Forbes.com Top 10 Benefits of Social Media Marketing

Forbes.com Top 10 Benefits of Social Media Marketing

LKN Computer Pro

Have you been burned before by technicians claiming $25 computer repairs, or worse, overcharging for repairs? Here is how to weed these people out.

As with everything in life, you get what you pay for.  We at LKN Computer Pro, often times, see these computers come through our door where a customer has taken their computer to someone’s house or met them in a parking lot to drop their computer off, only to have that computer come back with the same issues or in even worse condition.  More times than not, you are not paying $25 dollars.  You are paying for the $25 dollar repair and then you have to take it to a reputable shop where you are now paying for us to fix the issues caused by the last repair man.

How do you weed these people out and what do you look for in a reputable company?  I have made a list of what separates a real computer company from the scam and rip-off artists:

1. Certifications and accreditations – Look for companies that have technicians who have gone to school for computer repairs or computer science.  Simply ask the technician what certifications they hold.
2. Physical Location – Does this person own a company with a physical location or are they taking your computer to a garage where all of your personal information and computer are just sitting around?  Are they asking to meet in a parking lot?  If the answer to these is yes then I would steer clear.   
3. Franchise – Are they a franchise?  It is easy to stamp a franchise name on the side of a Volkswagen Beetle and drive around town, but most franchises only require these people to pay a franchise fee and they are off and running.  They do not vet technical knowledge of the people buying into this franchise.
4. Beware Volkswagen’s that look like cop cars! – By far, our biggest complaint is the overcharging from the big box stores who send their “Agents” onsite, or worse, bring it into their office where astronomical fee’s are charged for their BASIC services.
5. Cousin Vinny – Everyone has one and this is a hit or miss.  The cousin or nephew who can repair your computer for free or for a fraction of the cost of a reputable store, only to find out that by the time the cousin or nephew is done working on your computer it is worse than it was before you gave it to him.  It may even come back in parts that he could not reassemble.

Everyone has had at least one bad experience when dealing with their personal computers.  Unfortunately, the reputable places take it on the chin for the others who have scammed or completely ripped off clients.

At LKN Computer Pro we offer dynamic costs and not pre-canned costs for customers.  This gives us more flexibility in working with customers to save money while providing excellent service.  We have a physical location where are computers are diagnosed, troubleshot and repaired (no parking lot meetings here).  We quote our customers before doing the work and offer the diagnostic fees waived if you decide to have your computer serviced at our facility.

We at LKN Computer Pro believe that trust is not given blindly, but earned and we are earning that trust one customer at a time.  

Virtualizing your old Laptop to your new laptop - Run Two laptops in one!!

Did you recently purchase a new laptop, but still find yourself dependent on using your old laptop?  Is it frustrating going back and forth between your two machines to get your work done?  There is an answer!

If your laptops meet disk space requirements (99% do) we can take your old laptop system and integrate that very same system onto your new laptop.  Now you have both laptops running off of one system.  Get rid of the old laptop and the going back and forth between multiple systems to get your work done.

While running on both systems you can then slowly migrate off of your dependent applications and get rid of that old laptop once and for all!  

How do we do it?  At LKN Computer Pro we can make a virtual copy of your old machine.  Drop that machine on our network and then transfer that virtual machine to any machine of your choosing.  After some configuration on the new machine your old machine is ready to go.  Once our customer comes in to pick up the new laptop we go through a 30 minute training session (really all that is needed) and they are out the door with one less brick to carry around in their bag on business trips, but all of the DATA!!

Does this sound interesting to you?  Feel free to come by our facility to determine whether this solution is a good one for you and if your workstations or laptops meet the requirements.

The most common questions:

Q. Is this is really expensive solution??  

A. NO!  Absolutley not..the virtualization software is free and it just takes one of our experts to configure it.

Q. How long will the process take?  

A. Normally (depending on how much data) it will take approximately 8 hours from start to finish with most of that time being             transferring of the data.

Q. Will it affect the performance of my machine?  

A. The old machine running on your new machine will take up some resources, but most of the time this is not even noticeable.

What is the Cloud?

