"Tech Support" Animated Cartoon?

Ed Guthrie

Ed Guthrie

Cleared for Takeoff
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Apr 8, 2005
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New London, PA
Display Name
Ed Guthrie
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Smoketown, PA (S37)
Back on the AOPA webboard someone posted a webpage containing various animated cartoons with a suggestion to view the one titled "Tech Support". My wife and I had tears running down our cheeks we were laughing so hard. Unfortunately I failed to bookmark the site. Anyone remember the webpage?
 
Ed Guthrie said:
Back on the AOPA webboard someone posted a webpage containing various animated cartoons with a suggestion to view the one titled "Tech Support". My wife and I had tears running down our cheeks we were laughing so hard. Unfortunately I failed to bookmark the site. Anyone remember the webpage?
Click to expand...
Ditto here. Is this it? http://www.illwillpress.com/vault.html

Speaking of Tech support, I just Fired DELL. I pay $200 per computer (nine Dells) for "no wait" tech support. When my boot track crashed and my FAT was unrescueable, they said, "We would like you to talk to a data recover technician- it is a pay for service." To which I said, "you are so fired".

I hate it when you now more than the scripted "entry level" technician and you have to waste your time wading through them anyway.

Apple time for me.
 
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bbchien said:
Ditto here.

Speaking of Tech support, I just Fired DELL. I pay $200 per computer (nine Dells) for "no wait" tech support. When my boot track crashed and my FAT was unrescueable, they said, "We would like you to talk to a data recover technician- it is a pay for service." To which I said, "you are so fired".

I hate it when you now more than the scripted "entry level" technician and you have to waste your time wading through them anyway.

Apple time for me.
Click to expand...
Uhm, he was referring to "data recovery" more than the technician's time.

No warranty system will cover data recovery off of a crashed hard drive. If you want to restore to original, that wouldn't be an issue. If you want to recover, it's major bucks. They take apart the drive, place the platters in a clean environment, retrieve every block that's readable and rebuild the filesystem. It's not an easy task.

You won't get it from Apple, either.
 
Brian Austin said:
Uhm, he was referring to "data recovery" more than the technician's time.

No warranty system will cover data recovery off of a crashed hard drive. If you want to restore to original, that wouldn't be an issue. If you want to recover, it's major bucks. They take apart the drive, place the platters in a clean environment, retrieve every block that's readable and rebuild the filesystem. It's not an easy task.

You won't get it from Apple, either.
Click to expand...
But I will get fewer system software crashes. And, Brian, I have been computing since before DOS. All my data is backed up. What I really resent is how much time it takes to do a rebuild, before a machine is the way my staff needs to have it. My most recent Dell 3.8 gig screamer died on the tenth day of service. This last one prompted me to site liscences. It's cheaper.

You see, I'm in the position at work that if a computer dies, I physically destroy it. Yes I can likely get it fixed. But there is too much going through in patient care, payroll...and if I had time I could reformat the drive or lay down format code where the files actually were- but it's too much time. The Sledge hammer is time effective. New box shows up-->load software, configure, backin data, and we're off to the races again

So, crash--->physical destruction and new computer. I consume them like crazy. It's the most cost effective strategy. This is the inherent fraud in the business of computers. You can fix it if you have infinite time.

Now I have to see if the windoze emulators are as good as they say...after all, Apples are basically UNIX.
 
If I were in Dr. C's position on a Mac (bad hard drive), I'd just pull the drive, destroy the drive, swap in a new drive and install the OS and software and restore the backed-up data. At most, we're talking an hour for a full install of the OS, and a full suite of applications and the time to swap the drive.

I keep data backed up. Digital data does not exist unless it lives in two distinctly different repositories.

Bruce is quite correct in destroying anything with sensitive data on it. I would not trust that the data is secured on any discarded drive unless it were physically destroyed. There are some secure erase utilities - however they do not have the capability of erasing spared sectors. Some drives have built-in security erase functions that do erase everything, including the spared sectors. However, you need a special utility to invoke it and even then, if the drive is truly bad, it may not be able to execute the security erase command.

Big-@$$ hammer though, can erase pretty much everything short of defense-department recovery techniques.
 
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BTW, Bruce, I'm reading "everybody knows" common knowledge on the tech forums that Dell has had endless problems with hard drives recently. So, of course, you're the only one.

Guess which maker we're getting desktops from now? If I have any choice (and I'll make it my business this time) they will not palm off one of those on me and the next lease roll.
 
