Computer Troubleshooters: The World’s #1 Computer Service Network
on July 30th, 2007
Our R.E.S.T. Plan
on March 9th, 2010In a recent newsletter we told you about our HOST plan. This week, we wanted to tell you about our REST plan. The REST plan is just like the HOST plan, except it doesn’t include the monitored security software or free infection cleanup.
In case you were wondering, REST stands for Residential Enhanced Support Technology. It’s a great plan for residential customers, home businesses, small businesses too. And all at a great price! Just look at all of the features of the plan.
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Monitoring and Alerting
Out software will monitor the health of your computer and alert us to any potential problems, often before they cause downtime. -
Priority service scheduling
As a customer on a service contract, you will be given priority over non-contract customers. -
25% discount on remote service
If you need us to work on your computer remotely, you will receive a 25% discount. -
Remote access to your computers on the REST plan
You can remotely control your computer just like we do when we work on your computer remotely. That means that you can access and control your computer from any internet connected computer. Visiting someone and want to show them something on your computer? Or maybe you need a file or want to read your email. Just connect to and control your computer and you can do all of that and more.
That is a long list of great features. And the best part is that it only costs $10/month per computer. For one year on this plan, you would pay $120 to cover one computer. If you signed up for remote access to your PC with a service like GoToMyPC or LogMeIn, it would cost you just under $20 a month or $240 a year. This functionality is included with our REST plan which only costs $120 a year. In addition, if you had an issue requiring a 2 hour service call, it would cost you $195 normally, but if your computer was covered by our REST plan, it would only cost $120. That’s a savings of $75.
If you have questions about the REST plan or want to sign up, please contact us. By the way, our H.O.S.T. plan has all of the features of the R.E.S.T. plan plus it includes monitored security software and free infection removal. It’s $20/month per PC.
Computer Troubleshooters #1 Technology Franchise
on March 4th, 2010Computer Troubleshooters is proud to announce that once again, Franchise Business Review has chosen Computer Troubleshooters as the 6th best franchise and the #1 technology franchise!
If you or your business want the best computer service, give us a call!
Check Out Our H.O.S.T. Plan!
on February 25th, 2010You probably know that we have service contracts that we offer our customers. But what you may not realize is how much money these plans can save you. We have plans to cover anywhere from the residential customer, to the home or small business, to the medium sized business. But in this article, I want to focus on our most popular plan, the HOST plan.
In case you were wondering, HOST stands for Home Office Support Technology. It’s a great plan for residential, home businesses, and small businesses and all at a great price! Just look at all of the features of the plan.
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Monitoring and Alerting
Out software will monitor the health of your computer and alert us to any potential problems, often before they cause downtime. -
Monitored security software included
That’s right. It includes monitored security software. We install our top of the line security software which includes anti-virus, anti-spyware, and anti-rootkit. It also includes security software that will help prevent you from going to infected websites. And this software is remotely managed by Computer Troubleshooters. That means you don’t have to worry about it. You will never have to worry that your security software will expire and you will never have to renew it because it never expires as long as you are on the HOST plan. You’ll never have to worry about your security software again. -
Free infection removal
We are so confident that the security solution provided with the HOST plan will protect your computer from infections that if a computer on the HOST plan becomes infected, we will remove the infection at no additional charge. In the 3 years we have been offering the HOST plan, only 2 computers have gotten infected. Considering the large number of infected computers we see each week, that’s really good! -
Priority service scheduling
As a customer on a service contract, you will be given priority over non-contract customers. -
25% discount on remote service
If you need us to work on your computer remotely, you will receive a 25% discount. -
Remote access to your computers on the HOST plan
You can remotely control your computer just like we do when we work on your computer remotely. That means that you can access and control your computer from any Internet connected computer. Visiting someone and want to show them something on your computer? Or maybe you need a file or want to read your email. Just connect to and control your computer and you can do all of that and more.
That is a long list of great features. And the best part is that it only costs $20/month per computer, $30/month for each server. If you added up the cost of security software, remote control software, and assume 1 infection cleanup in a year, that would normally be an expense of $440 in a year. With the HOST plan, it would only cost $240. That’s a savings of $200! And that doesn’t even include the savings on remote support!
If you have questions about the HOST plan or want to sign up, please contact us.
Remember Your Favorite Websites
on June 12th, 2009Most people have a list of 5-10 websites they visit most often. When you want to go to one of your favorite websites, how do you go to it? All web browsers, like Internet Explorer, have a feature that will let you save the address of a website. Internet Explorer calls these “favorites”. Some web browsers call them “bookmarks”. Whatever they call them, it’s basically an address book of websites.
