Highest Paying Certifications

This was published on About.com and I found it very interesting as I am looking at changing over to a PM track in my career.

http://tiny.cc/u9ySz

Good reading!

Diana

Hww to show Classic Google after you sign up for iGoogle

I recently signed up for iGoogle and am enjoying it but it created a problem for me. After a couple of days I could no longer type in Google,com and get tto the classic Google search page. No matter how I tried iGoogle came up. Now I like iGoogle and have it customized so I can see what is important to me, but I am in a job search and need to have a fast loading search engine, not to have to wait for all my modules in iGoogle to load.

After playing around with it, I came up with this URL that allows the classic Google search page to load.
http://www.google.com/webhp

Since I use IE7 and have the tabs, I have 2 home pages load, classic Google for the first tab and iGoogle for the second tab. That way I can do my searching and not have to wait for iGoogle to load.

How to Handle a Help Desk

I just had an article published on Tech Republic (http://www.techrepublic.com/) you can see it here - http://tinyurl.com/4aw3rs.

I deal with help desks on a weekly basis and have learned a few tricks from not only being the customer but I spent 10 years answering the phones for various companies (ex: Hewlett-Packard). Having been on both sides of the phone I can tell you that things go much better when you keep your temper and document EVERYTHING!

Teaching Computers

I find that I am spending more and more time teaching people about their computers. They read an article in the paper on sending your photo's via e-mail, or about a new service (LinkedIn) or want to know about the hottest sites and they call me. Sometimes we just chat about their idea, others it turns in to a 3 or 4 hour consulting gig. I do not mind the calls, as a matter of fact I enjoy them but I do not like hearing about how my customers asked a question of some other tech only to be told that "It is not part of my call?". How can you tell a customer that you will not answer a simple question? If you are at a customers house doing a cleanup of a computer you are usually sitting waiting on a program to run or going through and deleting files or programs. Neither of which should require all your attention. So why not answer the customers questions or show them how to insert a picture into an e-mail? You are on site already, sitting there waiting and not currently busy, right? So answer their questions! Now I am not talking about business's but about the home user who is sitting next to you, they are curious and want to learn more. To my mind the more they learn the better customer they are. If they have read that adding more memory to their computer will speed things up, they will call me to ask. I have a charge for the phone call and another charge to actually go install the memory. Win, win, right? I make more money, make my customers happy and they get a faster computer, all because I will answer their questions and not make it into a big technical question. I have more follow up business than allot of techs in my area (I asked) and I feel it is because I take the time to answer a question.

Backing up your computer

I have been trying out a new service called "Data Deposit Backup". I found it through an old business associate who is reselling the service. I found it easy to install and setup and it has been running in the background on my main desktop for about a month. It is only for broadband users as it backs your data up to their servers. I find it useful and unobtrusive to have running on my computer. The cost is minimal $2.00 per GB per month so I figure the average user would spend around 10.00 per month to backup all your pictures and data. It does only interface with Outlook so those users with other e-mail programs would need to know what file their e-mail program uses to store their e-mails in order to tell DDB to backup that file or directory. All in all I like the program and will be showing it to my clients who might benefit from the service.

Networking USB printers

Yesterday I got tired of moving USB cables around when I wanted to print. Now you have to understand that my home office has both my laptop and my main desktop on 2 different sides of the room (we will not go on about how the test center in the basement is setup! LOL). So I had run USB cables from both computers to the printers (HP6110 and HP335) so that I could just switch cables as needed. Well, yesterday my neighbors girls were over to use the internet (PBSKids.org) and of course they have to print out what they make. So I was running back and forth to move the printer around. "There has got to be a better way" says I.

So I did some research and came up with a nifty little device - a Belkin Network USB Hub. Now I am partial to Belkin having had good luck with their devices, so I did some research on Google Groups and did not read anything too bad about using this type of hub.

Down to Circuit City I go (need to price laptops anyway) and pick up the hub. I had ordered it over the internet and they had it waiting for me at the desk. After talking to one of the clerks, I always ask about returns or problems. I picked up my new toy and came home.

Let me tell you this was one of the easiest installs I have done. No problems from either Vista or XP. I had expected some issues with Vista security but the program must have taken care of all that. I now have 2 printers that automatically switch from desktop to laptop as needed and my external HD that connects to both as needed for backups.

A sweet deal!

Computer Backups

Computer Backups are the one essential that I find most computer users tend to skip. Most people think "I will do it sometime" and then never do. I spend allot of support time recovering data that my customers "have to have". Most of it is priceless pictures. My neighbors learned the lesson the hard way when their laptop died and the hard drive froze. No way for me to get the pictures off and they lost the pictures of the first 5 years of their children's lives. The digital age is wonderful, we can snap pictures all day long, but think about what you would do if your computer died. Don't wait for that to happen...call your local computer person and ask them about backing up your data today.