Benjamin Burrows

Where is the Super AntiSpyware love??

We are all entitled to our opinions.  I swear by Kaspersky and we sell it at the shop I work at, while others like Eset, AVG, and others.

One trend that bothers me a little is how opinions shift.  We maybe that is not the right way to word it but my brain is a little frozen still from shoveling myself out of my driveway.  We finally had a decent snow storm yesterday and I had to fire up the snow blower at work!!  Fun stuff.  Years ago the big names were AdAware and Spy Bot.  They both did a pretty good job and still continue to do so to a degree.  A few years ago Super AntiSpyware appeared and everyone fell in love with it.  It was recommended everywhere!!  Then Malware Bytes AntiMalware came out and it has turned into the AdAware/Spy Bot battle.  Who is better?  I honestly do not know.  I use both at work and it is just like the old days, one finds stuff the other doesn’t find and vice versa.  I have personally dealt with both companies and quite honestly have to side with Super AntiSpyware.  The people at MBAM are very rude and cocky.  Dealing with SAS is much better and their people seem to actually care a little.  Now I will mention that I do sell SAS on my Burrows Solutions website and at work, so you could think I am bias.  I really do not feel that I am.  Like I mentioned, I’ve dealt with both and SAS is just more pleasant to deal with.  Both software titles will have their ups and downs, catch something new before the other does, and so on.  My backing though is with SAS.

So where is the SAS love at??  Why is everyone only recommending MBAM anymore?  I think it is really important to at least use both of them but I trust my real-time scanning to SAS.  What is your opinion?

HP “Black Screen Of Death” fixed??

Quickly I want to thank everyone for their comments on my bench fee post.  We heard from a lot of Techs out there and I really appreciate it.  However I’d really love to hear from end users and/or customers.  I understand though that most of those types of people probably do not read my blog.  Either way there is a lot of great information there and I appreciate it.

Onto the subject at hand.  I don’t know if all of you have heard of the HP “Black Screen Of Death” but it is a big problem with certain models of their laptops.  I’ve seen several of them in the past and I really hadn’t thought about repairing them until recently.  Like always YOU readers and users always inspire me into attempting new repairs.  I was contacted by a troubled user about a month ago asking if I could take care of the repair for him.  I researched it, cautioned the customer on the risk and he agreed to give it a try.  I researched it more, purchased some information on the fix, and bought a heat gun for the repair.  Some time was wasted with the heat gun though.  Instead of focusing on the repair we had to play with it and test it’s power!!  It is pretty cool!  I’ve thought of maybe posting some video of me catching items on fire with it but I’ve tried to focus on more work rather than play.  I am happy to report that the fix was successful!  I’m pretty excited about it and glad to see that I could possibly have another repair to offer to all of you.  I wish that I had more laptops that need this repair so I can really get an idea of what kind of success rate to expect with this repair.  I’m also concerned with how long this fix will work.  I’m confident in my abilities but there are always unknown variables and just basically do not want to charge $80 for a fix that only lasts a month or two.  I really do not think that will be the case but time will tell.

So I now offer a new repair service to you!  While this repair does not require any parts it is a more tedious and time consuming repair.  I think a fair price would probably be the same as my DC jack replacement.  I’m going to set it up the same as the DC jack repair, you pay the $30 for me to look at it and attempt the repair and then if/when I fix it you send $50.  Or you can pay the whole fee at my Burrows Solutions website and if I am not able to fix it I will refund you $50.  I do not have any special buy now buttons setup yet so just use the dc jack repair buttons for now if you are interested.  If you have any questions or concerns, please post a comment or email me.

Dry spell……Bench fees?

As most of you can tell I’m really not that great at this blog stuff.  I think I provide good information on occasion and occasionally make you laugh, as long as I believe that I will continue on!!  Some of you are just here for UBCD4Win news also, hopefully something will be reported on that soon.  Right now though I am in a bit of a dry spell.  There is no good news floating around and nothing really good to talk about.  Sure I could follow the herd and post some BS about the crappy new Ipad, nope not gonna do it.  In my thinking though I did remember something that I wanted to talk about……….

