Over the course of time the cost of living constantly increases and you also gain more experience doing what you do. Am I Charging Enough? is a question all businesses need to ask themselves every few months to make sure we are keeping our heads above water financially and to make sure our prices match our reputation.

Here are a few questions you need to ask yourself to help you determine whether you need to raise your prices:
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In part 1 of our Automation with AutoIT tutorial, we showed you how to run silent commands using AutoIT. In this article we are going to show you how to install applications that don’t have any silent install options. If you found the last article hard, don’t be turned off as this one is easier.

For this article I will be installing Winamp without using a silent switch.
Although inamp actually has a silent switch we will be doing it the other way sake of showing you how to do it for programs without them. This is where AutoIT really shines.
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In our last “computer repair tool of the week” article we posted about the application called Universal Silent Switch Finder which has the ability to find hidden install switches. The advantage of knowing what these hidden switches are is that it allows you to control the way a piece of software is installed. For example, if we were to install something like Spybot and we used its “silent” switch, it would install Spybot without ever showing us a install screen or asking us any questions. The main advantage of this is that it allows us to automate what we do.
Lets say that you install a certain set of software on every system that you sell like Spybot, Ad-Aware and AVG antivirus. You can make this a 1 click process and let the application that you created do all the work. In this article, we’ll show you how to do it.
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The other day I came across a clients computer that was getting the infamous Blue Screen of Death (aka BSOD). However, since the computer had the “Automatically Restart if the event of a bluescreen” option switched on, the system would restart and the blue screen disappear too quickly for me to read. Most technicians will just go into Safe Mode and switch this off, but what if you cant get into Safe Mode? What happens if the option to “Disable Automatic Restart” doesn’t show in the F8 menu either?
I had this happen to me and I found a way around it. Read on.
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This week I encountered a computer repair job that went bad. I’ve had experience dealing with jobs gone bad in the past and I have learnt how to avoid them in most cases. However, I think this one was unavoidable. Heres my story.
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Most technicians bring along various program installers (such as the latest antivirus update, iTunes & Winamp etc.) on a USB drive to their clients houses because the client may not have internet access, it is very slow, or the program installer is very large.

MSN/Live Messenger used to be one of those installers that I frequently brought along to clients houses. However, ever since Microsoft started pushing their other “Live” products, they no longer offered a stand-alone, offline installer for Windows Live Messenger. I hated having to re-download it every time I wanted to install Live Messenger, so I found an easy way to get the stand alone offine installer. Heres how I did it.
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As a technician, occasionally you come across situations where you are not quite sure what to do. Its a fine balance of personal morals, ethics and just doing business. I have written 7 questions which are borderline and I’d love to know what you guys would do in these situations.
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This is a guest post written by Nathan H from our forums. Nathan has written us a quick reference guide on what you can/should do for a computer maintenance task.
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A few weeks ago I wrote about the problem with the computer repair industry. This week I will be talking about the problem with the software industry with a focus on Norton and Vista.
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As computers become more and more of a necessity, the elderly are embracing computers in greater numbers. Just two days ago I had to set up a new laptop for a 78 year old woman and her money is just as green as the younger generations so its a good idea to learn how to setup computers to be more usable for them. Here is a guide on how to set up a Windows machine for the elderly.
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