There are 3 types of clouds:

Private

Public

Hybrid

Let's cover the first one which is Public and where many large businesses are putting their data.  A public cloud is basically shared resources that are divided into slices for other businesses to use.  So say you have a single server with a lot of storage and memory.  You could slice that physical server into 12 virtual servers and charge for each server that the company is using.  Public clouds house everything from data to email to backups.  Think of office365 when thinking of a service that the public cloud uses.  The concept of the public cloud is great, but do you really want to have your data in the same location as other companies (it gets a little deeper than that)?  You are basically putting all of your information with one or two providers who host a slew of other companies.  If there is a data breach then everyone is affected.  Having all of your resources in the public cloud requires and immense amount of bandwidth as well as a high cost association and you never own this business model (think leasing a car or renting a house).

The next cloud type is the Private cloud.  Private clouds are becoming popular with smaller businesses these days, but the tech companies that support the smaller businesses do not have the technical knowledge to deploy these cost efficient options. The good news is LKN Computer Pro DOES have the expertise and knowledge!!  A private cloud takes virtualization software and run's it on a single host and then hosts all of the services on those hosts.  The good news is normally companies can run on the free version of this cloud based software.  So instead of deploying 3,4,5...servers you purchase one server and host other servers off of that physical machine.  The cost savings come in the form of less power for multiple servers and easier deploying and Disaster Recovery solutions.  Where it would take days or weeks to restore a physical server a new server could be deployed in less than 3-4 hours.  For this reason alone virtualization software or private clouds are well worth the investment. 

The last cloud type is what is referred to as a Hybrid cloud.  Hybrid clouds are a mix of public and private clouds.  A company may want to host all of their data (X-ray machines...etc...etc.) in their private cloud, but choose not to deal with the overhead of having to deal with email, so they use Gmail..Office365 or others who provide MaaS (mail as a service).  This option also works for small businesses who do not have the time nor capital to invest in full private cloud infrastructure and wish to go with a hybrid solution.  As the company grows those public cloud services can move to the private cloud and transition to a full private cloud infrastructure.

A lot of decisions are beyond the customers control as they are limited to capitals and budgets.  LKN Computer Pro can come up with a flexible cost effective plan to meet your dynamic needs without having to break the bank.  Feel free to call us to do a survey and cost analysis.

To use the cloud or not use the cloud? That is the question

The cloud now offers a variety of services:

MaaS – Mail as a Service

SaaS – Software as a Service

IaaS – Infrastructure as a Service

PaaS – Platform as a Service

BaaS – Backups as a Service

And so on and so forth…

All  of these are great, but what is right for you as a business or consumer?  While many find the cloud a great solution for startup businesses the costs slowly ramp up as the business grows.  Think of Cloud Services in the terms renting an apartment.  You never own that apartment, but you certainly are paying someone’s mortage who gets the benefit of the tax write off?..certainly not you.  So what is the best solution?  Well first let’s start with the need for high speed internet in order to connect to your services.  Without high speed internet stability the cloud is useless.  So if you do not have high speed internet available then your choice is to keep all of the systems internal to the facility.

Say now you have a high speed internet.  The next question is what should I run from the cloud?  This answer is difficult depending on what type of business you are running.  If you are in the medical field then having your server offsite is not an option as X-Rays are very high bandwidth and speed oriented in order for Doctors to get the information that they are looking for in a timely manner versus the cost of the internet bandwidth would not be feasible unless you were a very very large facility with an unlimited capital to throw towards IT.  In the medical case it is best to be your own cloud provider by using virtualization software that grows with you and your business and you OWN it after all is said and done.  Virtualization software is free until you reach a certain point from a memory and cpu perspective and then you purchase additional licenses to license your cpu’s.  Virtualization is an excellent candidate for new startups as it reduces costs and it is very easy to deploy and restore (which presents and excellent cheap and cost effective way for Disaster Recovery).

The best way to determine if you are a good candidate for cloud services is to have a local IT provider assess your systems and your bandwidth and come up with the best plan financially while keeping in mind potential future growth.

Our next blog session will be What is the Cloud??

www.lkncomputerpro.com