Summer Is Almost Here!

The trees are finally green, flowers are in bloom and the birds have finally flown back up north. Summer brings lots of thing to Central Florida, like tourists and the dreaded lightening storms. Have you ever seen what happens to the inside of a piece of electronic equipment after it has had 10,000 volts of electricity sent though it? It isn't pretty! Saving your electronic is easy and a whole lot less expensive than a new computer, TV or DVD player. The cheapest way to protect your electronic equipment is by purchasing surge protection. Surge protection comes in many forms, but the most common is build into power strips. MOST IMPORTANT...NOT ALL POWER STRIPS HAVE SURGE PROTECTION BUILT INTO THEM! 1) You must purchase a power strip that clearly states they have built in surge protection. 2) This is not the time to be cheap, purchase a surge protector that come with a guarantee if your equipment is damaged when plugged into their strip, they will replace the equipment up to $10,000. These are good quality and usually run around $35. You don't need to purchase the $150 strip, unless you need noise suppression for high end electronics. 3) If you are using this for audio/visual equipment, get one with connections for your cable, satellite and phone as these are the most common routes for lightening to hit your electronics. 4) If you are purchasing one for your computer, make sure your modem's phone line and broadband Ethernet cables run through the protector. The key idea here is that anything that comes out of a wall and into your electronic equipment must be protected. A small amount of money now can save you lots later.

You Want To Do What To My Computer!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?

Often I get into the middle of a mess created by another computer repair company, one of the most reoccurring situation is where someone takes their computer in for repair and the computer comes back wiped clean with a brand new installation of Windows installed and a DVD with all their files. Before I go on, I'd like to first say that while on a rare occasion it is necessary to completely start over, over 99% of all problems can be solved without reinstalling. Those who tend to reinstall your operating system have no clue how to really fix your machine. Anyone really can fix a computer that way. The art of computer repair is fixing the problem without reinstalling Windows.
Having your computer wiped clean is not only costly from the repair bill, but is more expensive in time. Once you receive your computer back from Billy Bob's Computer Repair, you will spend the next 2-3 evenings trying to reinstall your programs (if you can find the disks or downloads), finding and transferring all your files back and changing all the setting back to make the computer look and act the way you like it.
Do you know why Billy Bob can fix your computer cheap? Because delete and reinstall takes about 30 minutes of actual time, while actually fixing the problem takes: 1) skill, 2) a lot more time and 3) your patience. Where Billy can turn your PC out in a day, sometimes it can take a day or two to run all the scans and get your PC up and running again.
The moral of the story is: Treat you computer like your car, get the oil changed often and if someone tells you that your pc needs major repair, get a second opinion.