Windows Maintenance Schedule

The “dirty low-down” on computer products to avoid – and to look for!

As a professional independent computer consultant, I sometimes have to deal with poor product choices my clients have made. And new clients often arrive with problem products. Fortunately, clients I’ve had for awhile usually follow my purchase recommendations or let me design their new computers and networks – saving both of us time, money and aggravation.

So, I’m going to fess up here with some “from-the-trenches” advice on what to avoid – and what to get. Please don’t sue me, these are just my honest (professional) opinions. And being an honest fellow, I don’ have a lot you can take.

This is one of those blog posts which I’ll be adding to and updating as time goes on, so you might want to check back occasionally.

~ The Bad ~
Companies That Used To Be Great

They say “Nothing spoils like success” and the personal computer industry has lots of examples.

Hewlett Packard:
As a guy who did electronic engineering for fun, and with my experience in audio engineering and acoustics and vibration engineering, HP earned my highest respect for their innovative electronic test equipment, then for their scientific calculators, then for their computer printers.

Unhappily, when the founders grew old and departed, there was a lot of in-fighting at HP. The founder’s goals, ethics and standards were compromised. Eventually Carly Fiorina became CEO and did a lot of damage to the company. From what I read at the time she was one of those Harvard Business School graduates who think that the same set of rules and methods apply to all businesses, no matter what they produce or what corporate culture they promote (my understanding is that she came on-board with no experience of the computer industry).

She also seemed to think that Hewlett Packard would be improved by changing it from a company based on “Top quality innovative products at reasonable prices” to “As cheap as possible for mass consumption”. Soon HP lost its reputation as a great place to work and many skilled and experienced employees left, resulting in a serious “brain drain”. She also got the bright idea of buying Compaq Computer, which had become one of the worst computer manufactures ever, and then she merged the two product lines.

Fortunately, Carly is no longer CEO – as I write this, she’s running for the US Senate as California Senator. And things seem to have improved at HP. So don’t avoid HP – just buy carefully and never their lowest priced units.

• My recommendations?
  You should now avoid all of HP’s lowest priced products.
• All their computers should be avoided.
• Their more medium priced and most expensive printers and “All-In-One” devices (printer/fax/scanner) are still excellent – but avoid the least expensive ones.

Unfortunately they still haven’t recovered their former programming skills, so their Windows printer drivers are often problematic and their bloated Windows printer “Helpers”, which auto-load at Windows startup, are well known for slowing down Windows.

If you’re looking for alternate printers, scanners, etc. – the Epson line is very good.

Western Digital:
Hard drive manufacturers seem to be especially prone to swings in quality and popularity. There have never been absolutely clear winners in that market, it seems to me. But there have been brands which are excellent for a time and are then overtaken by another – every few years.

Western Digital used to be my favorite, with Maxtor a close second. Then IBM’s hard drive division came out with the outstanding “Deskstar” series – which they eventually sold to Hitachi, after which the quality dropped. I don’t have any opinion on Maxtor drives these days – not having used their products for a few years.

My recommendations?

• I now favor the Seagate line of hard drives, including their USB external drives.
• Note that other computer consultants do favor Western Digital drives - a matter of personal experiences.

~ The Good ~
Companies That Used To Be Great – Went Downhill – Then Recovered

These companies started out great, got sold, or were devoured by larger fish, or otherwise blew it – but have now recovered their former quality.

Gateway Computers:
Remember those clever commercials where the computer boxes had a black and white piebald cowhide look? Gateway really was started in a barn in a rural farming state – by two brothers. And they really did have honest down-home ethics and business practices. They made excellent computers, treated their people well and generally did a great job.

I guess they too were spoiled by success. The brothers had a falling out, one of them left the company and it proceeded to go downhill. Eventually it was sold off (more than once, as I recall).

The current owners of Gateway also make the eMachines line of fine inexpensive computers (sold in Best Buy and other super-stores). They are doing very well in that low-end market and I’ve recommended and installed their desktop machines for two of my clients with excellent results – and a good friend used two of their laptops with gratifying results. Gateway now seem to be leaving Intel as a supplier and switching to AMD processors and motherboard designs.

My Recommendations?

