Re: #1 reason people don't like VISTA

In article <M9ydnWWq3uDUttLUnZ2dnUVZ_rbinZ2d@xxxxxxxxxxxx>,
Steve de Mena <steve@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Allen Wessels wrote:

I've never met an experienced technician who spent 3 days on a machine
with those kinds of issues and finished the job without realizing that
they may well have missed something.

The length of time indicates the number of problems and that number
tells you that the liklihood of missing something is high.

Whereas a simple backup of the data and a clean reinstal/update would
get you there in a fraction of the time with substantially higher
likelihood that the system will work more reliably.

- Allen

You think the way the majority of "techies" think. "Re-format" is
always your solution. And note that I said I worked "3 nights [in the
evenings after work] on it, not "3 days".

You have no idea how I think unless you've spent 30 years in the
computer industry.

Reformat is not always my solution. As with any unknown situation, you
run tests that give you an idea of the nature of the problem after
getting a completely unreliable story from the end user.

Based on that, you compare the time required to either fix the laundry
list of problems you find or backup and reinstall.

Since the backup and reinstall is going to cost you a couple of hours,
any fix that takes significantly longer than that needs to have one heck
of a good reason to be pursued.

Not having restore disks or a way to back up for a home user is an
example of such.

You spent probably a dozen hours of customer down time and your own
figuring out all the little odds and ends you could spot with your
toolkit. It is neither thorough at detection nor perfect in correction.
I don't care how confident you are of a hand repair.

I know the value of time, both the client's (paying or not) and mine.
When I billed out at $125 an hour, I quickly learned to value the
solution that got the customer back up and running because they often
billed out time on that down machine at my rate or more.

But you keep on learning on your and your client's dime. You'll value
every single little virus, bug, worm and what have you and there will be
no end to them. And us "techies" will tent the building and smoke them
all dead.

- Allen
.

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