folks and long-time clients called me in to help them with a failed hard drive on their HP Media Center 8530i.

I planned to spend a couple of hours installing the new hard drive, reloading Windows and all drivers and then be on my way.

The old joke goes — Want to make G-d laugh? Tell Him your plans.

What SHOULD have been a two hour walk in the park executing a task I’ve done a hundred times before turned into the technical support experience from hell consuming six hours of my time spanning the course of a week.

First we’ll start with getting to the old hard drive and removing it.

I got to the old drive – but removing it would’ve involved a pair of welder’s goggles and a blow torch. HP placed that hard drive in the most inaccessible place imaginable. OK. The drive stays. I removed the optional device cage and put the new drive there instead.

(Note — the old drive was a Seagate Barracuda 750GB drive. The drive I was installing was the 1 TB version of the same drive. This piece of trivia will prove very entertaining later.)

OK new drive installed we reboot. Excellent. The HP BIOS recognizes the drive. Excellent! It’ll be child’s play to install Windows Vista home premium on this HP Media Center desktop, reinstall the drivers and be on my way….

… or so I thought.

Windows installer doesn’t see the Seagate drive. But the BIOS does. Odd.

Googling around to different forum posts and articles tells me that many other people have hit the same brick wall I have. They never did find the answer. But I did. Read on.

(Side note — this reminds me of the Norton 360 backup/restore option I encountered some months back. Nobody – not even Symantec technical support- could solve the problem. As you will soon learn, HP tech support proved useless too.)

Enter Howard – King of All Geeks.

Just to make sure there couldn’t be any sort of hardware issue I swapped out the 1TB Seagate Barracuda for its little brother – a 250GB Sata-1 drive. No difference. BIOS sees it. Window installer doesn’t.

Scratching my head I swap the SATA cables in desperation. It made no difference but it had to be tried. Why? In the immortal words of Bill Cosby – “When you’re desperate, you give the ridiculous a try.”

After an hour of research I concluded there was some sort of driver issue preventing the Windows Vista installer from seeing the new Barracuda 1TB drive. Conclusion? We’ll need the official HP recovery discs to reinstall Windows Vista.

The CDs ordered we have only to wait.

Today I returned to the client’s location and booted from disc 1 of the HP recovery disc set. What do I get? An error 1012. The HP recovery CDs gave me an error 1012. What is an error 1012? I do not know but I was told to contact HP technical support if the problem persisted.

It did. So I did.

Below is the actual chat transcript. I urge everyone to read every single line carefully. VERY carefully.

Howard Sherman : Getting error 1012 when trying to run recovery. Cannot update firmware because this is a new hard drive with no OS on it.
[An agent will be with you shortly.]
[You are now chatting with Samantha .]
Samantha : Welcome to HP Total Care for Desktop Support. My name is Samantha. I will be your technical support specialist today. Please allow me a few moments while I read your issue description details.

NOTE: For security reason, PLEASE DO NOT send credit card information via chat.

Howard Sherman : And to save time — I am a Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer with 30 years experience so you can talk to me like a tech.
Samantha : That is really nice to know.
Samantha : Howard, if I understand the issue correctly, you are getting error 1012, when trying to run recovery on the New Hard Drive, am I correct?
Howard Sherman : Correct.
Howard Sherman : And it can’t be the firmware for the CD/DVD drive because I tried two different DVD drives and got the same error.
Samantha : Okay.
Samantha : Please let me know, from where did you get the new HDD?
Howard Sherman : Staples
Howard Sherman : It’s a Seagate Barracuda 1TB
Howard Sherman : it’s Sata-3
Howard Sherman : To make sure it wasn’t a compatibility issue I swapped it out with a barracuda 250GB Sata-1
Howard Sherman : Same exact problem
Samantha : In order to assist you in a better way, may I please have the product/system and serial number of your computer? This information will help me to pull up the relevant details needed for the issue.

