Hey Everybody in Portland Computer Repair Land,

For this post holiday blog, I think I would like to give you all another couple of amusing-but-true computer repair stories and problems.

First – The Tail of the Poorly Used Hairdryer

As you all know from reading this blog, spilled liquids on a computer can be a big problem. Sometimes a computer can be entirely destroyed in the worst cases, with full data loss. Other times, people get lucky and just lose a keyboard or an LCD screen.

Recently we had a fairly standard call about a water spill, and I went to investigate. When I arrived on scene and opened up the computer, I noticed that the motherboard didn’t look quite right. Everything was a little bit flatter than it should be…some of the resistors were slightly puddled, actually.

A little investigation turned up the culprit: the customer’s daughter, in an attempt to save her computer and fix the spill problem before mom came home, had used a hair dryer on her computer’s motherboard to get rid of the water. In doing so, she had managed to physically melt some of the motherboard components in the machine.

So people, please, keep in mind that getting rid of the evidence is fine, but do not attempt to dry the water in your computer using a hairdryer.

Story Number Two: The Poorly Aligned Neck

Recently a client came to us who said his computer worked fine, but that he could only open the screen about 20%, and then it started to crack the plastic. We took a look, and sure enough the hinge had broken free of its mooring and that it would take 2-3 days to get the part. The client sighed, said he needed the computer for business and that it was getting really painful to keep using it this way. We stood, shocked briefly, and then confirmed that the client was, in fact, using the computer by hunching down really low and sort of looking up at the screen.

We quickly informed the client that one can easily attached an external monitor to a laptop, and then use it that way. One needs not use the computers screen. The client was relieved, and so too, we hope, his neck!

So those are the stories of today, tune in later for more computer tips and tricks.

-Thanks,

-Zac

Hey Everybody in Portland Or Computer Repair Land,
Today I want to talk to you all about the hardest part of this job. The hardest part is not, surprisingly, fixing the problem. Fixing the problem can usually be done quickly and easily. No my friends, the hardest part is finding the damn problem. I will illustrate this fact with an example from today.

A customer came in who needed the DC jack on their laptop resoldered. This is not a problem, and it’s a job we do with some regularity. Usually the job takes about an hour and a half or two hours, and its not a big deal.

Except for the DV9000 From Hell, as we have affectionately taken to calling it. The DFH started out like any other laptop solder job. One of my technicians took off the old jack, and soldered on the new one. The new jack tested fine, so we reassembled the computer. We pushed the power button. Nothing. Oh crud…

So we tried all the usual, basic stuff. We disassembled and reassembled the computer a couple of times, and nothing. So we had to take the computer apart and spend half a day, probably three to four hours, going over every square inch of the motherboard, looking at every single connection, looking for a single thing that might not be quite in place. Finally we found the damn thing, it was a single metal pin bent out of place and touching another metal pin, which was shorting the entire computer. So we unbent the pin, and the computer worked fine.

So, to the customer the problem on the invoice looks like, “unbent metal pin” but for us, the problem really was finding the problem. The problem itself is incidental to the actual

Hey Everybody in Portland Laptop Repair Land,
I would like today to talk to you about the product markup scam that many computer repair places try to run. Earlier today a customer called me and told me that he had cracked his laptop screen and he needed it replaced. I quoted him our usual price for such a job, (give or take 1.5 hours, so usually somewhere around $105) plus the price of a screen (usually $100-200, depending on the size of the screen.) He expressed a little bit of shock on both ends. He told me that the previous computer repair place he called quoted him only $60 for the labor, but $300 for the screen. Obviously this shop was marking up their parts a huge amount so that they could pretend to be a lower priced shop for the work.

This product markup scam makes a lot of sense, because a customer caling around to shops asking how much the replacement will cost probably assumes every shop uses the same screens. So if the customer hears that I charge $105 to replace a screen, and another shop charges $60, they might go with that other shop, even though the job will cost them more overall.

I decided to check on how widespread this scam is and did an informal poll by pretending to be a customer, and calling some local computer shops. I’m not going to give out names, I don’t think that would be approapriate since I am competition to them, but I can tell you that 3 of the 6 shops I sampled use this same scam. Low labor costs, and utterly outsized screen prices.