Hey Mike, would you post some of those forum addresses? I just got a Dell salesperson to confirm the credit to my account- one month later and $100 short. She says, "I'm so sad to hear someone say that, it's so rare!" (scripted, I'm sure). Sigh.
 
Before you throw those Dell's out, let me know. I have a whole network of guys who would be more than happy to have them.

BTW - I have 4 Dells at work, and have had zero issues. Gateways on the other hand.....
 
I've had good luck with stuff from dell. However the customer support is crap. You just have to be very forcefull with them and do not take no for an answer. To give you an example I have a laptop that has been ridden hard for the past 3 years and they have replaced 3 motherboards, 2 full sets of plastic, 4 keyboards, 2 hard drives, and they upgraded my processor.

They are getting cheap...just bought a laptop from them (for half off using coupons from techbargins.com) and they do not even provide a cd of drivers/operating system which is a pain because I always start from scratch when I get a new computer.
 
Hard drives are hard drives, Mac or otherwise. For a while, everyone avoided Maxtor, now they're fine. Everyone jumped on Fujitsu and then they had quality problems...which I've heard are fixed. It's irrelevant who the computer manufacturer is or what OS is installed. Apple doesn't make their own hard drives, they buy them from the same places everyone else does, just with a SCSI interface (or is it all firewire now?) instead of IDE/ATA/SATA.

Bruce, if uptime is that important to you, you seriously need to consider an imaging program or client management system. I've got 70 workstations and laptops at my company. If one goes down, I've got an image available for that particular PC. Take out the old hard drive or even swap computers, tell Altiris (the software) that I want it to have a particular image, boot up and twenty minutes later, it's done. I can even take care of issues in CA or NV from AZ with remote storage.

And I've been doing this since I was 13...DOS hadn't been around yet and the IBM PC came out two years later. ;)
 
Bruce, if you're that fed up with client computers, set up a Citrix server and get Winterm clients. Server with redundant everything (redundant power, RAID 5, multiple processors, 4Gb RAM) and good speed should be $10K or so. Add Citrix licensing and the labor, probably another $5K (seems to vary based on product). At $400 per thin client, if it goes down, take the spare off the shelf, plug it in, send the other one back for repair.

The processing is done on the server, not the client. The user has their own desktop space, My Docs, etc., plus whatever else you need set up. I've got 10 Winterms in my remote offices. I'd consider doing ALL of them but too much of the stuff they do is starting to require more local access. Maintenance-wise it's a no-brainer. The server guy can come in once a month, check everything over, run any updates (ONCE vs on each workstation) and confirm your backups (again, ONCE vs all the workstations) are intact.
 
Brian Austin said:
Apple doesn't make their own hard drives, they buy them from the same places everyone else does, just with a SCSI interface (or is it all firewire now?) instead of IDE/ATA/SATA.
Click to expand...


Actually, most Apple products are shipped with SATA or ATA hard disk drives.

While Apple doesn't make their own drives, like other major computer manufacturers, they do have their own stringent quality control measures and specifications for procurement. Every large computer manufacturer has their own standards and procedures for parts and components that they purchase from other vendors.

One thing I would never do is purchase a "white box" or bulk-package hard disk drive if I cared about the data.
 
N2212R said:
Before you throw those Dell's out, let me know. I have a whole network of guys who would be more than happy to have them.

BTW - I have 4 Dells at work, and have had zero issues. Gateways on the other hand.....
Click to expand...
I can't do that. They have sensitive data on them.
 
bbchien said:
I can't do that. They have sensitive data on them.
Click to expand...

Bruce, if you keep/destroy the hard drives there will be no sensitive data left unless you consider your bios settings "sensitive".
 
lancefisher said:
Bruce, if you keep/destroy the hard drives there will be no sensitive data left unless you consider your bios settings "sensitive".
Click to expand...
The rest of the computer is hardly worth saving. It's not worth the time. I pu t in a new HD- now what? I have to build it.

As for the central server and whitebox computer(s), that's a problem. I still have to reload my MS Office and call for the license authorization becuase MS sends the chip id in with the registration. Then I have to build by network ports, load my printer driver (a network served HP LJ1300), my financial software, my electronic record software, back down the patient files....TOO MUCH TIME. Time Time Time.

And I certainly won't be talking to "bernie how can I hep you?" anymore. I would use Open office except the other physician suites can't open the files in good format.