You can locate the same on a white bar coded sticker on the side panel of the tower, back or bottom panel of the tower . Product/System number starts with P/N and Serial number starts with S/N.
Howard Sherman : Sure
Howard Sherman : The model # is actualy an M8530i
Howard Sherman : k1334aa-aba
Howard Sherman : cnx8341frg
Samantha : Thank you for all the information. I really appreciate your cooperation and help. Kindly confirm your e-mail address.
Howard Sherman : howard@royalgeeks.com
Howard Sherman : I am Howard – king of all geeks
Samantha : Thank you so much.
Samantha : Howard, which OS you were using on the old HDD?
Howard Sherman : Windows Vista Home Premium
Howard Sherman : I tried installing from a “plan vanilla” Windows Vista Home Premium DVD
Howard Sherman : The installer couldn’t see the hard drive
Howard Sherman : That’s when we ordered the official HP recovery kit which came with 3 discs.
Howard Sherman : Booting from disc 1 is when I get the error 1012
Howard Sherman : The HD is fine beause either the 1TB or the 250GB was seen in the BIOS
Samantha : Howard, let me inform you, if you change the HDD from outside HP, then the HP recovery disk will not work with that HDD, as all the parts in HP PC are tattooed together.
Samantha : So it will give you the error message.
Samantha : In this situation, if you install retail version of operating system on the PC, then you will not get the error message, and can use the HDD.
Howard Sherman : I didn’t know HP manufactures hard drives
Howard Sherman : I did use a retail version of Windows Vista Home Premium.
Howard Sherman : The Windows installer doesn’t see the hard drive!
Samantha : What is the model number of the hard drive?
Howard Sherman : I tried that last week. It’s only when that failed did we go ahead and order the system recovery kit
Howard Sherman : Checking
Samantha : Do you have any other CD/DVD drive with you?
Howard Sherman : First I tried a ST31005N1A1AS-RK
Howard Sherman : Then I tried a ST3250310AS – a 250GB hard drive
Howard Sherman : Ys
Howard Sherman : I tried an external USB DVD drive
Howard Sherman : No difference
Samantha : Okay.
Samantha : Howard, kindly confirm the model and the product number of the PC once again.
Howard Sherman : .
Howard Sherman : Sure
Howard Sherman : The model # is actualy an M8530i
Howard Sherman : k1334aa-aba
Howard Sherman : cnx8341frg
Samantha : Thank you.
Howard Sherman : Sure
Howard Sherman : At this point unless there’s some hidden secret to doing this I’m going to have to suggst the customer buy a new computer.
Samantha : Let me check few things.
Howard Sherman : OK
Samantha : Howard, in this situation, we can burn the firmware update for the CD/DVD drive on a disk and make a bootable disk, then run the update on the PC. Also burn the chipset driver and run it.
Samantha : Let me provide you the links.
Howard Sherman : Why would the firmware update be necessary when I tried booting from a second, completely different drive?
Samantha : Howard, first install the chipset driver on the PC, and then check.
Samantha : Let me provide you the link from the manufacturer site.
Howard Sherman : How can I install the chipset driver on the PC when the hard drive is blank?
Howard Sherman : And second of all – why should that even be necessary since I am using recovery discs provided by HP itself? Shouldn’t all the necessary drivers already be included on the discs you provide?
Samantha : Howard, as I have mentioned, the recovery disk will work properly only with the HP shipped hard drive. However we can try few things. We need to update the BIOS, then try to install the chipset driver, and also install the firmware update for the hard drive.
Howard Sherman : Can I order a hard drive from HP?
Howard Sherman : And if I get this order from HP and install then run the recovery disc it will work, right?
Samantha : Yes, I believe it should work, if you order the HDD from HP.
Howard Sherman : Saying “you believe it should work” doesn’t sound like a very confident answer.
Howard Sherman : Ok let’s go ahead and try updating the BIOS, etc.
Howard Sherman : Then again — the BIOS sees the hard drive just fine.
Samantha : Sure. Let me provide you the links.
Samantha : http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/softwareCategory?os=2093&lc=en&cc=us&dlc=en&sw_lang=&product=3377257#N2363
Howard Sherman : I don’t see how updating the BIOS is going to help since the BIOS recognizes the drive just fine already
Samantha : Select BIOS from there and download then save the file.
Samantha : Let me provide you a link for the chipset.
Samantha : The link is:
Samantha : http://www.nvidia.com/object/nforce_vista_win7_32bit_15.49.html
Samantha : The above-mentioned Link will take you to a non-HP Web site. HP does not control and is not responsible for information outside of the HP Web site.

