A few days ago I asked the Technibble readers to ask me a question about the computer business. Here are the answers:
Read the rest of this entry »

Over the last few years I have been helping my clients with their Apple Macs. It has been mostly simple stuff like unboxing the Mac and setting it up, entering their email settings, migrating data and the occasional hard drive/RAM upgrade or replacement. I didn’t venture too far beyond that because I wasn’t confident with my Macs skills and didn’t want to learn on a clients computer. I have years and years of experience repairing PC’s and rarely come across a PC I cannot fix, but my Mac knowledge was limited.

I can see that Apple’s computer market share has greatly increased recently (thanks to Vista I assume) so I thought that I should look into it further and I bought myself a 13′ Aluminum Macbook. I have spent the last few months learning both the operating system/hardware sides and how to fix it. I still have a long way to go myself, but I would like to share some of it with other technicians so here are some resources for repairing Apple Macs.
Read the rest of this entry »

Here on Technibble we have covered computer repair applications for your USB drive fairly extensively, but what about a technicians CD wallet? Here is a list of disks that I carry around in my onsite CD wallet.
Read the rest of this entry »

Working in the computer business is great, especially if you have your own business. You get to choose your own hours, what jobs you want to work on and it stays interesting as there is often a new problem that you have never seen before.

However, there can be a lot of frustrations too such as clients who call you for advice and have no intention of paying you. Clients who are very slow to pay and clients who always ask for discounts. Thats just to name a small few.

What are you biggest frustrations in the computer business? Drop us a comment. As always, you dont need to sign up to comment and you can even post anonymously.

The question “Should I charge businesses more?” recently came up on the Technibble forums and the short answer is yes. Heres why:
Read the rest of this entry »

I would like to share with you my (and many other technicians) process of working on a computer and dealing with a client. I have built up this process over many years after making many mistakes of my own and putting extra steps to make sure they don’t happen again. This is my process:
Read the rest of this entry »

You may be a brilliant technician, but providing computer training is a completely different game than fixing a computer. It doesn’t rely so much on technical skills; instead it requires social and teaching skills which many computer technicians don’t necessarily have. Here are some tips I learnt over the last 8 years to be the best computer teacher you can be.
Read the rest of this entry »

Yesterday, I had a client bring their laptop into my workshop because it kept turning off after a certain amount of time. My first guess was that it was overheating as I have seen this kind of thing before. I booted the laptop into BIOS and sure enough, the temperature was slowly rising until it reached the 90 degree celsius range and shut down.

I flipped the laptop onto its back and saw the cooling fan and plenty of hair in it so I am assuming the heatsink is probably clogged like in this picture of a laptop I took about a year ago.

Now, the client had driven about 45 minutes to my place because they got a really good referral about me from their friend. I figured this wouldn’t take very long so I told them they can stick around while I clear it out (I have done this many times before). I took out all the screws I could see but the laptop case wouldn’t open. I looked a little more and found some hidden clips, undid them but it still wouldn’t open up. I searched under stickers and the rubber feet for screw holes but it still wasn’t opening.
Read the rest of this entry »

I had a shady client today. I first talked to them on Friday but it was only today that I released that they wanted me to do something shady. That Friday, I got a call from a new client saying that wants me “to make it so she can logon to the laptop without using the fingerprint scanner”.
Read the rest of this entry »

I was recently asked via email about how I handle stock as a self employed computer technician. You want be able to carry enough stock to be able to do your job, but you don’t want to be holding onto too much because their value can decline so quickly. Here’s what I do:
Read the rest of this entry »