Zone Alarm is a well known internet security package and most of the time it works fairly well. However, because this application has to sink its hooks deep into a Windows to protect the operating system, it can cause serious problems when the application does not uninstall correctly.
It seems, based off Zone Alarms official forums that there are a lot of people having trouble removing Zone Alarm and this is where the Zone Alarm Removal Tool comes in. Its a small, portable and freeware and its probably a good idea to have on your USB drive since you probably wont be able to connect to the internet to download it if you encounter these problems with Zone Alarm.
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Guest Post by Justin. Justin is a small business owner and computer technician with Protocol16, supporting small and mid-sized businesses as well as consumers in the metro area of Portland, Oregon.

Many technicians that are just starting out would love to accept credit cards, but the idea of accepting them right from the start is daunting. While starting up my personal business, I ended up deciding to take credit cards right from the start, but I learned a lot along the way.
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Clonezilla is a free, open source disk imaging tool that is loaded with features. While it is a little rough around the edges visually, it is very capable. It supports over a half dozen file systems covering Windows, Linux and Macintosh based computers. If Clonezilla does not support the file system, you can still image the hard drive by doing a sector-by-sector copy.
Clonezilla can be run from a Live CD, USB drives or a network drive and has the ability to either create a single image file, or do a direct copy from one hard drive to another.
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Since I have started my computer business I have learned a lot. I have learned not only lessons that apply to the computer business, but lessons that also apply to any industry or even just life in general.

One of the lessons I would like to share with you is that by giving something away or spending more money can actually save or make you a lot more money.
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If you have been reading Technibble for any length of time, you already know what advice I have to offer a new computer business. So, for this post I would like to draw upon the experiences of the Technibble community.

What is the single, best piece of advice you could offer someone starting a new computer business?

As always, you dont need to sign up to leave a comment and you can even post anonymously if you like.
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Fabs AutoBackup is a small, portable application that allows you to pick and choose what you (or your client) want to back up with simple check boxes. The program does the rest. After the format, you can also use AutoBackup to restore all the files back to where they should be. We have actually covered Fabs AutoBackup about a year ago but it is now Windows Vista and Windows 7 Compatible and had added quite a few new features making it worth mentioning again.
For a list of what AutoBackup supports backing up and restoring, read on.
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In this article, I would like to share with you a series of business and life lessons that I have learned over the years that I believe have helped me become successful in this business.
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Linx is a small, free and portable application designed to benchmark an Intel CPU in GFlops and to test the stability of a CPU.
Linx supports both 32 and 64 bit operating systems and Single, Dual & Quad Core CPUs. While I was reviewing this application to see if its worthy of becoming the repair tool of the week, it happily maxed out all 4 cores of my QuadCore system at 100% to the point where everything loaded very slowly, but my OS remained stable.
There has even been a well known member on our forums writing a few posts (1, 2) about how this application saved him in a few hard-to-diagnose situations.

This application is a great way to really stress test a CPU so it is defnitely worth adding to your toolkit.
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If you have been following Technibble for any length of time, you will already know that I recommend that all new computer businesses should raise their prices to something more sustainable.

Once you have been in business for a year or two you may want to raise your prices again because your experience is now greater than it was when you first started.

In fact, you usually need do this because can fix problems faster. If you charge according to time, you will actually make less than when you first started because you can do it so much quicker.

Of course, raising your prices is the easy part. The hard part is convincing your clients that you are more experienced than the guy down the street who charges half what you do per hour. The client often doesn’t know any better so you need to educate them. Here are a few ways to go about it:
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There are a handful of common beginner mistakes I often see in this business. A single one of these top 7 beginner mistakes can completely cripple a new business, yet I have found businesses that are actually making a few of these mistakes at the same time. I would like to share with you the top 7 beginner mistakes I have found:
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