• I’m a fan of Gateway’s inexpensive “eMachines” computer lineup.
• Their move to AMD components, which are good, very popular, and often go head-to-head with the Intel line, will probably not have a negative effect on quality.
• I don’t have any personal experience with them, but the Acer line of low-end computers has a great reputation.

Symantec:
I don’t know about Symantec’s enterprise level products, but I’m experienced in their home and small office line. For the home or small office line, Symantec has a big weakness, in my opinion. They don’t seem to create new programs themselves. They only buy up and publish the programs of others. So, the vision of the program’s creator and the quality of their programming can be lost. When Symantec changes or upgrades these programs from others the changes are often not for the better.

I’m including them in this category because I’ve heard from a fellow computer consultant that Symantec’s “Norton Antivirus” is once again a good product – after being one of the worst antivirus products for a few years.

By the way, Peter Norton developed a well deserved reputation for creating outstanding software – but he sold out to Symantec decades ago, so his name on a product means nothing now.

Symantec’s other major home or small office products (‘PC Anywhere’ and ‘Ghost’ backup) have been bypassed by better and newer competing products.

My recommendation?
If you already use Symantec’s “Norton Antivirus”, you should upgrade to the improved newest version. If not, there are better products than any of Symantec’s for home and small office users.

~ And The Ugly ~
Companies that fall into “The Unwashed Millions” category

My recommendation here is to avoid companies that are “unknowns” and stick (in most cases) with those who have become “de facto industry standards”.

Dangerous Corporate Phone Support

In the good old days of personal computing, you could call Microsoft or another major computer product maker and have an expert help you with any problem involving their product for free – even if it took more than an hour. As you can imagine, that cost those companies a lot of money – so in today’s pro-corporate, anti-consumer environment it had to go. Happily, smaller companies trying to get a leg up on the big guys, and certain product niches (like Internet Service Providers and web hosting companies) may still provide excellent phone support.

Now, it’s positively dangerous to your computer’s health to get phone support from the big guys. Take the big computer makers as typical examples:

They still have free phone support. But if your Windows installation has serious problems, they may simply have you use a software tool, which they pre-installed on your computer, to restore it to the healthy condition it was in when you first received it – while deleting all the work, programs, and other stuff you have done since!

From the corporate point of view this makes sense – they have “fixed” your computer and it’s now “as good as new”. From the users point of view this is a huge disaster.

It’s also not unusual for a corporation’s tech support staff to have you edit your Windows Registry over the phone – without first making a backup copy of your Registry! One small slip on their part or on yours, while editing inside the Windows Registry, and your Windows installation will be trashed. Don’t ever let anyone do that! Always ask them to tell you how to make a registry backup first – it’s quick and easy to do.

Get Your Free Spyware Here!

Don’t you love those drive-by free offers of scamware? When I entered a typo in my browser’s address field the other day, along with the 404 (“not found”) error message, my own ISP (Internet Service Provider) offered me some of this loathsome junk! I don’t want to pick on just Mindspring – many web sites offer this kind of thing.

This could (just maybe) be a legit offer that just happens to look dangerous, but why should I risk the health of my computer to find out? A bit of web paranoia is well justified these days.

Drive-by trash - Don't fall for it!

• It’s not exactly inspiring that they can’t even figure out that my operating system is Windows XP Pro 64 bit.
• If they don’t even recognize my version of Windows, what might they do to it?
• What’s the motive of someone offering such a free service?
• How are they making a living?
• Why aren’t they disclosing their money offer upfront, not leading me down the “freebie” garden path first?
• How do I know my ISP is not taking a bribe from one of the many nefarious companies out there to install spyware (or worse) onto my computer?

Never accept free “Windows Diagnostics”, “Registry Clean/Repair”, “Emoticons”, “Screen-savers” and all such. The only exception is something like a free scan of your registry (or a free trial period of a software product) on the web site of a reputable Windows repair tool web site, or the equivalent on a respected antivirus software site.

Always Buy High Value – Not Low Price

Whatever you do – don’t buy based on the lowest price. Base your purchase choices on Value. That is, the “Most Bang for the Buck”. For instance, when offered a range of increasing prices Versus increasing features, you must “do the numbers”.

Example: If the largest hard drive in a manufacturer’s line offers 25% more storage space, but costs 33% more, that is not a great value. But if it has 25% more storage space and costs 20% more – go for it.

Until next time – remember, “Value”…
     _jim coe

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