When you are visiting a website and you want to save it’s address to your favorites list, where you click to save that address depends not only on which browser you are using, but which version. For example from version 6 to version 7 and then to version 8 of Internet Explorer, how you save a website to your favorites list changed with each version.
Most of you should have at least version 7. The picture to the left shows how you would add the current website to your favorites list. In version 8, the star with the plus sign in front of it is gone and you just click on the gold star that says “Favorites” next to it. Then click “Add to favorites”.
Now when you want to access that website, click on the gold star and you’ll get a list of your favorites. Then you just click on the website in that list that you want to go to. Simple! Where favorites really shine is for accessing websites you don’t access very often. You know the address for the websites you go to frequently, but for the ones you don’t go to very often, you may not be able to remember the address.
That’s the basic operation of using favorites. You can organize your favorites list too. Instead of one long list of websites in no particular order, you can sort the list and you can even create folders to group them in. To sort your favorites list, click on the gold star. Now right-click on any website listed in your favorites. You will get a little pop-up menu. In the menu, click on “sort by name”.
To create a folder, right-click on any website in the favorites list and select “Create new folder” from the pop-up menu. Give it a name. Now you can click and drag any website in the list and drop it on the folder to move it to that folder.
There are other ways to create shortcuts to your favorite websites too. You can put a shortcut to a website right on your Windows Desktop. To do that, go to the website. Make sure the web browser window isn’t taking up the whole screen. Near the top of the browser window find the address of the website. Just to the left of it will be an icon. Click on the icon and hold the mouse button down. Now drag the icon onto your Windows Desktop and let up on the button. Now you have a shortcut to that website on your Windows Desktop.
Record and Watch TV on Your Computer
on May 12th, 2009You already know that there are many websites you can go to and watch videos. You can watch most TV shows online at places like hulu.com or on any of the TV Network websites. But when you watch a TV show on a website like this, it often doesn’t look very good. It may not be a full screen picture. And there may be a lot of advertisements in it or around it. Another drawback is that it usually takes at least a day, and sometimes a week or two after a program has aired before you can watch it online.
Many people have cable or satellite TV and have something called a DVR. DVR stands for Digital Video Recorder. It allows you to easily record and watch TV shows. It’s kind of like recording and watching shows on video tape, but there are no tapes. It uses a hard drive that can store a lot of programming.
DVR’s have a lot of advantages. The biggest advantage, in my opinion, is that you can skip commercials. I rarely watch a TV program live anymore. I record it on my DVR and watch it later. Then, I can skip the commercials. It saves time and it makes for less of an interruption in the TV show. DVR’s also make it easy to record weekly TV shows. You can tell your DVR only to record the new episodes so it won’t record the repeats.
Basically, a DVR is a specialized computer. But you already have a computer. Can you turn your computer into a DVR? Of course! Here’s how!
First you need to know how the TV signal will be getting into your computer. Will you be connecting a cable TV to it or will you be connecting an antenna to it? Next you need a TV tuner for your computer. A TV Tuner can be a card that is installed on the inside of your computer, or it can be a box that sits on the outside of your computer and connects to your computer with a USB or FireWire cable. When you are selecting a TV Tuner for your computer, there are a few things to keep in mind.
1. If you will be feeding a cable TV signal into it, make sure you get one that supports Clear QAM. If you don’t, some channels will not come through.
2. A TV Tuner can usually support one or two signals simultaneously. If you want to be able to record one program and watch another one live, or record two programs at the same time, get a TV tuner with dual tuners.
3. Get a TV Tuner card that comes with a remote control so you can sit on the other side of the room and watch. That way you don’t have to be sitting right in front of your computer if you don’t want to.
4. Make sure you get one that supports HDTV. SDTV is going bye bye.
By the way, the most popular brand of TV Tuners for computers is from a company called Hauppage.
Once you have a TV Tuner and you have either an antenna or cable tv cable connected to it, then all you need is the right software. Most TV Tuner cards come with software. This software varies in function and quality. You should try the software that comes with yours to see if you like it. If you don’t like it, there are alternatives. You don’t have to use the software that came with your TV Tuner.
If your computer has Windows Vista Home Premium or Windows Vista Ultimate on it, then you already have some good software for this. Windows Media Center can do all of this. Don’t confuse this with Windows Media Player. They are two different pieces of software.
If you don’t like the software that came with your TV Tuner, and you either don’t have Vista, or don’t like Media Center, then a good choice is SageTV. In fact, sagetv.com can be your one stop shopping because you can purchase a bundle that includes a TV Tuner and SageTV software. For example, click here to see one of their bundles.
