Are you fed up with your current computer engineer not fixing your problems?

Our customers have complained to us that their previous IT support company would leave their offices and the problem was still there or they had different faults. It was as if they had not they had not completed the service call or they were in a hurry to leave the office.

As part of the service we will always telephone you a few days afterwards to check the repair has been done to your satisfaction.

You may think that if we take that much care we would be expensive but it only takes a few minutes of the engineer’s time and it’s always good to get feedback.

If you would like to be included as one of Systems and Solutions Service contract customers then please call me directly and I will call out to your offices to discuss your requirements free of charge. If you take up even the most basic of our service contracts it will mean that you get guaranteed call out times and a whole host of other commitments.

Guaranteed call out times; can you really get a service level agreement from a local company?

It has always been regarded that local support companies cannot guarantee call out times to fix your server or computer workstation. 

What we did is to put in writing what we were doing anyway so it seemed simple for us. We decided that we wouldn’t stop at a guaranteed call out time; we decided that we would make a bunch of other commitments to make it attractive for our customers to deal with us. It’s more professional. 

When you have a crisis, (maybe your server doesn’t work) you need to get someone out quickly and someone that knows what they are doing. What you need is someone that can sort out your crisis and get you back working again. That is what we will do, calmly and quickly.

The only way for you to get these guarantees is to sign up for a computer service contract with us. We guarantee onsite callout times, remote support response times and telephone support response times. We employ Microsoft qualified engineers, give you a dedicated primary service contact and a free technical report. We have of course mentioned that we follow up by telephone after every service visit to ensure satisfaction. Expert and low cost.

Are local computer support companies your only option? Do you have a choice? …read on.

It would seem that you have a lot of choices about whom you deal with when it comes to using a local computer support company - but do you?

When we call out to one of our service contract customers we can get there quickly because we are local - makes sense doesn’t it? We made a decision some time ago to keep our business local and that is a must for professional computer support. We still provide remote support because that is even faster for us to deliver as we do not even have to get into our car to come and see you. A faster response time means less downtime for you. 

Dealing with a company who has qualified staff is important because they have the exam result to prove they are expert. Sole traders and one bands tend not to be qualified. It makes sense to employ someone that has taken the time to study their craft because you have to put a great deal of trust in an engineer to fix the computer holding your valuable information.

When you have a problem with your computer or network you need action fast, you do not want to be faced with the one person that knows your computer system being off on holiday, off sick or engaged at another important customer. I suggest that you need guaranteed call out times to ensure that you are covered.

So, if  you would like faster, guaranteed response times and Microsoft qualified engineers working on your system then call me directly to arrange a no obligation and free of charge discussion of your requirements.

Kevin Ackland talking about Computer Health Checks

 Why is it so important to give your computer a health check?

This is the single most important thing you can do to save your computer from costly repair bills and potentially a loss of data. Whilst a computer should continue to work without problems it is only sensible to make sure. It’s the one chance you will get to ensure that an expert checks that your system is working fine. Unqualified and inexperienced computer technicians cannot give you the wealth of experience that a professional does.

What happens if you don’t have a health check on your computer?

Whether you have a health check on your computer will depend on your computer expertise. Maybe you could think in terms of what would happen if you never got your car serviced and just drove it into the ground without ever making a check. Unlike a car, there is no oil change but there are so many faults that can be prevented by the computer health check. The health check is preventative; we could discover something that saves disaster from happening. With hardware being more and more reliable computer users are leaving things to chance with the expectation that everything will be fine. There are still many things that can go wrong.

 How often should you have a computer health check?

An annual health check is normal unless you have other issues going on with your computer system. The annual health check is recommended because your anti-virus is normally renewed on an annual basis and leaving it longer means that we could miss some important issues.

 Why are we giving it away free?

Generally they are not free they would normally attract a cost of around £49. Our own health check is free because we can organise our workshop to do these between our paid work. It also means that we get to see our loyal customers regularly without there being a computer problem to get in the way.