So, your lesson for today is to shop around not just for well priced labor, but also to make sure you shop around for the price of the parts. My $105 job might cost less than another shops $60 job.

Thanks everybody,

-Zac

Hey Everybody in Portland Or Computer Repair Land,

I would like to talk today about the windows operating system installed on your computer, and how it makes all of our lives much harder if your motherboard fails. First, just to make sure we’re all on the same page, your motherboard is aptly named, because it is the giant control center for everything in your computer. All things (hard drives, power, RAM, etc) plug into the motherboard, and it handles communcations between all of your components. Now, if you bought a computer from Gateway or Dell or HP or any other big name computer builder, your computer has a copy of windows with what Microsoft calls an “OEM” or “original equipment manufacteror” license. This license is an enormous pain in the event that your motherboard ever fails. You see, if you have an OEM license, you are legally prohibited from putting a different motherboard in your computer.

This causes enormous problems for an obvious reason: it can often be very expensive or difficult to get an identical motherboard. Today, for example, we had a client whose motherboard failed, and for which there are no replacements. The manufacteror (Gateway) no longer makes the board, and there are no used boards on ebay. This means this client, his computer, and his windows installation are now useless. So, instead of spending $80 on a new motherboard and $70 to have it installed, this client would need to buy a new motherboard, a new copy of windows, pay for a new windows installation, and for getting all of his data transfered. Such is the cost of all these extra operations that it frankly became cost effective for the client to just have us build him a new computer.  ($400 of work on a 3 year old computer versus $600 for a new one).

The solution to this problem is simple: don’t buy your computers from the big guys. If you buy a computer from me, I install a version of windows that is perpetually valid. Thats right, no matter how often you upgrade or replace your hardware, you will never need to reinstall windows. So, for yet another reason to buy local, consider the hassle you could be in for if your m

Hey everybody in Portland Oregon Computer Repair Land,

Somebody recently asked me about the fact that all of these posts start with some version of our name, (Happy Hamster Portland Computer Repair, or Happy Hamster Portland Laptop Repair) and wondered why we do that. So I thought today would be a good time to talk about google, and how google decides where a page falls in the listings when you do a search. Setting up your webpage to rank high in google is called, “Search Engine Optimization.”

First, let me be clear that we will ony be covering about half the options here. There is “white hat” optimization, which is what we do, it is entirely legal and follows all of google’s rules. There is also “black hat” optimization. We don’t do any of that, and so I can’t tell you much about it, but basically it’s trying to get your page higher in the list by cheating google.

There are three key factors that decide where your page will rank on google. The first is the content of your page. Google wants to see in a webpage the words and phrases that people search for. That is why so many of our posts have key search terms in the titles, etc. That is so google will read them and then know I want to associate my web page with those searches. The second factor is that google likes new content, they want your webpage to change constantly. So by both writting blog posts regularly, and using key terms in them, we help our google ranking. The third factor google looks for is incoming links. Google will rate you higher if other people link to you. We don’t have a lot of that, but we’ve done what we can by signing up all over the place to make sure we get our names out there and get as many back links as possible.

That said, I want to be clear that this blog started before we started to do search engine optimization. I write this blog because it is informative and amusing in its turn, and I want you all to read it and learn new things about your computers. However, if you’re wondering about the big clunky list of categories that comes after the information, yes, thats for google.

Just so this post does have some computer repair related value, let me teach you all a cute trick I only just recently learned. If you hold down your windows key + D, it will jump you straight to your desktop! Just press that combo again to restore all your windows, just as they were. Neat, huh?

Okay, thats all from me for today, thanks for reading!

-Zac

Hey Everybody in Portland Computer Repair Land,
Today I would like to talk to all of you about your laptop keyboard. We get calls periodically with laptop keyboard problems like, “my kid ripped off the “F” key” and, “my Y key won’t work anymore.” Those two calls are by far the most common, although there are certainly other instances where a laptop keyboard needs to be replaced. What most people don’t know is how easy it can be to fix a laptop keyboard problem.

