Hey Everybody in Portland Computer Repair Land,
Something we harp on frequently a security method is picking strong passwords.  The security of your password is more important that your choice of anti-virus program!
Anyways, this new article sums it all up pretty neatly, so go give it a read. Most impressive to me is the chart showing exactly how long it would take to crack your current password -

Lifehacker article – how I would hack your password

Thanks!

-Zac

Owner

Happy Hamster Portland Computer Repair

Hey Everybody in Portland Computer Repair Land,
I had a strange call today that I think bears some clarification. A customer’s wife came in with a dead computer, and asked us to take a look. We diagnosed the computer as being full of viruses. The wife called the husband, and put him on with me. I explained the problem, and that we charge $150 to do a complete virus removal. The husband got upset at the price, and said, “look, why should I pay you $150 to run a virus scan? I can do that myself at home!”

I’m going to pause the conversation there, because he raises a very good point – if all we did was run a virus scan, I wouldn’t pay us $150 for it either. However when we do a virus removal, it’s actually a surprisingly in depth process.  We have developed three separate in house tool kits that we use to defeat viruses, depending on their nature. Each kit contains between 5 and 15 different specialized programs, some of which are available to the public, some of which are not, and some of which we programmed ourselves, that we use to defeat virus problem.

In addition, beyond our tool kit, we bring another important element to the table – knowledge. We have seen your virus before, probably several hundred times. We fix 5 – 10 virus infected computers every single day, so we have seen ever single trick the viruses can throw at us. We know the loopholes, the work arounds, and all the tricky places where they can cause real damage to your data.

So of course we do support you in removing your own viruses, and if running your virus scanner gets rid of it – go for it! But when the challenge is beyond what you can do yourself, know that our in shop tools and methods go far beyond the sorts of things it would be safe for the average home user to try by themselves. Sometimes it is best to leave it for the professionals.

Thanks,

-Zac

Owner

Happy Hamster Portland Computer Repair

Hey Guys,

The weather is great, and we love it! However, with the weather this nice people do not want to think about getting their computers repaired. This means our work load is down to same day service. So go ahead and stop in, we can look at and probably get your computer repaired right now, today!

Thanks everybody,

-Zac

Hey Everybody in Portland Computer Repair Land,

A few of our customers have asked us in the last few days about a new laptop from Dell that sells for just shy of $400. It is called a dell inspiron 15. Just from looking at the specifications, it looks fairly competent. Fast enough, big enough, etc, given the price. And hey, it’s a Dell, and Dell is widely known for building reasonable quality machines. Well, they used to be known for that. Unfortunately, Dell has followed Gateway down the rabbit hole of assuming customers are too stupid to look at the long term costs of owning a product.

You see, Gateway has always been notorious for building very cheap computers that break very quickly, so you have to buy a new one. Consider this – if you buy a new $400 Gateway every year, you will have spent $1,600 over the course of 4 years on laptops. However, if you simply spend $800 on a high quality HP you can get a computer that will simply last for 4 years without giving you problems. You will save hours of time shopping for computers, hours of time transfering your data around, and hours upon hours of general headache.

So, lets get back to this crappy Dell. We went ahead and took one apart here in our shop and here are a few things we noticed -

1) The hinges will get loose and break without too much work. The screen has almost holding strength. Take your finger, flick the screen, notice how it warbles back and forth before it settles. On a well built computer, you can flick the screen and it simply stays put.

2) the keyboard is pathetic. As you press each key, it actually sinks into the computer a little bit. Basically its like typing on a computer sitting on a bed of jello, the whole thing moves when you type.

3) The mouse buttons make me sad. They literally wiggle within their sockets. They have both back and forth motion, and left and right motion. They are not properly secured by any definition.

4) The case will crack like an egg. The plastic is incredibly thin and lightweight, and one drop will probably be enough to crack it.

5) It is held together primarily by plastic snaps. Most computers are held together with screws, which are both stronger than plastic, and allow you to take it apart and put it back together more easily. Dell has opted for the cheaper, easier method of casting plastic with snaps that will just snap together to hold the computer together. There are screws, but not as many as we would like to see.

For these, and a host of other reasons, Please stay away from the Dell Inspiron 15, its just as bad as any Gateway we have ever seen.

