charderman

While everones favorite fruit company continues to try and grab more market share, they keep missing the mark in one very important but overlooked area. Hardware is always the key. You may say but they are a hardware company and I would agree but not a very good one in the light of maintanence. No one wants to drive 50 miles or better to their closest “Fruit Stand” just to get something that any computer place should be able to repair. They make it easier to use but not easy to fix or repair. I understand they want to keep everything through them, but what they keep missing is that they should allow smaller places resell parts and fix their machines. People would have a much better cost of ownership overall and therfore would come back to them more often. I am not hating the Mac, I have a couple of them myself I am just saying they are quite a pain to repair when something goes wrong. If you were to buy a “prophet”(made up) brand car or a Ford, and everything about the prophet was better except price and the only place you could get it fixed was 50 miles away or better, but the Ford you can fix anywhere and it’s much cheaper. Which one would you go with. ( Insert your favorite brand car, doesn’t have to be Ford.) I think most people would go with the Ford for the price and the ease of repair and part availability. I know in this internet age it should make things easier as far as this stuff goes, but most non-technical people want someone to hold their hand through the repari and they want someone local that they trust not someone they don’t know 50-100 miles away that has to keep their computer for a month because they are too busy since they are the only place around. I know the Mac has a good market share right now, and I am not picking on them. I would love to see them do much better. I am only saying that after 20 years it should be better than this.   

We all went out as a family and had Chinese food tonight. This is a pretty rare thing these days as it costs a bunch for us all to go out. Anyways, I find it quite surprising how many Chinese restaurants have sushi since it is after all Japanese. I find it even funnier that most people even though having never tried sushi, think it is the most disgusting thing ever. First of all most places in small towns don’t serve REAL sushi and what they end up selling is usually full of cooked ham, shrimp, and crab-meat. SO, after eating there many times and seeing that they had real sushi along with all the other stuff that they were actually getting quite creative with it. A few weeks ago I stopped and talked to the lady who runs the place and to my surprise she actually had a Japanese sushi chef working for her and before he left taught her the craft. I know most buffets have a very limited arrangement of stuff like sushi but they have converted a once dead grill section into a small sushi buffet and it is quite nice. I can’t seem to get enough of it. I challenge anyone out there who thinks sushi is gross without trying it to find a place that specializes in sushi and try it before you say ick. Most of these places will be found in a larger city with a large Asian community, but sometimes you just get lucky.  

It’s hard to imagine that Microsft’s Windows Vista and Office 2007 are over a year old already, is it because most people still have XP, or is it because no one is buying anything new. I like to think that neither of these are actually true in and of themselves. As with Windows XP no one seemed to want it the first year or two it was available, in fact I still see many computers come through the door with Windows 2000 on them, and the person using it still says, “Best operating system ever, I am never going to upgrade. “. I really think the problem lies more with change than anything. Change is a hard thing most people are too busy to learn something new, which is why, I think, Microsoft has done so well to begin with. Barely changing the UI over the years so people had to learn very little new stuff to get thigns done. I also think that with some of the new steps Microsoft has taken with the UI and the little steps Apple has taken, is the reason for the change in market shares. Is Windows Vista a good product? I get asked that all the time. I really think it is, if you approch it with an open mind and just let your mind kind of turn off as you use it. I notice when I frist started to use it that the more I thought about how to do things the less I got done, but as I just started using it, it became very easy. Now I don’t really like going back to XP when I have to. Should you move to Vista, well that is a question you have to ask yourself. Do you want to learn something new? Is there time in your schedule to try something new, and do you need a new computer? I really suggest anyone wanting to move to Vista get a new machine and NOT try and upgrade. With the new machine you need to think about a new printer, scanner, or other devices as they may not work with Vista. Overall it is a bit of an investment to go to Vista, but if you have the time and money I think in the end it is worth it.

I know I haven’t been posting much, but we have been very busy. We moved our home then moved our business, and now we have started some new ventures in our current business. We are now hosting a call center at our current location and are selling satellite internet to start out at www.allstarsatellite.com. We are very excited and are having a blast. I know I have been writing about a lot of our business stuff lately but it has taken up the majority of my time. So I really don’t have a lot to say about many things these days. As we get settled into all the new things we are doing I should have some time to chat about good stuff again. Many more things to come and soon………

And here it comes…………..

I had a blog and I used to write in it. Well there has been a lot going on in the past several months. I finally got my ipod, about a month after my last post. It took several phone calls and emails to get it but they upgraded me to the next generation Ipod nano’s so I guess I can’t complain too much. We (meaning Supervillain and I ) have a new weekly show called Help Desk Radio. We do it on our Local AM radio station, but you can listen on the website at www.helpdeskradio.com. With this new show we have found that our business has gone through the roof which is why I haven’t had time to post or be online much at all for anything other than work. This coupled with holiday season and the fact that Supervillain and I signed a lease for a new building for our business (which means we’re moving) is keeping me very very busy. This past week I took a “boot camp” training for my cisco certifications. I will be taking the tests very very soon. Cisco is the one I have been putting off forever, so we will see how I do this next week with the exams. I should have some more pictures and other news as the weeks role on.

Here is a picture of the Chard family. I think you will enjoy.

I guess I can’t expect anything different. These “free’gimicks where you get a laptop or an mp3 player always seem to be too good to be true. I completed all my offers and such in April and they processed the paperwork in June and now its August and they are telling me it will still be another month or so. We will see , and I will be in close contact with them to make sure they pay up.

I would like to apologize to the people who I accused of stealing my ipod, actually the person I accused. I will be stopping by on Monday to say it in person shortly after they open. My ipod was found in a box that had wedding presents in it. We are still trying to figure out how it got in there, not tat I care I have it back. I would also like to thank the People at Stolenipods.com for all of there help and I would suggest anyone use their service to keep track of your electronics. Again sorry to the person I was accusing, although I still want the other item that was left there back.  

Makkaio and I used to run a website together. I t was called two drunk guys talking about crap. I noticed the domain was recently purchased. Although nothing is up right now, it seems almost a shame that we didn’t keep it going. The whole site was put together to post our “podcast” before anyone was doing them. here is a link to the old site. Feel free to leave a comment and let us know how bad our old site really was.