In Pursuit of Filthy Lucre
It is amazing to me how so many people have their reality skewed by the fact that something cost an inordinate amount of money. I admit, I have fallen into this fallacy of thinking myself. Many of us believe things like “I paid $25,000 for my car… therefore, it will last me a long time, like 10 years.” This is a non sequitur, but that was my thinking with my Pontiac.
Most of us have had the experience of our wonderful American cars falling apart after about three years. We have to buy new tires, new breaks, transmissions fail, blown head gaskets, etc. Then we grumble in anger when we must pay our mechanic fees to keep it together.
Well, computers don’t even begin to have the same “long life” as our automobiles. In the past 10 or 12 years, computers have ended up being obsolete almost as soon as we take them out of their boxes and install them. We can expect a good two to five years service of an average desktop. Even less is true of notebook computers because of their small parts and the fact that most parts are not user serviceable.
When I sit down with a customer to assess the problems on their computers, I am the first to explain to them that, if their computer is more than five years old, it might be best to consider their budget. In reality, it would be better for their budget to take the $80 to $250 they might spend on my efforts to affect repairs and/or upgrade to their computer and spend that money on a new computer.
Many are surprised that I would talk myself out of business like that, but admit that they have been thinking about it. Frankly, between you and me, it is in my best interest. I hate working on old computers from the last millennium. It is a hassle to find the parts to upgrade older computers – one usually has to hunt down used parts on eBay. And they are so blasted slow… “come on computer, I haven’t got all minute!”
In the case of notebook computers, it is already expensive to have a technician find the hardware problems, and most won’t even look at an older computer because it is not cost effective for anyone. And even when I do get upgrades and/or repairs completed, the customer is usually disappointed that I haven’t made it work as fast as their friend’s computer, or their neighbor’s computer. So, even when I do a good job, I lose. And I never hear from them again because they assume the work I did and the money they spent was not a good value – which reflects back on me.
One of my customers has a notebook computer with a Pentium III 300 Mhz. It was sluggish and had a number of errors that occurred on start up. I did my normal triage and was pretty quick to explain that it was a very old computer and she would be better off spending her money on a new computer. She said, “I spent $3,000 on this computer in ’96 and it needs to last.” Then I said, “Until when??? 2006? This is not a car!”… on the inside, on the outside I said, “Ok, we’ll see what I can do here.”
I explained to her that the costs of computers have come down considerably and she could get a replacement notebook for less than $1,000. But she wouldn’t hear it. “I am not spending any money on a new computer. I paid $3,000 for this computer and it is going to last.” I kept plugging away on it and made some headway. Of course, she was still not pleased with its performance. I repeated my warning of spending money on this when she should invest it into a new computer. She chanted her mantra once again, “I paid $3,000 for this computer and it has to last.”
She said, “I am going to get DSL installed in a couple of weeks and I know that it will be much faster then.” I scratch my head in wonder every time I hear a customer say this or ask me if DSL or Cable will speed the computer up. The answer is NO. Having DSL does not speed up the computer in any way, shape, or form. It speeds up your internet connection and you internet surfing speeds. But I digress.
After two hours of trying every trick I knew, I squeezed a little more performance out of it. To me it was not a satisfactory use of my time, but she paid me for it and that made it worth it… especially because she didn’t make some insinuation about my abilities.
Two weeks later, she called me back for another hour and a half session on her $3,000 laptop… she had DSL and suddenly was bogged down with spyware and viruses (gee, what a surprise). She had no firewall or virus protection, and of course no one makes a decent firewall that works with Windows 98 anymore. I installed a few useful freeware programs that will help, but no matter what I do, it is never going to be a $3,000 computer anymore.
But, I developed a new mantra for me: “It doesn’t bother me any more to work on an old computer because time spent on a customer’s computer is money in my pocket.” In this instance, I have to set aside my desire for “job satisfaction”, and settle for satisfaction in “filthy lucre”.
Most of us have had the experience of our wonderful American cars falling apart after about three years. We have to buy new tires, new breaks, transmissions fail, blown head gaskets, etc. Then we grumble in anger when we must pay our mechanic fees to keep it together.
Well, computers don’t even begin to have the same “long life” as our automobiles. In the past 10 or 12 years, computers have ended up being obsolete almost as soon as we take them out of their boxes and install them. We can expect a good two to five years service of an average desktop. Even less is true of notebook computers because of their small parts and the fact that most parts are not user serviceable.
When I sit down with a customer to assess the problems on their computers, I am the first to explain to them that, if their computer is more than five years old, it might be best to consider their budget. In reality, it would be better for their budget to take the $80 to $250 they might spend on my efforts to affect repairs and/or upgrade to their computer and spend that money on a new computer.
Many are surprised that I would talk myself out of business like that, but admit that they have been thinking about it. Frankly, between you and me, it is in my best interest. I hate working on old computers from the last millennium. It is a hassle to find the parts to upgrade older computers – one usually has to hunt down used parts on eBay. And they are so blasted slow… “come on computer, I haven’t got all minute!”
In the case of notebook computers, it is already expensive to have a technician find the hardware problems, and most won’t even look at an older computer because it is not cost effective for anyone. And even when I do get upgrades and/or repairs completed, the customer is usually disappointed that I haven’t made it work as fast as their friend’s computer, or their neighbor’s computer. So, even when I do a good job, I lose. And I never hear from them again because they assume the work I did and the money they spent was not a good value – which reflects back on me.
One of my customers has a notebook computer with a Pentium III 300 Mhz. It was sluggish and had a number of errors that occurred on start up. I did my normal triage and was pretty quick to explain that it was a very old computer and she would be better off spending her money on a new computer. She said, “I spent $3,000 on this computer in ’96 and it needs to last.” Then I said, “Until when??? 2006? This is not a car!”… on the inside, on the outside I said, “Ok, we’ll see what I can do here.”
I explained to her that the costs of computers have come down considerably and she could get a replacement notebook for less than $1,000. But she wouldn’t hear it. “I am not spending any money on a new computer. I paid $3,000 for this computer and it is going to last.” I kept plugging away on it and made some headway. Of course, she was still not pleased with its performance. I repeated my warning of spending money on this when she should invest it into a new computer. She chanted her mantra once again, “I paid $3,000 for this computer and it has to last.”
She said, “I am going to get DSL installed in a couple of weeks and I know that it will be much faster then.” I scratch my head in wonder every time I hear a customer say this or ask me if DSL or Cable will speed the computer up. The answer is NO. Having DSL does not speed up the computer in any way, shape, or form. It speeds up your internet connection and you internet surfing speeds. But I digress.
After two hours of trying every trick I knew, I squeezed a little more performance out of it. To me it was not a satisfactory use of my time, but she paid me for it and that made it worth it… especially because she didn’t make some insinuation about my abilities.
Two weeks later, she called me back for another hour and a half session on her $3,000 laptop… she had DSL and suddenly was bogged down with spyware and viruses (gee, what a surprise). She had no firewall or virus protection, and of course no one makes a decent firewall that works with Windows 98 anymore. I installed a few useful freeware programs that will help, but no matter what I do, it is never going to be a $3,000 computer anymore.
But, I developed a new mantra for me: “It doesn’t bother me any more to work on an old computer because time spent on a customer’s computer is money in my pocket.” In this instance, I have to set aside my desire for “job satisfaction”, and settle for satisfaction in “filthy lucre”.