Thanks!

-Zac

Hey Everybody in Portland Computer Repair Land,
Since we posted the “about us” section of our website, more people have visited that page than any other page on the site. It beats out its nearest competitor (price) by almost 2 page views to 1! People really care more about who we are, then what it costs, which I think is pretty neat.
So, now that I know there is a bit of biographical interest in my employees, I think I’m going to do a little series on them on the blog.

I’m going to start with my Vice President and Junior Partner, Jay Sigler. Jay, interestingly enough, was not going to working at Happy Hamster. He originally came in to apply as a technician, and I found his skills to be  rusty, and out of date. However, while interviewing, it came to light that Jay previously owned a roofing company with 65 employees for which he did all of the sales and marketing work. At that point, about 4 months ago, Happy Hamster outgrew my ability to do everything in it, so I was thinking about hiring on a marketing guy.

I gave Jay a shot on a 3 month contract to see what he could do for the company from a marketing perspective. It was an interesting experiment for the company, as he was my first non-technician hire.  Things worked out pretty well (hey, he still works here!) as he found adverting opportunities for us that I never knew existed, and in many cases got us free advertising from sources from which I normally would have paid. He also reworked many of our existing advertising contracts, and achieved substantial savings on all of them.  Our traffic increased even more than usual once he started working for us, running nearly 20% a month for those 3 months, compared to about 10% a month before he started.

Additionally as a side effect of his sitting in the back of the room, out of the mainstream flow of the shop, he has a good opportunity to observe the shop in action. This removed position lets him see long term trends in how the shop runs that I don’t notice, focused as I am on the day to day operations.  Really, he has in many ways slipped in to fill the gaps in our coverage of a host of issues, and he has helped me out a great deal by taking over tasks I simply no longer have time to do properly. He is also soon going to be starting to post on this blog about subjects relevant to business computer repair and marketing.
So, if you have any sales or marketing inquiries, you’ll find yourself in Jay’s inbox, and I’m glad to know that he’s more then up to that task.

Thanks!

Zac

Owner

Happy Hamster Portland Computer Repair

Hey Everybody in Portland Computer Repair Land,

A lot of people ask us about our google rankings. In fact, there is about a 50% chance that you found this website by typing in, “Portland Computer Repair” or “Portland Laptop Repair” or some other variant on the theme.  We did this very intentionally, because google is the way the world finds things now. We have achieved all of our high search results by using a company very dear to us – The Search Marketing Team. They do all of our ongoing SEO work, and make sure that we stay at the top of the search listings.

If you have any interest in search engine optimization for your business, give them a call. They price their services very fairly, and do the job quickly and efficiently. We couldn’t be happier with our search engine marketing.

Thanks everybody,

-Zac

Happy Hamster Computer Repair

Hey Everybody in Portland Computer Repair Land,

Recently we have been experimenting with new in shop pricing. Previously we completed all work at an hourly rate, $75/hr, but the last few weeks we have tried doing fixed price service for some of our most common jobs.

Take virus removals for example, these are now done at a flat rate of $150, because in the past the vast majority took 2 hours, and cost $150.

However, by switching to a flat rate, even though we make the same amount of money, we achieve two things that matter to me a great deal -

1) Reduce customer stress – by telling customers a fixed price before we begin, people call less to ask how we’re doing, and if we’re going to make it within 2 hours. This saves the staff a lot of stress, because we’re always paranoid about every billable second, and the customer a lot of stress, because they know what their cost will be.

2) Increase the sense of community – maybe it sounds silly, but I do my best to foster a sense of community around our little computer repair shop. As any of you who have been customers recently know, when you leave we ask you to put in a pin in the map for where you are from in Portland. We also have our (very small) lending library that people take books out from now and again.

I understand that a computer repair shop is not a watering hole, or a coffee house, but I still do feel like we are a part of the community and I want the community to feel like we are a part of it.

Now that relates to the cost issue because flat rate pricing spreads the risk and reward amongst all of our customers. Sometimes, virus removals only take an hour, but in the new system, those people pay $150. By that same token, sometimes virus removals take 4 hours, and those people also pay $150. In a flat rate system, everybody is helping out everybody else, and we as a community can keep the pricing consistent.

Thanks everybody,

-Zac