Saguaro PC Tech | Laptop-Computer Repair Tucson

While general laptop repairs, like virus removal and software issues (Windows problems, etc.) are the same as for desktop computers, repairing laptop internal hardware components is a very difficult and specialized area.  Therefore, finding a good laptop repair shop is not so easy.

Why is this?  There are two reasons:

1. Internal repairs require extreme precision and skill.  Soldering and electrical testing are also often required.
2. Parts are very specific to each model, sometimes even varying among different revisions of the same model laptop.

See what a laptop motherboard replacement is like in this video.

Therefore a repair shop must have technicians with the appropriate skills.  Plus, the owner of the shop must have the knowledge and patience to deal with the often frustrating process of finding and ordering the correct parts for the job.  I personally went through hell learning this and often wondered if it was even worth bothering with laptop repairs.

For this reason, many of our competitors do not offer laptop hardware repair.  However, the reality of the computer business is that the desktop computer is fading away and laptops are taking over.  If a computer shop wants to survive, it must offer laptop repair services.  These days, over 75% of our business is laptops.  Of these jobs, roughly a third require internal component repair.  So I hung in there and have since learned the process of managing laptop repair work.  Its still tough and frustrating, but I’m used to it now.

So what should you do if your laptop’s LCD screen goes out, or your power jack breaks, or the machine just won’t turn on?

• First, don’t try to fix it yourself.  You have no idea how many things can go wrong, or how easy it is to break something.
• Don’t try to save money by ordering parts yourself.  Because parts are so specific and can even vary for the same model, you’ll probably order the wrong part.

On the second point, I can’t tell you how many customers have come in with their own parts, only to find it’s the wrong one.  Is it worth having to go through the hassle, pay for return shipping and restocking fees just to save $20?  I don’t think so.

So I suggest taking it to a reputable local repair shop, hopefully us here at Saguaro PC Tech.  Let our techs take a look at it and consult you on the repair.  If the machine is over 4 years old, we’ll let you know if it’s worth fixing or not.  We won’t steer you the wrong way just to make a quick buck.  We prefer you be happy with your experience and remain a long-term customer.

To learn more about us, please visit our Website or out Facebook page (don’t forget to “Like” us).  Even better, give us a call at (520) 250-5948.  Thanks!

Use Temporary Credit Cards for Safety and to Avoid Repeat Billing

This is a great way to add some extra security to your online purchases.  It’s also a way to avoid repeat billing from sneaky vendors (like antivirus subscriptions) or  overbilling.  Most card issuers have them (usually called “safe shopping” cards or “gift cards”).  While the gift card type of card simply runs out, the safe shopping cards let you do things like choose the card’s spending limit, expiration date, and more.  That way, you can make sure that automatic billing doesn’t kick in unless you absolutely want it to.  Vendors can’t charge you if there’s no money left on the card.  Another security feature is that if anyone ever gets a hold of your account information, all they can get is the amount of the balance on the card, or the amount of the spending limit (if you have that type of card).

Use Multiple or Disposable Email Addresses to Avoid Spam and Stay Secure

There are two concerns here.  One is reducing spam and the other is avoiding viruses from emails.  Here are two approaches.

1)     Reducing Spam: Use Multiple eMail Accounts.

I get a lot of resistance from customers on this, because it seems confusing, but it’s really not.  Just create 1 or 2 more email accounts with a free email provider like Gmail, Yahoo, Hotmail (Live Mail) or AOL.  It costs nothing and can greatly reduce the hassle and risk of spam and viruses.

Use one of these addresses for sites you don’t want to hear regularly from, like newsletters or coupon sites you’re only mildly interested in, or any new site you haven’t heard of, where you suspect they’re going to bombard you with spam.

I like to use them for product registrations, like when I buy a new printer, because I know they’re going to spam me with all kinds of product offers and deals.  Sure, I may want to look at these occasionally, but only when I feel like it.  I don’t want them cluttering up my regular mail inbox.

Do not add any contacts to the address book.  You don’t want to worry about a worm infecting it and sending spam to your friends.

This is also a good way of separating different aspects of your on line life into different areas, associating each area with a different email address.

2)     Security and Reducing Spam:  Use Disposable eMail Accounts.

A more aggressive way to reduce spam in your inbox is to use a disposable email addresses for websites you suspect might be very risky or questionable.  These are also great for sites you want to check out once (out of curiosity) but don’t want to go back to, or ever hear from again.

Many such sites require you to register with your email address before you can see their content.  These could be sites like forums, or “marketing” sites that offer business tips and help, but are really about harvesting email addresses so they can spam you.

For this, you can use a service like Trashmail or 10 Minute Mail.  You’ll use these temporary email addresses to get the necessary “confirmation email”, check out the site, and avoid the spam that might come your way.