So when a computer crashes, it's out for physical destruction. I just finished off two more this last month. Sayonara! Down to 9 Dells from 11.
 
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bbchien said:
The rest of the computer is hardly worth saving. It's not worth the time. I pu t in a new HD- now what? I have to build it.

As for the central server and whitebox computer(s), that's a problem. I still have to reload my MS Office and call for the license authorization becuase MS sends the chip id in with the registration. Then I have to build by network ports, load my printer driver (a network served HP LJ1300), my financial software, my electronic record software, back down the patient files....TOO MUCH TIME. Time Time Time.

And I certainly won't be talking to "bernie how can I hep you?" anymore. I would use Open office except the other physician suites can't open the files is good format.

So when a computer crashes, it's out for physical destruction. I just finished off two more this last month. Sayonara!
Click to expand...

Oh, say it aint so. Just yank the drives - everyone I know would gladly put in a new drive. Although I can understand the gratification of destroying something that gives you trouble.
 
N2212R said:
Oh, say it aint so. Just yank the drives - everyone I know would gladly put in a new drive. Although I can understand the gratification of destroying something that gives you trouble.
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It's so. Mike A. can tell you so.

Maybe the RAID server is an answer. But I can't afford an FTE infosys guy. I'm it.
 
Bruce, I would never allow client (for you, patient) critical data to reside on a workstation. I have a RAID5 server running Linux, with basic cheap-ass workstations (currently, Dell, but used to buy Compaq). In three and a half years of heavy use, the server ONLY goes down when I shut it down. Longest uptime between reboots was over four months.

And why would you use MS Office? Use Open Office or (as we do) WordPerfect Office by Corel. Save money, work better.


have been
 
SCCutler said:
Bruce, I would never allow client (for you, patient) critical data to reside on a workstation. I have a RAID5 server running Linux, with basic cheap-ass workstations (currently, Dell, but used to buy Compaq). In three and a half years of heavy use, the server ONLY goes down when I shut it down. Longest uptime between reboots was over four months.

And why would you use MS Office? Use Open Office or (as we do) WordPerfect Office by Corel. Save money, work better.


have been
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Sometimes we simply transmit the MS Word file to the referring office. It depends how & what they use. Currently all the critical data resides on one EXPENSIVE peer. May be time for a RAID setup...
 
Meh. Our ITS dept has service contracts with Dell and Gateway. Gateway has a service support group in Greenville that they send down, and Dell requires we send the laptops to them. Personally, the Gateway group seems to do an excellent job. Furthermore, when I had my Dell, I had only one issue, which was apparent when I received it (motherboard was defective and system would spontaneously restart), and was immediately Advance RMA'd. All of the PCs that I've built and used have never had any problems that were not the direct result of something that I personally did (screwing around with random settings, changing BIOS settings, installing software or a driver I knew wasn't stable, etc.) Thus I feel that 90 - 98% of all computer problems, regardless of platform or manufacturer, are PEBKAC (Problem Exists Between Keyboard And Computer) issues. Even in our department, the most we ever see is someone installing an improper driver and getting an IRQ_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL error. Thus I refuse to blame anyone except the end user.

I used to work in tech support (in a way I still do, but not in a call center thank god) and I'm sorry, but the reason there's a script is because 9 times out of 10, the person on the other end of the line has no idea that "press control alt delete" means to press all three at the same time. Yes, it's a pain for those of us who are the exception, but that's just how things are. The individual has a knowledge base in front of them to search through, and that's what they're supposed to do. If you really have a problem with it, the first thing you say when they answer is "Please escalate my call". And continue repeating that phrase until someone else comes on the line. If you question their ability, refer to the phrase again. Eventually you'll get someone who is on par with you, and hopefully you can get their extension for future use. We actually did this when we got the service contracts, because we made them understand that the student workers would be calling, not faculty members, so they wanted to be able to speak to someone who would understand "We need a chassis replacement for this laptop" and not start asking 2000 questions about the problem that the worker apparently already knows about. Not to mention having a specific person attached to your service account makes it much easier to discuss previous problems and makes communication much more efficient.
 
bbchien said:
...after all, Apples are basically UNIX.
Click to expand...

So, how come Apple won't give me any command-line priveleges? No grep, no awk, no sed, no finger, no who, no ls -latr, no korn shell, no cron jobs, and no tar. No man pages for heaven's sake. :P

That ain't Unix. Unix is meant to be hacked at and manipulated by glasses wearing, Mountain Dew and coffee guzzling geeks like me (minus the Mountain Dew, and strictly decaf on the coffee.... but I do wear glasses... ;) ).