The possibilities are endless.
Organize Your Desktop
on February 28th, 2009The Windows Desktop is what Windows calls the screen where all of your icons are. You have a lot of options for organizing the icons on your desktop. You should only have icons on your desktop for things you use frequently. For things you don’t use frequently, I recommend removing them from your desktop. Removing an icon from your desktop does not uninstall software from your computer. You can still access that software from the start menu.
When I organize the icons on my desktop, I like to group similar things together. For example, anything that has to do with media (music and video), I would group together. I might group games together and so forth.
You can have Windows auto-arrange your icons if you want to, but I hate this option. Not only do I dislike it because it doesn’t group icons and won’t allow you to group icons, but any time a new icon is added or one is removed, icons move. So they are never in the same place. The whole idea of having icons on your desktop is for faster access. If my icons move around, it slows me down because I have to find the icon on the desktop. If that icon is always in the same place, I can go right to it.
If you have auto-arrange turned on and want to turn it off. Or if you want to turn it on, here’s how. In Windows XP, find an area of the desktop where there are no icons and right-click there. You’ll get a pop-up menu. Hold your mouse pointer over the top menu option “Arrange Icons By” and you will get a sub-menu. In this sub-menu are several options. One of these options is auto-arrange. If there is a checkmark next to Auto-Arrange, then it’s turned on. If not, it’s off. Click on it to add or remove the checkmark. While you are in this sub-menu, make sure “Align to Grid” has a checkmark next to it. This keeps your icons evenly spaced. If you turn on auto-arrange, then you can also select here how it will arrange them. It can arrange them by name, size, and more.
In Vista, right-click on a blank area of the desktop and choose View. After that, it’s pretty much the same as XP.
When auto-arrange is on, you can’t put the icons where you want them. So once you have it turned off, you can move the icons around and arrange them how you like them. To move an icon, simplay click on it and drag it to the place where you want it. To delete an icon, right-click on it and choose delete from the pop-up menu. To rename an icon, right-click on it and choose rename”
After you have your icons all arranged the way you want them, there are, unfortunetly, some things that can mess them up. For example, some games will mess up your icons. Changing your screen resolution can mess up your icons as well. There are some other actions that can mess up your icons as well. It would be nice if you could somehow save your icon locations and restore them if they get messed up. Windows doesn’t provide this functionality, but there are third party programs that do. And the best part is that they are free. Here are 2 of them.
IconRestorer
IconSort
These don’t work on the 64 bit version of Windows. If you have a 64 bit version of Windows, then click here.
Another powerful way to organize your desktop is by using a dock. These applicaiton launchers are very configurable and very useful. Limited versions of these are available for free. The two best are Object Dock and RocketDock.
Managing Your Music
on January 19th, 2009Managing Your Music
These days, many people have their music on their computer. Whether you ripped your music from your CD’s, or downloaded them over the internet, some people have quite a lot of music on their computer. This is a huge topic that is too big to cover in depth in this newsletter, but I am going to touch on some important information about it.
Although there are many different formats music can be stored in, most people’s music is stored in one of 3 formats, WMA, MP3, and M4P.
WMA is the format used by Windows Media Player which comes with Windows.
M4P is the format you get if you purchased and downloaded your music from Itunes.
MP3 is probably the most common format.
M4P is the format you get if you purchased and downloaded your music from Itunes.
MP3 is probably the most common format.
WMA and M4P files are large while MP3 files are smaller and take up less space. However, some audiphiles complain that there is a loss of quality in the music on MP3. I can’t hear a difference, though.
Both WMA and M4P support Digital Rights Management (DRM). This is a method for restricting the use of the downloaded music. MP3 does not support DRM. Because of that, if you have music in the MP3 format, you can do whatever you want with it without restriction.
Until recently, if you purchased music online for download from walmart.com, amazon.com, and other similar online retailers, your music was in WMA format and there were restriction on where you could play that song and what you could do with it.
Now, however, most online music retailers have converted over to MP3 format. The last remaining online retailer that still used DRM has been Itunes. But now even Itunes is converting over to DRM free songs.
If you have music in a format with DRM restrictions on them, you can generally convert them into DRM free MP3 files by burning them to CD and then ripping them back off the CD into MP3 format. That’s because when you burn a CD, none of the DRM information is burned to the CD.
Once you have all of your music in MP3 format, you want to organize it. There are lots of different ways to organize your music. If you have a lot of music, then using folders to sub-categorize your music is a good idea. Some people sub-categorize by genre, the artist name, or year. The possibilities are endless. It’s your music and you can organize it in a way that makes sense to you.
