Dell Dimension 4700

More Info: Come on down to Computertech and we will plug it in and boot it up for you to see. Comes with a free AntiVirus/Malware. Already tuned up. All Updates and Drivers, latest BIOS. Perfect machine for general usage (Surfing Web, Checking Mail, Writing Documents).

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Popular:

• Google Product Search – Our first stop most of the time.
• RetailMeNot – Where we find quite a bit of coupons.
• Slickdeals – Very popular deal finding website.
• Pricewatch – Know your product? Search for it here too.

Now lets do an example. One of our customers wanted us to purchase Quicken Deluxe 2010 for them and install it on their laptop. Our first stop was to Google Product Search.

1) Goto Google.com
2) Click on “Shopping” at the top left (Or Click Here)
3) Search for your item (Here we will be typing in Quicken Deluxe 2010)

Wallah! Cheaper than heading down to the store. The bad part is, your going to have to possibly pay for shipping and wait for the item. The customer needed it the same day. Since Quicken has a download from the website, we had to purchase it there. This is where the coupon comes in handy!

1) Head to RetailMeNot.com
2) In the search box above, enter the website your purchasing from. (Ours was “quicken.intuit.com”)
2) Search bellow for the matching product. (We clicked on “CLICK HERE TO CLAIM” $20 off)

There we go, saved the customer $20 on the product with a couple clicks. Depending on your coupon… You might either have a code to type near the product checkout screen from the website your purchasing from, or a link you clicked from RetailMeNot that Redirected you to the website with the coupon applied automatically.

Sometimes RetailMeNot might not have a coupon for your product, so we just do a Google search instead. Example: “Quicken Deluxe 2010 Coupon”. When searching for coupons: Try not to go past the first couple pages on google. Don’t download and install anything. If it’s too good to be true, probably is.

Another thing to look at is deals. I gave a couple links above (Pricewatch & Slickdeals) where you can browse for some cheap deals. Most of the information is submitted by people like you, and confirmed the same way. I may choose to update this article at a later time with more websites, but this should get you started!

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Be Smart

• Be very careful when clicking on any advertisements, many are fake and will take you to a virus download
• Be very careful when “googling” anything, just because it’s at the top of your google search, doesn’t mean it’s “virus free”
• If you see any type of “scan” started when you go to a website, do not touch anything! These are definitely fake and will download a virus if you touch any part of the screen. Right now, it’s “fake” (appearing to be real)
• Change all of your email passwords, make sure they are unique and are not the same as your Facebook, Myspace, LinkedIn accounts
• Many email accounts are getting hacked into, so be very careful when getting emails from friends with “just a link” in it. The hackers are getting lazy and not even sending out text anymore. Just a link, be careful!

If you happen to see an attack/infection going on, your best bet to stop it:

• Press the “control, alt and delete” buttons” at the same time on your keyboard or…put your mouse down on the bottom of your screen (the task bar) and right click
• Start “Task manager”.
• Go to the “applications tab” and then you will see what you have going on with your computer.
• Click on the Internet E or Firefox and then hit “end process”. Do it for all of them.
• You will see the scan windows go away.
• Update your anti-virus software and do a scan

Now, you may or may not be infected still. If you do all of the above and see symptoms of a new program on your computer or it acting very slow, then you probably have a virus.

You can do the following:

• Ignore it and it will get worse, no question
• Fix it yourself, some folks do a good job with that
• Get the neighborhood kid to fix it, not a good idea
• Call Computertech, get protection ahead of time!

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2. Virus Removal + Tuneup/Cleanup – $75

Hard Drives range around 60-$120 depending on the size and interface. Can’t stress enough how important it is to backup your important data. What would you do if you lost all your files in the blink of an eye? Some people have better “Luck” with their drives. Lasting them a good 10 years. For some, 6 months is all they got.

This week we have been seeing a bunch of 2 year old, defective Seagates. Some older Samsungs say their good-byes. Hitachi’s old deskstar’s failing as usual.

Back to our recovery process…

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1. Friday! The end of our week.
2. Slow Week – PC Performance Wise
3. Busy Quick Post | Week Summary

This week was mainly virus removals and blue screens. Lot of time spent doing diagnostics this week. Also had a few laptops came in with heat issues which is very common. Replaced a couple heat-sinks, screens, keyboards for laptops too.

Had charter come out today because of some phone/internet issues. Was bad firmware on the modem & got a brand new one out of it. Was a quick fix for a little downtime. So far charter has been great for us. Probably because we are a business though, we pay a good chunk of money.

Overall was a good week. Kept busy. We are going to be moving one of our part time employee’s (Joe) to full time. We are excited to say that. Hes a great addition to this company! Mmm… Pizza…

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1. Friday! The end of our week.
2. Slow Week – PC Performance Wise
3. Defective Hard Drive Week

I like looking at free alternatives, and when I do, most of the time it is open source. If you would like to take a look at some, head off to http://sourceforge.net/. They have a lot of software there, and a very easy to browse website.

That’s all for now, just a quick post. Looks like some scans are finishing, time to finish some virus removals.

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2. Sales & Information

This is the day we have to pump out the computers before we are unable to work on them for 2 days. Most people need their computers the day before they brought them in, so we are always rushing. That is one thing that sets us apart though from the other guys, were quick. Though my guess is that some of these shops have a lot of machines to work on. We have a steady flow going on where we are always working. Business is good considering the economy.

This week overall was good. We were kept busy, made a bunch of people happy and generated quite a few more customers. Hoping for a busy next week. I think I heard the pizza man…

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1. Busy Quick Post | Week Summary
2. Slow Week – PC Performance Wise
3. Defective Hard Drive Week

The clients just wanted us to tune them up, and possibly upgrade the memory. We always tell our customers that with a machine of that age, there is a high chance that their hard drive is going to start to fail (if it is not already). Long story short, throwing more money into this machine might be a bad idea. Same answer for all, just need the machine to get by for another couple months. With the economy like it is, I can understand that.

Day later, and maybe an additional stick of memory, machines were working better than ones twice the specs that just hit our bench. Their prices were $50, $75 if they needed some more RAM. They were very happy with the speed when we showed them running on our bench. Then we told them they could donate those machines to a museum when they were done with them. All joking aside… We love to make our customers smile, hopefully a laugh out of them too.

I remember when I wasn’t spoiled with so much computer gear, I had whatever my parents handed down to me. They got the job done, slowly but I couldn’t complain. I ran those computers to the grown.

Related posts:

1. Friday! The end of our week.
2. Defective Hard Drive Week
3. Busy Quick Post | Week Summary

Discussions about whats going on with the business. Maybe some tech news every once and a while. What type of machines we are getting. Will try to keep a few blogs a week, hopefully with some useful information.

This website is powered by a very popular blogging management system called WordPress. Might as well take advantage of that.

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Norton Internet Security, Norton 360 – Basic Norton Anti-Virus is OK
Anything that says McAfee on it – Labs don’t like it, we don’t either
Toolbars – Losing real estate for the convenience of something your browser does already
Firewalls – They are too advanced for basic users
Most Registry Cleaners – Can be too thorough, cause issues
Driver Scanners/Updaters – Can cause useless drivers to be installed, blue screens later
Fix it all Utilities – “Run Twice as fast!” – Too good to be true, sadly
Windows Defender – Will not keep your PC “Defended”, not even a little

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