Howard Sherman : How in the world are Nforce drivers supposed to help here?
Samantha : This is the chipset driver along with the display driver.
Howard Sherman : At what point is the chipset driver introduced in the system recovery process?
Howard Sherman : According to the BIOS update it corrects a blue screen issue and a wake-from-hibernation. How will that correct the OS not recognizing the hard drive?
Samantha : The BIOS update can also resolve the other issues.
Samantha : Howard, the best thing would be, if you purchase the HDD from HP and then install the HP recovery disk on the PC.
Howard Sherman : Can you give me a link to where I can purchase that drive?
Samantha : If you wish to purchase the drive, then you can do it right now. 750GB Serial ATA (SATA) 3Gb/s hard drive – 7200 RPM will cost you: $323.95
Howard Sherman : And not to be difficult here but in looking a the BIOS upgrade the installation instructions call for it being installed from Vista logged in as administrator — which is not possible
Samantha : If you wish to purchase the drive, then my supervisor can call you right away and assist you to place the order.
Howard Sherman : Who makes the hard rive?
Howard Sherman : And why is it more than three times the price of a larger drive with the same speed I can purchase retail at Staples?
Samantha : You will get the same hard drive, which was shipped with the PC.
Howard Sherman : Hm.
Howard Sherman : Let me consult with the customer
Samantha : Howard, were you using Vista 64 bit on the old HDD?
Howard Sherman : No, 32 bit.
Samantha : Sure.
Samantha : Kindly check the model number of the PC once again. Is it m8530f or M8530i?
Howard Sherman : i
Howard Sherman : the sticker does say 64 bit
Howard Sherman : BTW — the drive installed in the PC is a Seagate Barracuda 750GB @ 7200RPM
Samantha : Exactly.
Howard Sherman : I installed barracudas also — bigger and smaller — no difference
Howard Sherman : Yet the drive you want to charge 325% more for — and is smaller — WILL work? Are you kidding me?
Samantha : As I have checked from the resources the PC had 750 GB SATA 3G (3.0 Gb/sec): 7200 rpm HDD, and the Windows Vista Home Premium with Windows Media Center (64-bit) with Vista Service Pack 1 shipped with the PC.
Samantha : Would you like to purchase the drive?
Samantha : Then my supervisor can call you right away to place the order.
Howard Sherman : I booted from a Windows 7 64 bit DVD and it recognizes the drive fine.
Howard Sherman : No need for special drivers,chipsets, BIOS, etc.
Samantha : That is great!
Samantha : Howard, after installing the Windows 7 OS, you might need the drivers.
Howard Sherman : That will be the easy part.
Howard Sherman : You may wish to make a note in your documention
Howard Sherman : I’m off to the store to buy a copy of Windows 7.
Samantha : Is there anything else I may assist you with?
Howard Sherman : Uhm, no
Samantha : If you wish you can purchase the Windows 7 disk directly from HP.
Howard Sherman : No thanks we’re in a hurry
Samantha : Not a problem.
Howard Sherman : Plus I sure wouldn’t like to hear you charge 325% more for Windows install media too
Samantha : please keep your Activity ID for future reference.

Howard Sherman : You can count on it!
Howard Sherman : Bye now!
Samantha : Your Activity ID for this chat session is: 1244507.
Howard Sherman : Ok got i
Samantha : Thank you for your time and patience.

You can save the chat transcript after ending the chat session. For that you need to click on the Save button after ending the chat session.

If you need further assistance, please get back to us. We want to ensure your satisfaction with our products and our service. You can contact us again at:

http://www.hp.com/support/chat

Chat support is available 24 hrs a day, 7 days a week.
Our exclusive Owner Services will help keep all of your HP and Compaq products up and running. Please visit our Web site at:

http://www.hp.com/home/ownerservices

Samantha : Good bye and take care, Howard.

Don’t lose sight of the fact that throughout the chat transcript she could not (or would not) qualify the hbasis for her reasoning in installing a BIOS upgrade (that could not be performed), a firmware upgrade to the DVD drive (that also could not be carried out) and the Nforce driver installation (which also could not happen under the circumstances). What’s possibly worse is that Samantha did not respond to my questioning of the sky-high price of their hard drive which she said she BELIEVED SHOULD solve the problem.