It’s also a good idea to use a standard file naming convention for your songs. For example, you could use: artist name – song title.mp3
In this example, if you have the song Michelle by the Beatles, you could name the file:
The Beatles – Michelle.mp3
But having the word "The" might be a problem. So you could do this:
Beatles – Michelle.mp3
or this
Beatles, The - Michelle.mp3
The good part is you can do it however you want. Just be consistant to avoid confusion.
When you play a song on a computer, an IPOD, phone, or an MP3 player of some sort it displays information about the song. This is called metadata. It includes information like artist, song title, album, genre, year released, and so forth. It’s a good idea to have this information consistant. For example, if you have songs from several different albums from the same artist, the metadata between them could be inconsistant. In keeping with our example, one album might have the artist listed as "Beatles" while another might have it as "The Beatles". This means when you sort by artist, all of the songs by the Beatles will not be together.
There are lots of utilities out there that try and help you organize your music. Many of them cost money, but my favorite one is free. It will let you update the metadata. It will also allow you to rename the song files. And the best part is that you can do it in mass instead of just one song at a time which can take a long time if you have a lot of music.
Some examples of some things you can do with this utility is that you can select all of the songs by an artist and type the artist name in once and it will go and update all of the songs to have that artist name.
Something else you can do is select a range of songs and tell it to rename the song file. You can tell it what format to use (ex: artist – song title) and it will go and rename them all using the metadata in each song and the song file format you specify. It couldn’t be much easier.
Getting your metadata and song file names all standardized makes organizing, finding, and listening to your music much easier.
Leander Texas Computer Help Service and Repair
on December 18th, 2008
You just found the best Computer Service in Cedar Park, Texas!
We are the #1 Computer Service network with over 500 locations around the world!
We service small and medium businesses as well as home offices and residential.
For more information about us, please explore our web site. If that doesn’t answer your questions, or you want to schedule an appointment, please call us at 512-267-5913.
Maintaining Your PC
on November 12th, 2008Maintaining Your PC
Thanks to the creators of malicious software like viruses, spyware, and so forth, we have to have anti-virus, anti-spyware, firewalls, security updates, and more. It’s quite a bit of work to properly maintain your computer. Two thirds of the issues people call us about can be traced back to this malicious software. So it’s certainly important to keep your computer maintained so you can avoid these additional costs and problems.
Traditionally, most people and small businesses wait until there computer breaks or is not usable and then call for help. The problem with is is that your computer is down and you can’t use it and it costs more to fix something than it does to maintain it in a why to help prevent it from breaking in the first place.
Instead of waiting until something doesn’t work, being without your computer, and having to pay someone a lot of money to fix it, why not pay us to keep your computer from breaking in the first place? We’ll maintain your computer for you, saving you time, preventing downtime, and in the long run, saving you money.
The biggest advantage to our support plans is that they include monitoring and alerting. That means that our software running on your computer will monitor the health of your computer and alert us to any problems or potential problems. We can often catch a failing hard drive before it fails. Our goal with all of our support plans is to prevent problems from happening.
We have 5 different support plans available. When most people think about support plans, they think they are only for businesses. But they aren’t. Two of our plans were created specifically for residential customers and those who either work from home, or run a business out of their home.
I won’t go into great detail about all of the plans in this newsletter. That would be too long and too boring. But I would like to highlight the two plans that are targeted towards residential and home office.
Our R.E.S.T. (Remote Enhanced Support Technology) plan provides the following features:
- Remote monitoring and alerts
- Remote Support (we can work on your computer from our office)
- You can access and control your computer from any internet connected computer.
- Priority Service Scheduling
- 25% discount on remote labor. That means you only pay $60/hour billed in 15 minute increments. Much cheaper than our regular rates.
Our H.O.S.T. (Home Office Support Technology) plan includes everything the R.E.S.T. plan has plus:
- Anti-Virus, Anti-Spyware security software that is monitored and controlled from our office.
- Web filtering. We will filter out the websites that are known to spread infections. At your request, we can filter out much more like porn sites. We have 54 categories of websites we can filter out. We can also filter out specific websites.
- Website Advisor. This software works when you are surfing the web helping to prevent you from accidentally going to a website or doing something on a website that might cause your computer to become infected. It also works to prevent you from inadvertantly signing up for spam.
Our R.E.S.T. Plan is only $10 per month per PC while our H.O.S.T. plan is only $20 per month per PC.
My favorite is the H.O.S.T. plan. It provides the best protection you can get for your computer and you don’t have to pay for your own security software and you don’t even have to maintain it! You don’t have to worry about your computer’s security. That’s our job!