 The benefits.

You get an expert to look at your machine not someone that “just knows” about computers. A hard disk that is about to fail often gives “tell tale” signs that disaster is imminent. If a system hard disk completely fills up, the computer system will fail, it’s completely predictable. The health check is proactive and preventative.

 What is done on a computer health check?

Our checks ensure that they cover the 3 enemies of a computer which are:

 Heat generation

Dust build up

Viruses

 We go further by checking aspects of the computer that could cause problems in the future too. The event logs are checked and analysed for “tell tale” signs of trouble ahead, the system, application and security logs are all checked for anything that could give a clue to imminent problems.

 The heat generated by a computer can be the cause of crashes and hardware failures so all the fans are checked to see if they are performing properly, the amount of dust building up in the computer is reviewed. The technicians then review the amount of physical RAM compared with the RAM being used under normal load conditions. This is an area where we can discover programs that are being loaded up causing the system to be a great deal slower. It can also be the time when we can discover the third enemy of a computer - VIRUSES.

 The anti-virus program is checked to see that it is up to date and the customer is advised on the renewal date. The anti-virus program logs are checked to see if there is any evidence of virus or spyware activity.

 In all our technicians are active on your computer for around half an hour and there is absolutely no obligation to have any work done at all.

 We keep in touch with you too by contacting you if we need any questions answered and importantly we will always contact you when the system is ready for collection - you will never have to chase us. That is they way we run our repair business and that is the way we run our FREE health checks too.

 Read about The history of our FREE computer health check.

Kevin Ackland, Managing Director, talks about upgrading workstations.

It galls me to throw away a computer workstation that I’ve paid good money for only a few years ago. I know that technology moves on and we need the extra facilities but just throwing away computer workstations seems such a waste. And it is.

There are a few things you can do. You can redeploy the machine, you can clean it up to get it working faster OR you can UPGRADE the hardware. Which is what I’m suggesting.

Computers can be upgraded – the insides of a computer are all replaceable and it’s really easy to do once you have weighed up the pros and cons to see whether it is worthwhile.

The best outcome is to get a computer that has the same setup as before but following the upgrade it is much faster. There is little inconvenience and big gains.

One of the most common causes of a computer slowing down is too little memory capacity. If a system doesn’t have enough memory it swaps data with storage, using the storage as temporary memory. This will mean the system will be chugging along really slowly and the hard disks red light will be lit up like a Christmas tree decoration.

In more detail, it works like this. When your computer starts up, it loads up part of Windows from the storage to memory, after that it loads the programs it needs into memory too. Once Windows has loaded and a few programs have been loaded too, the system will probably want to connect to the Internet for updates of the anti-virus or windows security. Sometimes that means all the memory is used up and it has to swap out data from the memory to the hard disk. And that’s where the speed issue takes place.

That’s the problem; to solve it you can do three things.

1.    Upgrade the memory capacity. That will give it enough room to work in. The memory will start filling up but not so much that it has to swap the data to storage. The red light on the hard disk doesn’t come on and the speed of the computer stays the same.

2.    Upgrade the main processor. Getting a processor that speeds up that entire process will really help.

3.    Upgrade the storage. Getting a bigger and faster hard disk will give better through put. The data leaves and arrives faster into memory.

Now I know you get all that when you get a new PC but what you also get is Windows Vista. As a company we have qualification in Administering Vista so we do speak from a position of knowledge on the operating system. My observations are two fold;

The operating system is stable and quite easy to use. There are some differences but you, like everyone else will get used to the changes quite quickly.

It has been resisted in businesses. In the offices that I visit the predominance of operating systems is Windows XP. That’s the same operating system that everyone hated in 2002.

So how will you know whether it’s best to upgrade or buy new? Personal computers are just that – personal. You need good advice from someone that has your interests at heart and not their commission.

& the solution to that problem is……… to contact me.