Bench fees.  What are your honest thoughts and opinions on them?  The shop that I work at does not charge one but I am teetering on the edge of thinking we need one?  There are some things out there that bother me such as extended warranties but this is different.  I am really curious to know what real people and techs think about charging a bench fee.  The thing that drives me nuts is when a customer says “Well, I’ll just order a Dell.”  Sure give them credit for being honest but most of the time they don’t even give us a chance to compete.  They just want us to confirm what is the matter for free.

So what do you all think?  I know some shops charge as much as a $49 bench fee.  I think a $19 fee would be more reasonable or it may be too low.  Do you think bench fees are fair and do they hurt your business?

I missed it!

My E-reader post was ok, but there was more important news yesterday and I did not find out about it until today!  Yesterday was Bubble Wrap Day and that awesomely annoying invention turned 50 this year!  I love bubble wrap, using it for shipping and of course popping it.  If I had enough of it I would do a video of my children beating me while I’m wrapped in bubble wrap to celebrate!!  I will have to mark it in my calendar so I don’t miss it next year.  For your pleasure though, check out this site:

Virtual Bubble Wrap

E-reader anyone?

I am not an early adopter.  It took me over a year of ogling over a Solid State Drive to finally purchase one.  I did jump on the Netbook bandwagon pretty quickly though, however I was still cautious with that.  It is really strange to me when I think about it.  My oldest son has a $150 cell phone, I still have my crappy “free” one?  When I see new technology like Netbooks and E-readers, I honestly think of my wife.  She is the one that likes cute little things, probably explains why she is semi-happy in the bedroom!  Anyways, when I first saw these E-readers I was quite interested but the early prices killed any chance of me purchasing one.  She is always reading books and I have wasted spent hundreds of dollars on her goofy romance novels and paranormal crap.

Now it appears that I may need to save up about $200 to get her one?  With recent promises that they should go down to $150 I am now finally interested.  I say $200 because I am not cheap.  Just like her Netbook purchases, the first I spent $400 on and the latest one cost $350.  I like to get a slightly better model with a better battery, I feel it is $50 extra well spent.  So I will hopefully find a decent model for $200 some time soon?

I do have a few questions that will need to be answered before I purchase one.  For one I wonder about the hard cover books I have already purchased from her.  It would be really nice if you could just prove you bought the book and they would give you a digital copy at a fair price ($5?).  I also wonder about new book purchases, how many will offer a digital copy for free or nominal fee when you buy the book?  Like most E-reader buyers my wife would want the paperback or hardback copy and the digital one.  I have hours of research to put into this and will share more thoughts on this when the time comes.  For now I will just keep my eyes open to $150-$200 E-readers, once I see that then I will start researching which would be the best buy.

Do any of you have any experience with the E-readers out there?  How do you like yours?  Please post any comments or suggestions, thank you!!

My SSD

My SSD arrived Monday morning and I was pretty excited.  I spent the weekend researching it and how I should set it up.  First I tried to clone my old drive to the new one.  I didn’t see the performance gains I wanted to I ended up doing a clean install.  I needed to get my system back to Win7 anyways so this was the perfect opportunity.

Install was about 20 minutes which I think is pretty much normal for my system, so I don’t think there was much of a gain there.  Start up and shut down are looking pretty good though.  I love Vista’s sidebar so I always “hack” Win7 by adding the old sidebar because I like it on the side of my screen.  Now when I start up the sidebar and Trillian are pretty much instantaneous.  That impresses me quite a bit because on my old drives it would take about 30 seconds for the both of them to load up.  Reinstalling most of my software onto the system was a treat.  Files on the hard drive loaded fast and the install process for most programs took seconds!!

My verdict is uncertain.  I’m mixed at what to think of the drive.  While it is faster, I expected more especially when the drive cost $220.  As long as I get the $40 MIR that will make me feel better but I’m still left wondering if it is worth it?  The access time benchmarks show it is about 3x times faster than the 5400RPM drive I currently have as the second drive in my laptop.  I am in the process of moving my 7200RPM drive in here though and will do more benchmarks.  Programs load faster and I think it is saving me a little time.  I am happy with it and would recommend one only if you have the money to spend on one.  Even though I really don’t have the money, it was just finally time and I needed to get one.

