A terrific programmer named Steve Gibson created a program anyone can run on their computer that will check the health of our computer hard drive, but save any corrupt data siting on bad sectors and move it for future use. It actually will bring the drive back to a reasonable state of health.

Please consider purchasing it for your system today. It will not harm your machines and you can run it on every PC in the house. His site is completely reliable, safe to purchase from,and helpful to try and use this SpinRite tool.

http://www.grc.com/cs/prepurch.htm

So I will not get into ALL the advantages of Windows 7 over Vista, but I have recently been hired to review and repair laptops running Windows Vista. There are endless scenarios where the machine becomes unresponsive. Not just older Vista machines, but newer installations, and fully updated installations as well. From my take on reading and experience trying to repair them, I would say that this was moreso an experiment and not a worthy release product.  There is endless drive churning and pointless freezing on ALL of these machines. The same machine, with a fresh Windows 7 installation, runs smoother and much more reliable.

Of course it needs to be said that these operating systems require at least 4GB of RAM (memory), a multi-core chip from AMD or Intel, and a graphics card that gives you at LEAST 128MB of video memory, if not 512MB.

I have an HP OfficeJet Pro device in my home office. This morning I woke to lights flashing on the front panel, and an error message on my screen saying I have an invalid yellow and black cartridge or printhead.

The first problem here is the description of the error code. There should be two different errors – one for the invalid ink, another for failed printheads. I have changed nothing and use this printer infrequently in order to promote longevity of the device. Unless you already know that they sell a print head called “yellow / black “, you easily waste money on replacing perfectly good yellow and black ink cartridges. So not properly managing your development department in India can lead to LANGUAGE BARRIERS that lead to a lack of customer satisfaction.

Secondly, when I called them, he did not want to listen to hear the problem, he wanted to sell me a support contract. In order to maintain a customer, they should offer 5 minutes of sincere support for the product, not ‘upsell’ a contract.

The reason they want to sell a contract is a) these technical support reps do not have technical skills and would prefer to replace the printer under warranty instead of diagnose the problem, and b) for profit and so they can make money – (I have NO problem with the idea of making money, just offering business-class devices that are not worthy of the title).

He wanted to sell me an ENTIRELY DIFFERENT CLASS AND TYPE OF DEVICE. I asked “Why would I want to replace a OfficeJet Pro with a consumer grade device?” He said he understood and proceeded to try and sell me yet another product entirely. After explaining to him that he should consider looking up any issues that could cause these errors, it was an afterthought to look up the actual problem in his database. He eventually did so, after I was red in the face, and he said I needed to order a replacement printerhead.

HP publishes its values to include “Uncompromising integrity; We are open, honest and direct in our dealings.”

HP is doing themselves a disservice in allowing overseas support people to try and think. These people have no mental tools to reason through things and they turn customers away from HP due to this anemia. They are not in line with the HP values.

This can grow into a huge blog entry, but I will keep it short.

The ONLY way the US Government will get ‘fixed’ in the best interest of the citizens:

1) Place a campaign finance cap on BOTH the party and the individual candidates.

2) Remove all allowances for earmarks on bills.

These two reforms will stop the motivations of ALL AMERICAN politicians to say one thing and do another – to stop their self-serving votes and involvements and concentrate on the desires and best interests of their constituents.

There are no longer party lines, there are only politicians and different marketing tactics; blue and red, donkey and elephant. These are no longer Republicans or Democrats, but simply congressmen who are manipulated by their own greed and little to no interest of their constituents.

Funny the automakers claim that failure to give them bailout money will mean another 2 million lost jobs.

First, we agree that the world they live in is a global one, and not just the US. SO US jobless claims are an almost worthless demographic. If we started to be concerned about the unemployment figures, then we are just a socialist country. If we start looking at what industries are doing to the US workforce, then we have to look at many industries that same way – and we do not.(As of today, look at a news search,  and clearly we could find another million job cuts from other industries and we do not even worry about those cuts. So why start worrying about it?)

Second, you may or may not agree with me that if the Big 3 fail, some other company(ies) will be sucking up the jobless ex-employee / manufacturing supply of the current Big 3, as the US demand grows for replacement autos and trucks. A perfect opportunity for Subaru, Mitsubishi, Hyundai, Toyota, Honda, Nissan, etc. to take up the slack. If the Big 3 fail, can’t congress just offer incentives for these companies to build business over here?  US profits and taxes are better from reliable new sources as opposed to a failing US group, right?