Is Samantha a sentient being capable of interactive conversation or a parrot merely repeating the lines she was taught? I leave it to the reader to decide…

Apart from the ego boost I received solving (once again) a problem that NO ONE – not even HP itself – could solve I walked away with some stunning revelations:

Nobody should ever buy an HP computer unless and untill drastic change are made.

Here’s why in summary:

There are serious design flaws in HP computers. I can swap out a bad drive for a good one in any average PC inside of five minutes. A technical support menial lacking my superior skill and experience can do it in ten minutes. Properly swapping out the bad drive in the HP Media Center desktop PC proved impossible — or ludicrously difficult at best.

HP technical support is misguided and out of touch. And possibly dangerous. Review the chat transcript. They wanted to sell me a hard drive smaller than the one I installed — from the same family of Seagate hard drives — at 325% of the cost. Samatha said she BELIEVED it SHOULD work. What if the average computer user followed her advice and bought that drive for $324? What they couldn’t know is that it still wouldn’t work. If the HP computer owner took the other path and followed Samantha’s advice they would’ve wasted hours of their time running a series of fool’s errands — leading nowhere and achieving nothing.

My own instincts told me to try Windows 7. And it worked like a charm with none of the hoops HP advised me to jump through and with no need to purchase their criminally over-priced hard drive. What justifies that inflated price? Are those hard drives manufactured by magic elves and sprinkled with fairy dust?

I give two thumbs up to Windows 7 for coming through like a charm and I give HP the thumbs down for producing a poorly-designed PC then backing it with horrible technical support.

If ever you were pause at the price you are quoted by an IT professional for getting a job done this story should take away your doubts and reservations once and for all.

If ever you have doubts about any technical support task you face then drop me a line – I’ll see the job through to the end. Like I always do.

In the past week I’ve worked with two different customers who could no longer login to their Windows 7 computers because they forgot their passwords.

The good news is that there’s no need to reinstall Windows.

The bad news is that resetting a forgotten or lost Windows 7 password is an expensive, time-consuming proposition.

The great news is that you can prevent this problem from happening in about five minutes.

Here’s how in three easy steps:

1 Insert a removable memory stick (AKA a USB memory stick) into your computer

2 Open User Accounts by clicking the Start button Picture of the Start button, clicking Control Panel, clicking User Accounts and Family Safety, and then clicking User Accounts.

3 In the left pane, click Create a password reset disk, and then follow the instructions. Make sure you store the password reset disk in a safe place and don’t use that memory stick for any other purpose.

Memory sticks can be had for under $10 and the total time it will take you to drive to the store, buy a memory stick, return home and create a password reset disc is far less than the hours of time you’ll waste fumbling with your computer trying to reset a Windows 7 password without said disc.

With all the recent storm activity here in the northeast and my personal involvement in repairing several small office/home office networks and computers I’d like to spend just a few minutes discussing the importance of an Uninterruptible Power Supply (UPS) also known as a battery backup system.

In the past seven days I’ve seen three computer workstation damaged to the point of uselessness due to electrical storm activity. Let’s take role call:

One computer had its on-board network adapters (Ethernet and wireless) fried leading me to install a work around. This was minor motherboard damage with a workable solution.

Another computer’s motherboard was a little less lucky. A pretty tricky power problem crops up now; the computer won’t power up without a lot of extra dance steps necessary to get the computer to boot. Again, fortune is on our side as the solution is simple to implement and requires no physical repair.

Contesant #3 comes in dead last – A one year old PC with all the bells and whistles was blown right out of the water and is now dead in the water. The expense of parts and labor in purchasing and installing a new motherboard was avoidable and should have been unnecessary.

Why?

Every instance of computer damage I outlined would have been completely prevented by the presence of a Uninterruptile Power Supply (UPS for short).

What is a UPS? To cut to the quick a battery backup system is just a very big battery with some electrical outlets attached. The UPS regulates power by absorbing a power surge of any type from hitting any piece of equipment plugged into the UPS. Similarly, dips in power or complete power outages are caught by the built-in battery that keeps your entire computer system running even in a full blackout.