That’s it for now.  We hope you are finding this series of articles useful.  Stay tunes for the next installment later this week.

As always, if you need more help in any area of computer repair in Tucson, or general support, please visit our Saguaro PC Tech Website or Facebook page.

Tips 1 & 2: Passwords and Security Questions

These first two tips go hand-in-hand, so make sure you use them both.  Read on……

1. Create Secure, Easy-to-Remember Passwords

Secure passwords are the best, but not if you can’t remember them.  Most of you already know this, but are you implementing it?  There are a lot of tricks to creating easy, memorable passwords without making them easy to guess.  You can research this on Google, but I’ll give you a few ideas.

1)  Don’t use the same password for every website, especially banking sites.

2)  Alternate UPPER and lower-case letters, as passwords are case-sensitive.

3)  Use special characters, such as #,%,@, or !. Either add them or replace a letter with one of these characters.

4) Use a common base password (like a pet’s name), then add pattern of numbers that means something to you (like your kids’ birthdays).  Or perhaps add the initials of the website it’s for.

Example:  If your cat’s name is Muffy, your kid was born in 1964 and the password is for Yahoo Mail, you can use MuFFy1964YM.  For a Wells Fargo password, say your birthday is May 5, 1945.  You can use MuFFy1945WF.  Get the picture?

5)  Shift your fingers up one row and to the right (or the left, since they don’t quite line up) on the keyboard from the actual letter you want.  For instance, instead of “muffy“, type k8tt7.  Use whatever rule you want, but stick with one rule, so you don’t get confused.

2. Security Questions.  Keep them as Private as Your Passwords

Strong passwords are important, but they’re useless if your security question is something anyone can answer.  Most websites have ways to recover or reset your password if you forget it by using security questions, also known as “challenge questions”.  When you answer these correctly, the site lets you change your password, or will email it to you.  What would happen if a hacker, coworker, your kid, or an angry “ex” knew the answer to this question?  I shudder to think!

Instead of going the traditional security question route, you could use a formula to create a memorable, yet indecipherable security question.  For instance, you could use word association to make the question easy for you, but hard for others, for example:

• “What’s your mother’s maiden name?” could be answered with your favorite Iron Maiden album instead.
• Put in your mother’s birthplace when the question asks for your birthplace.  Get the picture?

Here’s another trick, but it’s not available on all websites.  Some sites let you create your own privacy questions.  If they do, definitely go for this option, as it opens up a whole world of options.

We just got a machine in with a VERY NASTY new virus.  We’ve never seen anything like it before.  It throws up fake program called “Windows 7 Recovery”, and displays a warning telling you that a system recovery operation has failed.  It hides all your desktop icons making you think you just lost all your programs and data.

If that’s not enough, it then tells you that either your hard drive, your memory, or both have experienced a critical failure.  Geez…. talk about overkill!  Of course, then they tell you that you can buy their “magic” software that will fix all of that.  Wow, must be some program!  Of course, this is all fake and you must not fall for this scam!

Good News!  It’s just another virus and we have just succeeded in removing it using our usual virus repair methods.  So don’t worry if you get this.  Your PC is okay and your data is in tact.  If you get this nasty virus, we can help you and get you back up and running pretty quickly.

For more information, please visit our Saguaro PC Tech website.  We’re always here to help.

How’s this for a new one?  After years of distributing spyware infections posing as Antivirus or Security programs trying to grab your money, the “scamware” writers are now trying a new tactic.

We just got in a laptop sporting a big,

This infection is called “Windows Repair“.  Not a very creative name, but I guess they’re trying to make you think it’s a part of Windows.  The structure of this programs is the same as all the other spyware programs out there and we used the same virus/spyware repair methods as we always have.

So don’t fret if you get this.  You hard drive is not dying and your data is just fine.  If you do wind up getting this, or any other infection, give us a call and we’ll get your pc running again in a jiffy.  To learn more about us, please visit our sites below.  Thanks.

The Saguaro PC Tech Tucson Computer Repair website.

Or visit the Saguaro PC Tech Facebook Page for more tips and articles, bot ours and from other sites around the web.

If you’re suddenly horrified when you find you can’t launch ANY programs on your Windows XP machine, don’t panic.  Your PC is not completely hosed, nor did you lose your data.  This is due to just another virus that can be cleaned up like any other.

It does look scary though, and there’s a bit of registry hacking needed before the virus cleanup can be done.  It actually freaked us out too when we first saw it.  If you get this nasty virus we can repair your computer.

Last week, Microsoft released their new web browser, Internet Explorer 9. You can only install this version on Windows Vista or 7. According to Microsoft, Windows XP, won’t run the better graphics (more on that below) capabilities of IE 9.

However, XP users can take heart that the new Mozilla Firefox 4 (just released this week) can run on XP and deliver the advanced graphics that both these browsers possess. I posted some great links about Firefox 4 on our Facebook page.

