Nov
15
Tip of the Day!
Filed Under Uncategorized | 1 Comment
Do not eat fried egg sandwiches right above your laptop keyboard!
You’d have thought I’d know better – Doh! Can someone pass the cloth?….
James
Nov
13
Why is doing business so difficult?
Filed Under RANT TIME!, Business | Leave a Comment
Ok, so some of you may know, we’re opening up a shop in Leicester. Essentially it will retail computers, printers, ink etc to customers in our new premises on Allandale Road, Leicester.
So we’ve approached our bank about getting a merchant account to accept credit / debit cards. Now as soon as you mention the words “Computer” or “IT” their tone of voice changes. Apparently we’re such a big risk by selling a laptop to ‘Mrs Miggins’ in leafy suburban Leicestershire that the bank either wants to defer payments for 35 days OR deposit £16,000 ($32,000) in a bank account for 12 months at 0% interest until we prove our trading history.
Whilst 30 day terms are pretty usual in business, when you’re starting out a new business venture, you need EVERY penny you can get… and yesterday! Standar merchant terms are 3-4 days.
Do I want to borrow money? NO
Do I want to do anything out of the norm for a shop keeper? NO
Do I, my fellow directors or the business have any adverse credit history? NO
Do I want to sell a container load of Cisco routers to Nigeria / Uzbekistan / North Korea from an order emailed in broken English from a Hotmail / Yahoo! / Gmail account? NO
All I want to do is accept payment for good supplied, face to face, in a commonly accepted method – by plastic. The TV/DVD shop next door gets his cash in 48 hours and he’s only been trading two months longer than me!
OK, so I go shopping around… Another bank wants me to trade in the shop for six months before giving me a merchant facility.
“OK, if you won’t give me the ability to accept THE most popular method of payment in PC retail, how do you expect me to still be trading in six months?”
Unsurprisingly, he had no answer.
Another wanted 15 business days AFTER I had posted them a form for them just to make a decision. Have they heard of the internet? At least others can tell me in 15 seconds that they don’t want my money!
Others haven’t even bothered to return my call… After all I only want to give them MON£Y!
Why is doing business so difficult?
Nov
7
Please re-box your PC and send it back for a full refund…
Filed Under Users, RANT TIME! | Leave a Comment
Sometimes there are days I despair. Sometimes ‘customers’ make you feel like saying…
“Please re-box your PC and send it back for a full refund…You’re too stupid to own a computer!”
A customer of mine has been having a few problems recently with their teenage son, their home PC and the ‘entertainment’ that you can find on the internet that might ‘interest’ teenage boys.
In the first instance he had hacked his parents’ password and figured out how to switch off the Internet Security package – which included a web filter. As a result, the pc ended up virus ridden within a few days.
So along I come, clean all the Trojans, etc off the machine. Install a better package that can’t be hacked by the average teenager and move on.
A fortnight later, I find out that the young rogue has taken to turning the PC off with his right foot! The button on the front became jammed and refused to boot properly. He had a bright idea… when it boots and says “Press F11 to restore” for 2 seconds he decided to hit F11 follow the next 10 screens that say…
“Proceeding will restore your PC to factory settings… Are you sure?… Really Sure?… I’m not kidding now – everything will go… music, homework, dad’s accounts, downloaded games… THE LOT!”
Guess what happened?
Yep, I got two hours work reloading office, Kaspersky, Printer and USB drivers etc.
Whilst it’s a great source of very regular (!) income, it isn’t half a pain in the @$$.
If you value your PC - don’t let a teenager anywhere near it!
James
Nov
1
Filed Under Uncategorized | Leave a Comment
Nov
1
Who’s looking after your IT network?
Filed Under SBS2003, SBSC, RANT TIME! | Leave a Comment
Today there have been a fair few news group entries in some of the Yahoo! Groups regarding Microsoft Certifications that really made me wonder on the value of certifications.
It was all started when somebody asked what the fasted road to certification was in order to qualify for bidding for a particular IT contract. The lady concerned seemed to think that the SBSC (Microsoft Small Business Specialist) route was for her and asked further advice.
In her ensuing posts and responses, she claimed
“My experience is all in Windows 2003 Standard Edition where you actually have to know what you are doing instead of relying on wizards!”
however she didn’t know what was contained within Small Business Server or could hardly believe that Windows Server2003 , Exchange2003 , SQL2005, ISA 2004 and SharePoint all sat quite happily side-by-side on the same server, and wondered where all the redundancy was when it went wrong. Further emails showed a little more naivety on her part. Whilst SBS2003 isn’t the actual product tested in the Small Business Specialist exams, it’s such a core element of the Microsoft SMB toolset that you can’t ignore it.
Certifications are the result of having studied a product, installed it used it and supported it over many years. To not even know a products basic capability and expect to pass a test quickly (or even at all) is kidding both the ‘IT Professional’ concerned and their potential customer asking for the Microsoft Certifications in the first place.
James