so I’ve been working within various senior IT positions now for the last 20 years, and I have finally lost it. People who say that they “can fix your computer” or “help you update” or “make your computer faster” or whatever abundant excuses, boasting or what have you crap that rolls out of their mouth like puss from a festering wound… RUN FROM THEM!!!!!!
i mean really… ever notice that it takes them forever and when they hit one of the 100′s of errors that stall them, they say, “oh i’ve never seen that before” or worse, “oh yeah that happens all the time, don’t worry about it, I’ve got it covered…” etc etc run! run run run!!!!
they will ruin your computer. Really they will, and you’ll end up having to take it in to a professional, which you should have done anyway, and pay twice as much to fix it, and then entire experience, will leave you with a taste of bile, and distrust of all technology professionals for the rest of your life.
You see, the thing is this. Those of us that do this for a living do NOT want to work on your computer. We do it every day. We don’t want to do it for FREE (really, we don’t), in our spare time. We just don’t.
We aren’t running around reinstalling your operating system, or installing a plethora of “spyware tools” which are spyware in and of themselves, and we won’t ever install things like norton, or whatever, as your virus protection. Free? yeah, stay the hell away from that.
Me? yeah, I do help people. But they have to be attractive, or work for me, or family. Everyone else? my answer is “yeah, i don’t know” cuz i don’t want to do it. 90% of the time its the user’s own fault their computer is slow. 90% of the time, their desktop is so messy, that it is amazing that they can see the wallpaper, forget about any semblance of organization within their directory management.
I mean really… its’ just more of a headache than it’s worth to us. Especially if we were ambitious enough to move past A+ certification and move into real certifications, giving us those 6 and 7 figure salaries a year. We’ve paid our dues. We don’t need to impress you, hell we don’t even care if you know what we can do. We’d rather hang out with you, and recommend someone (and that someone will very likely be someone who actually gets paid to do the job, and won’t do it for free ‘as a favor’ to us, because they’re IT people as well), who can do the job, ONCE, properly, and you’ll love them, and a relationship will develop, that the money you’re paying, has saved you all the money you spent by those guys who are aching to learn, by breaking what you own, which is likely not broken in the first place.
would u do that with your car? your house? your childs car? your childs house? so why do you do it with your computer?????? and worse! why do you get upset afterwards, when it is so screwed up you had to bring it to a professional???
geez louise! what the hell is wrong with people???
and my favorite? The guys and girls who work at places like geek squad (there is a reason they went out of business you see), or Future Shop, or Office Depot, and they “fix” computers.
as for the geek squad folks. The call in people, have a computer, and a manual, and a guy walking around who gives them the ‘this is what you say’ to them, instructions, while passing some simple HR process of ” is windows made by Microsoft or Apple” test question.
Real IT people, get real IT jobs. Computer technicians, don’t know software, and software guys don’t know hardware. Security professionals, don’t build websites, and web designers aren’t programmers, and so on and so on.
yes, sure, there are those few of (us) who can do more than one thing… but we’re even less inclined to “fix” your computer, or answer a question.
I know this guy, who is a friend of a friend. He was talking to me about some old sound card, that has been off the market for 25 years already, and how “i should get that, and put it in to replace my “on board sound card” in my laptop… uhhhh yeah… that’s exactly what i should do.. i should put in a pci card, which is half the length, and half the width of the laptop i’m using…
guys like that? stay the hell away from them. they’re IDIOTS!!!!! they know nothing…
k, that guy? who has 15 cars that are all half built in his yard? and drives that old beat up truck with the duct tape holding on the side view mirror? Are you going to call him to fix your porsche? So then why are you going to get that guy with the 1980 dell computer, with half the keys missing, work on your brand new ASUS 64 Bit, 1500$ laptop? Hell he wouldn’t even recognize 1% of the software alerts that pop up…
k, my rant is done…
the moral of the story is this: a person with a little bit of knowledge will be happy to destroy what you own, at no cost to you, then the person who charges with a rate sheet, and is insured, and won’t work on his day off…
get it? do you? do you really???