Before you upgrade, you will want to check to see if there are going to be any compatibility issues between your software and this new browser. Some of the software that might have issues are older versions of AOL’s software, and QuickBooks (pre-2008 versions).

Usually compatibility issues will be talked about on the support pages of your software so you can check there. If any software that you run talks about Internet Explorer version requirements, you will want to check closely before proceeding.

There are two places where you can obtain the newest IE. The first place is Microsoft’s website. The other site (also from Microsoft) is called www.beautyoftheweb.com. The first site will direct you to the download itself. The second site will give you some videos talking about new features, websites that are incorporating the new features of IE 9 and video reviews.

One bit of technology that really makes Internet Explorer 9 so great is the ability to tap into the video hardware on your computer. Most people don’t realize that they have two processors on their PC. The CPU or Central Processing Unit is the main general use processor of your computer. The second called the GPU or Graphics Processing Unit, is used to display graphics and video. Internet Explorer 9 now uses both of the processors to render crisper, clearer text, richer graphics and smoother video (You Tube fans will love this).

To test this out, I went to YouTube. I went on to find various types of video from old Lo-Def video (240p), right up to the max 720p Hi-Def clips. I played five different videos in both windowed and full screen modes. With IE8, any video higher than 240p would jump a bit. During transitions such as fades, the video would skip. The higher the quality, the more I noticed this. Lots of people have accepted this as “just that way it is”.

After I upgraded to IE9, I cleared my browser cache to remove any vestiges of my previous visits and started fresh. I started with the 240p Lo-def and of course, there was no difference in speed but the images were a bit sharper. When I got up to the 720p Hi-def clips, I really saw IE 9 shine. One of the videos that I chose had lots of fades and wipes. There were at least 7 transitions that made IE8 drag and pause. With IE 9, it played smooth with zero jumps, skips, or lag. The video playback was perfect!

I continued to explore some other pages that I have always had lag issues with. Yahoo has always loaded slowly due to the vast amount of content. The load time usually for me was about 5-6 seconds. IE 9 was able to load the page in less than 1 second!

I have always been concerned with upgrading my browser from past experiences. It always seemed to me that the more complex they made IE, the slower it went. Not so with this release. Check it out. There are plenty more new features in IE 9. You can read about them on the beautyoftheweb site.

Thanks for reading this post. Read more articles on our Saguaro PC Tech Blog site. For any other questions or assistance, pop us an email or give us a call. See our website for contact info. Thank you and happy browsing!

This post presents some very basic and simple tweaks you can make to Windows 7.  Of course there are hundreds more, but for now, these will get you started.  We’ll be posting more later on.

Tweak 1: Make Internet Explorer 8 Faster and Smoother:

While the new IE 9 has replaces IE8, some of you may still like UE8.  It is still a great browser, however it’s bogged down by some features that Microsoft thought were cool in the beginning, but have ended up being useless for the most part.  Here’s how to make it smoother and faster.

First you’ll have to reset IE back to factory defaults.  Here’s how:

1. Go to the Control panel and select “Internet Options“.
2. Go to the “Advanced” tab to the far right of the window, then click the “Reset” button at the bottom.
3. In the next window, check the box next to “Delete personal settings“, then click OK.

You are now ready to set up IE8 without it’s unneeded default features.  Follow these steps:

1. When you first launch IE8, you’ll be asked to choose your settings. Select Choose custom settings.
2. When asked whether you want to turn on IE8′s suggested sites, select No, don’t turn on.
3. When asked to choose a default search provider, select Show me a webpage after setup to choose more search providers.
4. When asked to download search provider updates, select No.
5. When offered a choice of accelerators, select Turn off all Accelerators that are included with Internet Explorer.

Tweak 2:  Make the Recycle Bin Smaller:

Right-click the recycle bin, select Properties, and set a more reasonable Custom size.  Typically 250MB to 500MB is more than enough.  This will help reduce the clutter on your hard drive, as well as performance.

Tweak 3:  Improve Windows Explorer’s Folder Options:

This tweak makes Windows itself more usable, giving you more options and menus to use.  It also shows you more information about your files by showing the file extensions.  This way you know what type of file you are dealing with.  You may have read our post about virus threats, where we mentioned that a virus can hide it’s true identity if the file extensions are turned off.

• Go to the Control Panel, choose Appearance and Personalization, then Folder Options.
• Check (enable) two items that are normally unchecked: Always show menus and Show hidden files, folders, and drives.
• Uncheck (disable) one item that is checked by default: Hide extensions for known file types.

Tweak 4:  Change Your Desktop Icon Size:

Are you annoyed with the huge icons on the Windows 7 desktop, after getting used to having smaller ones in Windows XP?  I know I am!  What were they thinking?  Well, you can make your desktop icons almost any size you want with your mouse’s scroll wheel.  Here’s how.

