James B. Davis clipped > Calling in a service man just isn't the same as diagnosing a problem and getting back to work right away. >Anyone who wants to run their own business internet business or not, will really profit from some good basic IT skills. >When you have to call for help, who knows what you're going to get - most of the time they haul off your computer and it comes back with a new hard drive. When my wife's previous computer's hard drive was failing a couple years ago I got an external hard drive, installed Norton Ghost, and recovered everything that mattered. I was employed by a company at one point and found the most amazing computing environment, setup by a 'pro' - the owners were clueless and preferred to remain that way. They had 12 computers, of which 3 were networked. They had 2 dialup internet accounts, once dedicated to a machine that faxed out fliers and handled the phone systems answering service (which didn't) and call waiting music. they had 7 modems (!) and whenever anyone wanted to connect to the web they bumped off whoever was currently on when they called out via the modem to the same internet account !!! They had 8 phone lines they paid for, but they only used 4. the main server had no backup facilities and, even though they'd had a full loss a couple of years back, they STILL didnt do backups - well, they thought they did .. someone put a 'backup' button on their desktop but it didnt warn them that the backup was not going to the non-existant drive in the main server (the one another 'tech' had pulled to use elsewhere) There whole business pivotted on a DOS based program written years back by a guy who sold it to about 5 companies total, and he was the only person who knew how to fix it when it went wonky.. The there are the photographers I encounter who backup their data to a striped RAID (!) in their working machine .. I'm not mocking them, why on earth would I expect them to know any differently? they've employed a pro to help them set things up - and they merely trusted the person to do the right thing. heck, the only way I learned anything properly was by making mistakes and learning to get out of the mess.. or by listening to advice, reading lots, and experimenting to see if what I was told is true or not. Who has time for that when you just want to use the damned computer? bah.. annoying things.. having said that I have a whole load of them in the house for various tasks and i'm proud to say they all do exactly what I want and should they fall over, they're back up again in as little time as it takes to restore a ghost and a few backups. not simple. However, I have a few friends machines I tend now and then that are easy as pie to fix - they do nothing on them! they delete all their emails as soon as they've read them, they write no documents even though they insist on having the latest office suite, they play a game or two and browse the web.. those are easy.