First, in the case of a single missing key, the internet is your friend. For about $3, you can buy any key you want, for any keyboard, from ebay.com. The installation is simple, its just a piece of black plastic that snaps onto a white housing. This makes it a job that you can do at home fairly easily.

On the second job, replacing a whole keyboard, all you need is a screw driver and about ten minutes to make the swap. You can get a used keyboard on ebay for $10-20, and then follow these instructions. Most keyboards are held in by either 2 long screws coming up from the bottom of your laptop, or 2-4 small screws under the plastic bezel at the top of the keyboard. On any Dell, for instance, if you just take a flat screw driver and pop up the plastic bezel above the keyboard, you can easily unscrew, remove, and install a new keyboard in nothing flat. On most HP’s, there are two screw holes on the bottom of the computer with a “K” for keyboard written next to them. Undue these two screws, and the keyboard should come right off.

Laptop keyboards are much less scary than you might imagine, they are not attached or embedded in any particularly difficut to act on way, so give it a shot! Although, of course, if you ever have any questions, you know where to find us.

Thanks everybody

-Zac

Hey Everybody in Portland Computer Repair Land,

Today is a short post. Just want to tell you all a couple of more horror stories from, “other companies.” Today I want to talk about laptop jack replacements. Many of you know this problem, it is very common. Your laptop suddenly won’t take power unless the jack is “wiggled” in a certain specific way, and then suddenly it stops taking power at all. This is a laptop jack problem, It typically costs about $100 in labor, and $10 in parts to repair.

Unless, of course, you go with an untrustworthy company. Our first victim, we’ll call him “Tim,” had a dead laptop power jack, and took it to a local computer repair company. That company succesfully diagnosed his bad jack, and then informed him that the entire motherboard needed to be replaced! Instead of just resoldering the jack, they charged this poor customer $200 for a used motherboard + installation. Keep in mind that used motherboard often come from badly damaged computers, because they are used, their power jacks are often very weak as well. This customer came to us 2 weeks after this job was done because the power jack on the new board had broken. Keep in mind, also, of course, that an old motherboard probably already has a weakened jack. So “Tim” had to pay us to repair the jack on this supposedly new motherboard.

The second story tonight is another power jack problem. In this story, a user went to a computer repair place he found on craigslist that succesfully diagnosed the power jack problem, and then charged $100 to fix it. The customer came to us because it held for only about 3 months. When we opened his computer we were shocked to find that the jack had not been soldered back into place at all. Rather, this craigslist shop had used SUPER GLUE and glued the jack back into place. I don’t need to tell you how ineffective a long term solution using glue to bond metal together is, and I also don’t need to tell you that my customer suddenly found his calls unreturned by this scammer.

So, more cautionary tales about why you should pick a reputable company for your computer repair, it’s not about price, it’s about service,

Thanks!
-Zac

Hey Everybody in Portland Computer Repair Land,

Today I would like to talk about a problem that has come up many times in the last couple of weeks. There is currently a virus going around called, ‘anti-virus XP.” This virus pretends to be an anti-virus program, pops up on your computer, and tells you, “I have found many viruses, buy me now to clean off these viruses!”. This, obviously, is a virus scam.

The bigger scam, though, is the free anti-virus programs that let this virus get to your computer in the first place. I call them a scam because free anti-virus usually costs about $70, which is one hour of our labor to remove the viruses that it missed and let infect your computer. There are many places in computers where free is just as good as paid. Open Office is just as good as Microsoft Office. Comodo’s free firewall is just as good as Zone Alarm’s expensive firewall. Anti-virus, however, is not one of those places. AVG is free, which is wonderful, and it will protect you from low class older viruses, but it will not protect you from the new generation of threats currently infecting PC’s around the globe.

Let me put it another way. Just today we fixed three separate computers for three separate customers each with AVG free installed, and a range of virus problems. Each of those customers paid us $70 to remove the viruses, and then an additional $40 for a license to a real anti-virus program. In each case, $70 could have been saved if the customer had no at first tried to save $40. The math is clear, spend the money, buy a real anti-virus program (NOD32 from ESET), and don’t be sucked in by the lure of “free” anti-virus programs. They will cost you in the long run.
Thanks everybody.

-Zac