First, close all open windows so the desktop has the focus, then press and hold the Ctrl key while scrolling the mouse wheel up or down. The desktop icons will step through many sizes, from huge to tiny.  Pretty cool, eh?

That’s it for this post.  Please explore other posts in our blog, as we’ve got more tips already posted.  Check back soon for even more tips and tweaks.

Also, please visit our website at www.saguaropc.com,  or our Facebook page to find out more about us, or to have us help you with your computer repair issues in Tucson.

Have you been looking at some of the newer offerings of the big box brands with Windows 7?  Are you wondering if you’ll have to replace your computer to get Windows 7?

You may be happy to know that most of you can run Windows 7 just fine on your existing PC, perhaps with just some minor upgrades to your hardware, for a lot less than the cost of a new PC.

Below we’ll address the most common questions we’re asked about moving to the newest Windows.

Is my Computer too old to upgrade?

If your PC is around 3 years old, there should be no problem upgrading to Windows 7. If your computer is older than 3 years, some minor upgrades like additional memory might be needed.  If your PC is over the 3 year mark, this might also be a good time to replace your hard drive if it has lots of hours of use or is too small for your needs.  Why risk a hard drive crash after all this work?

Will my Computer run slower with Windows 7?

We have installed it on six year old computers, high-end gaming computers, and everything in between.  Windows 7 ran just as fast or faster in each and every case.  The older machines just needed a simple memory upgrade (only about $40 or so).

Will I lose my data?

If your computer is healthy, no data loss will occur.  If you are running Vista and you machine is running well, you can do what’s called an “in-place” upgrade (pop the new disk in and select “upgrade”).  The process will transfer everything over to the new Windows, and you will not even have to reinstall your programs.

If you have Windows XP however, you will need to back up your data, then do a “clean install”, which means you’ll need to reformat (i.e. wipe) your drive and install Windows 7 from scratch.  Given the age of XP machines, it’s a good idea to get a new hard drive anyway, so the process is not a waste of time.

Is Windows 7 hard to use?

Heck no!  Many people are concerned that learning Windows 7 is going to be too hard.  We have done this process for customers of various ages and professions and all agreed that Windows 7 was easy to learn and better than any previous version they have ever used.  They just loved the smooth, solid performance, and the great new features.

Will my peripheral equipment (printer, scanner, camera) work with Windows 7?

If your PC is less than 4 years old and your equipment is the same age or newer than your PC, there should be no problems.  If in doubt, you can check to see if the manufacturer offers Windows 7 support by looking up the hardware on their website.  Windows 7 has an incredible ability to support just about any type of peripheral equipment you can throw at it, if it’s no older than about 4 years old.

Will my existing programs work?

Most will work just fine if they’re less than 4 years old.  Some older programs will work too.  We’ve run Microsoft Office 2003 just fine.  One exception we know of is Quick Books.  You’ll need version 2007 or newer.  Certain other business programs may also have issues, but home users should be just fine.

How much does it cost to upgrade to Windows 7

The cost of the software when purchased from a local computer repair shop like us varies from $120 to $150, but it’s on the condition that you have to have them do the upgrade for you.  Big box stores charge much more (up to $200) for the “retail” version.  Labor costs for having a local shop do it for you vary, but start at around $120, depending on if you need them to back up and restore your data for you.  Again, big box stores will charge much more.

If you want or need any hardware upgrades, the cost is pretty minor, usually about $100 for both memory and a hard drive.  The total cost is still lower than the purchase of a new system.  Again, this varies according to what you have now.  Most PC’s less than 4 years old will be worth upgrading, except perhaps for low-end budget machines.

Windows 7 is the Savior for Vista Users!

A new problem with Vista (as if there weren’t enough already) is that Microsoft has seemingly abandoned making it better with any major patches or upgrades, in a sense admitting it’s a lost cause.  It has become sort of a “lost stepchild” by all accounts.

We have received a huge number of requests from our customers to get the upgrade.  Without exception, all who upgraded to Windows 7 have loved making the decision.  Not only did their machines run much faster, it made them more stable (e.g. less crashes) and smooth performing.

Final Note to XP Users – The End is Near:

Microsoft’s new web browser, Internet Explorer 9, is not available for XP systems!

This is just the beginning of what XP users will be seeing from now on.  New technologies have moved beyond what XP can support.  New devices and peripherals will not be compatible with XP and manufacturers will be dropping support for it altogether.

The end of life for XP is set for 2012 by Microsoft. I guess the Mayans were right about something!

So if your XP machine is still a solid performer and you want to keep it a while, make the move soon.

If you would like to find out more about making the move to Windows 7, let us know and we can discuss the process.  You can also find out more on our website.  You can also visit us on Facebook.