Acer 20″ LCD $104.95

I try not to “push” my Burrows Solutions site here too much anymore.  I want people to visit this blog for news about UBCD4Win, our other projects, and for my wacky thoughts.  However for this deal I just had to try and inform more people about this deal.

I currently have on hand some nice 20″ Acer LCD monitors.  I personally do not like built in speakers but they are good for some people and this monitor has them built in.  At only $104.95 (plus shipping) it is a steal.  Really, check out some other sites and you will quickly see this monitor selling for at least $139.  So if you need a monitor or have a friend in need, I really suggest you pick up this great deal!  Quantities are limited and I’m sure they will sell out within a couple days.  Check it out here:

http://www.burrowssolutions.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=5&products_id=67

Nice UBCD4Win mention

This was brought to my attention a few days ago.  I was too busy freaking out because I some how managed to order a SSD for my laptop.  Man, in about 50 hours that bad boy should be in my hands!!!

Anyways I found out about a little mention for UBCD4Win in Maximum PC magazine.  They didn’t do an article (which is what I always like to see) but put some kind of mention on the CD that ships with the magazine.  I haven’t had the chance to hunt down a copy but this screen shot was sent to me:
Pretty cool stuff!!

LONG weekend

On occasion I have a long weekend because I have extra work to do.  However there are times like this weekend when I will be going crazy waiting for Monday!!
This is basically an update to yesterday’s post. I can already feel your excitement, yes I am getting that SSD!! After suffering and wanting for over 6 months I’m finally doing it. Thanks to a very nice boss that let me borrow the money.

NewEgg was pretty good, I quickly placed my order and the processing began.  Less than 24 hours later my drive is on the way to Columbus, OH where it will be rerouted and shot my way on Monday.  Man, I think I’m gonna pee my pants a few times this weekend just thinking about it!!!  The really sad part though is that excitement will die in a few days and it will almost be forgotten?  That is one really bad thing about computer hardware, it gets stuffed into your system where it isn’t easily visible to everyone.  However it’s gonna be awesome when I show a customer how to do something, “damn, how did that load so fast?!?”

Now I have too many drives though.  Back in December my 200GB 7200RPM Seagate died HARD and rather than wait a few weeks for the RMA replacement I purchased a new 320GB 7200RPM Western Digital drive.  The sad part to that is back 1 1/2 years ago that 200GB drive cost me roughly $140, a few weeks ago my 320GB only cost about $60!
So now I will have the original 250GB 5400RPM drive, 200GB 7200RPM drive, 320GB 7200RPM drive, and this new super fast SSD.  I think I’m going to have to sell the original two drives?  I really won’t have much use for them and it’s silly to waste the remaining warranty on the second drive having it on a shelf.  The extra cash will help me pay the boss back too.  With prices continuing to go down though, those drives aren’t going to make much of a dent in the $210 price tag of the new drive.

So look forward to a few future bragging reports on the real world experience of these super fast drives.  I will let you all know if it’s really worth the $210 and if the bragging rights are warranted.

SSD excitement

For some reason yesterday I jumped back into my SSD “kick.”  With memory prices doubling over the past 6 months I assumed that all memory went up and there was no reason to waste my time on looking at a Solid State Drive.  I had to check prices yesterday and it didn’t seem too bad.  I was staring at a nice Patriot drive that was a pretty good balance between price and performance.  However a quick email from NewEgg this morning has me checking out a drive by OCZ.  It offers close to the same performance as the Patriot but is about $80 cheaper thanks to a MIR.

My biggest hurdle though is always money!  The Xmas season is over and I’m getting a bearing on the credit card bills and other people I owe money to.  It looks like I might be getting closer to purchasing one of these speed demons?  Have any of you purchased one of these drives yet?  Are all the good reviews really true?