It’s at that point you save any and all work you were doing and power down your computer and wait until power is restored. This prevents any data loss, physical damage to your computer or corruption of key system files which is likely to happen if your computer is abruptly powered off.

A UPS can be purchased for $40 or $50 at any Staples, OfficeMax or other big-box retailer. That’s a small price to pay for reliable, problem-free computing isn’t it?
Another

The answer to the most burning question on any any business owner’s mind is startlingly simple:

Make sure your business has a website that can be easily and quickly found on the Internet.

Why?

This past Tuesday I was zooming around from appointment to appointment in my haste to make my wife’s 30th birthday perfect.

One of her birthday wishes was sushi. She loves sushi. I love it too.

Ok. Sushi it is. I Google the name of our favorite sushi place along with the street and town where the restaurant is located right from my iPhone.

I glance down at the first couple of search results and click on the number. My iPhone dials it automatically.

Within two minutes my order is placed and will be ready for pick up in 20 minutes.

You’ve just got to love the efficiency technology delivers.

Unless you’re the owner of the Sushi restaurant I wanted to order from.

Why?

Because when I stopped by to pick up my order they embarassingly told me they never got the order.

How is that possible?

Because I called the wrong restaurant. The wrong restaurant had a website AND a Google listing with a name very similar to my favorite restaurant and located in the same town.

End result? My favorite restaurant lost a $100 dinner order AND a customer.

Why did my favorite sushi restaurant lose me as a customer?

Because the place I found by accident took $10 off my order thanks to a coupon they gave me that I had no knowledge of.

Then they threw in two free servings of Miso soup along with yet more coupons.

What’s the best part? Their fish is fresher.

And why did all this happen?

Because my formerly favorite sushi restaurant didn’t have any kind of presence on the World Wide Web. They are INVISIBLE on the Internet.

If you don’t have a website RoyalGeeks.Com can rectify that for you in seven days or less in most cases. Then we’ll get your website noticed within two or three weeks which will bring you more potential customers and make it easier for your existing customers and clients to do business with you.

If you already have a website is it working for you? Is it bringing you new customers? Is it making your phone ring? Are you taking orders for your products or services online? If not, why not?

We can supercharge any website and get it noticed in less than a month and make it possible for your customers to do business with you online.

It’s the year 2010 – there is just no excuse for even the smallest business to NOT have a website.

In the last few days I’ve noticed that many clients are purchasing new Windows-based workstations with 64 bit versions of Windows 7 installed.

This is exciting on one front as that means that Windows users with an unquenchable and unending need for speed will have their wildest dreams realized. That’s because modern computers with the latest CPUs and 6GB of RAM running 64bit are mighty fast machines.

Why?

Because Windows 7 64bit can address more than 4GB of RAM and tap into all the power of today’s powerful Intel and AMD CPUs the user experience is…amazing. That’s to speak nothing of all the amazing features in Windows 7 itself.

As is so often true in life there is a downside to all this 64bit goodness.

Compatibility.

Some printers have no drivers for Windows 7 at all forcing the user to go out and buy a new printer. All-in-one printers can be a real mixed bag; some of them will allow basic printing functions but the more advanced features of the printer may not work because their whiz-bang software won’t install on Windows 7 64 bit.

Even brand new pieces of software – Like Kodak’s Photoshare – are not compatible with Windows 7 64bit. In some cases this can make a Kodak camera inoperable with your new computer.

What to do? Always verify compatibility.

Before purchasing a computer make sure you know which version of Windows you’re getting – 32 bit or 64 bit. If you don’t absolutely NEED the extra power and speed then stick with 32 bit Windows 7 and you’ll have virtually no compatibility issues.

If you absolutely MUST have blink-in-an-eye performance, 8GB of RAM and other modern wonders but you ALSO use an older piece of mission-critical software there are two things you can do to get your program to run.

One Verify it’s compatible with Windows 7 64 bit first.

Two – If the software you need to run is not verified as compatible you’ll need to purchase a computer with a superior Intel CPU and Windows 7 Professional or Windows 7 Ultimate. This will allow you to run a ‘virtual’ copy of Windows XP from within Windows 7. This will allow all your critical software to run in this special Windows XP mode that is built into Windows 7. Sounds complicated? It’s a difficult concept at first until you see it running. Then it’ll make all the sense in the world to you.