So when the Big 3 walked in the door and threaten they are world class kick boxers and will kick the American economy’s ass without a bailout- then they are actually deserving of a US kick in the seat of their pants.  They walk in a second time and have no real plan with accountability in place for overhauling their business, removing management, or redefining their product direction. They claim that the problems are because of this economy as much as their nebulous mistakes.

You may have not bought a car in years, but if you look at what the congress did for auto businesses the past eight years, they gave great tax breaks for individuals /businesses that purchased SUV’s and trucks. In a confession to the congress, the Big 3 claimed the purchasing was based on building what  people WANTED and demanded. But no one called the Big 3 out on these tax incentives during the bailout discussions.  To this end, the Big 3  also offered leases for more efficient vehicles at much higher and unattractive rates.  So is this an issue of demand of market manipulation?  Clearly a business in in business to make money and consumer demand is only secondary for the auto manufacturers. SO you could sign a lease for a big Dakota Ram Hemi diesel truck for $180 / month, but a low- end Buick would cost the consumer $2000 down plus a monthly fee of $399.  Which vehicle do you think that average American will sign for? Again, none of these factors are brought up in these congressional bailout reviews.

The point? Let’s call a spade a spade. This is all just big business. What they say is not their goal and not their intention. It amazes me that economists and MBA’s who are looked up to by everyone,  have been granted the best schools and the best of everything else. In the long run, most of these experts seem to have no clear successful performance history, and no punishments. They may get ousted from this role or that post, or bring down a company too fast to be punished, but never before a payment for their time and efforts. Why should we all try so hard to get educated through Ivy League schools  when the real cash is in playing a minstrel show to anyone who will buy in?  They should call groups like the Harvard Business School a branch of the thespian troop.  That would be more appropriate. I am not saying these guys are bad people or wrong, but I am saying that my expectations are that they can run companies and build products that maintain quality. But that is not how the business world works. Quality exists – if at all – to climb and remove your competition. Then, as the last standing company, you force your market into whatever quality gives them the most profit. Looks like this really is the land of opportunity. Classical training is just an obstacle to making a living.

Who can blame the Big 3? As one congressman said something like “We gave $700 billion to bail out the financial sector, and it was misused, we do not want that to happen again with the auto industry.” Then note that  Citicorp was given a  $300 Billion bailout (20 x the auto bailout money) and has no required time in front of these congressional audits. I suppose Citi has better lobbyists.

I love Lenovo Thinkpads. They are well-built and completely supported by most versions of Linux. They also offer 3, 4 and 5 year support on-site contracts, inside and outside the United States. Recently, IBM sold off this PC hardware division to their manufacturing company, Lenovo. Since this transition, Lenovo US CEO William J. Amelio has given a lot of lip service to growing the company.  Contrary to the discussion that he brings to various tables, what I have personally noticed over the past four years the deterioration of the support quality – making India seem more tolerable. Why?  He is not concentrating on the quality of hiring at their Atlanta, Georgia technical support department.  It is so horrific, that I can no longer suggest that people purchase Lenovo machines, no matter how well designed they are or how innovative.

Top Three Reasons to not buy Lenovo:

1. Customer Service and technical support is not poor, but horrible. Their intent is to get you off the phone and not take responsibility for the problem. But those that are hired do not have technical capability. They can only answer the phone. They know NOTHING about computers.

2. William J. Amelio has been claiming to turn around the company, yet the customer service has only become worse. His goals to make the division more profitable loses its way without hiring people who have the vision to make certain parts of the company function properly. POSSIBLY, he is forced to be cost cutting, instead of quality growing. But my sense is that he has lost control of the core value of ThinkPad products.

3. ThinkVantage software ships on every Windows notebook, and causes no less than 12 running processes at any given time. Not only does this slow the performance of the machine down, but it drops the apparent quality of the machine to the end users. Additionally, the amount of conflicts each of these have with Microsoft operating system tools leads to unnecessary errors and slowdowns. Drive protection and Rescue and Recovery is one thing, but 12 of them makes no sense for the average user.

I have to suggest that Lenovo is only worthy of machines where you will be out of the country and need the backup to replace the machine or repair it in major cities around the world. The other advantage is to instlal Linux of almost any time and get reliable performance. In which case, moves this from almost last place to first place for Linux stability, reliability, and compatibility.