FWIW, Unix is the most stable platform you'll find out there, and having a backend server and storage array that is Unix based isn't a bad idea. However, the cost can be quite prohibitive.

What Brian said about Altiris to reload standard images to your PC clients is good advice. My company uses Altiris to push out new standard OS's to about 7000 designing engineer clients at a rather large client automotive company. This is done about twice a year on a global scale. It's good stuff. Don't keep any data local on the machine, then, if you have to put a new hard drive in a PC, you use Altiris to push the OS image to it and you're back up and running in short order.

Although I still like Unix. (not to be confused with Eunuchs... ) ;)

Carolyn (partial to Unix, forced to do more Windows than a housewife... :D )
 
Bruce, your situation is begging for a Terminal Server/Citrix application. Once set up and the initial bugs worked out (there will be some), all of your data resides on the server. Security is tighter, everything is redundant, updates are smoother and faster, backups are faster and workstation maintenance drops to nothing.

Your existing workstations can connect to the Citrix server as is. As they die, toss the box, keep the monitor/keyboard/mouse and connect a Winterm thin client. The user won't know the difference since they both connect to the server in the same way.

Look for a Citrix certified company, call them up, tell them your issues and ask them to visit. Ask for references, including similar situations as yours. If they can't provide them, move on to a different company. There are plenty of Citrix installs in healthcare (hospitals use them quite a bit). Go to http://www.citrix.com/ and check the Partners pages. Or just call them (it's easier).

It won't be easy making the transition...but the payback after the first month or so will be significant, especially on your workstation maintenance. Have the company include a service contract with minimum response times, on-site visits once a month for PM work, etc.. Let someone else handle the IT stuff while you concentrate on what you're good at.
 
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Razor said:
So, how come Apple won't give me any command-line priveleges? No grep, no awk, no sed, no finger, no who, no ls -latr, no korn shell, no cron jobs, and no tar. No man pages for heaven's sake. :P

That ain't Unix. Unix is meant to be hacked at and manipulated by glasses wearing, Mountain Dew and coffee guzzling geeks like me (minus the Mountain Dew, and strictly decaf on the coffee.... but I do wear glasses... ;) ).

FWIW, Unix is the most stable platform you'll find out there, and having a backend server and storage array that is Unix based isn't a bad idea. However, the cost can be quite prohibitive.

...

Carolyn (partial to Unix, forced to do more Windows than a housewife... :D )
Click to expand...


*cough*, *cough* *ahem*

From what source did you get that information?

Code: 
Last login: Sun May  1 10:55:55 on console
Welcome to Darwin!
mike-imac:~ mike$ uname -a
Darwin mike-imac 7.9.0 Darwin Kernel Version 7.9.0: Wed Mar 30 20:11:17 PST 2005; root:xnu/xnu-517.12.7.obj~1/RELEASE_PPC  Power Macintosh powerpc
mike-imac:~ mike$ grep
Usage: grep [OPTION]... PATTERN [FILE]...
Try `grep --help' for more information.
mike-imac:~ mike$ awk 
Usage: awk [-f programfile | 'program'] [-Ffieldsep] [-v var=value] [files]
mike-imac:~ mike$ korn
-bash: korn: command not found
mike-imac:~ mike$ sed -h
usage: sed script [-Ean] [-i extension] [file ...]
       sed [-an] [-i extension] [-e script] ... [-f script_file] ... [file ...]
mike-imac:~ mike$ finger
Login    Name                 TTY  Idle  Login  Time   Office  Phone
mike     Mike  A          *con  1:39  Sun    10:55
mike     Mike  A           p1         Sun    12:34
mike-imac:~ mike$ who
mike     console  May  1 10:55 
mike     ttyp1    May  1 12:34 
mike-imac:~ mike$ ls -latr 
total 72
lrwxr-xr-x   1 mike  mike      54 30 Jan 19:34 Send Registration -> /Users/mike/Library/Assistants/Send Registration.setup
-rw-r--r--   1 mike  mike       3 31 Jan 03:31 .CFUserTextEncoding
drwxr-xr-x   5 mike  mike     170 31 Jan 03:31 Sites
drwxr-xr-x   4 mike  mike     136 31 Jan 03:31 Public
drwx------   3 mike  mike     102 31 Jan 03:31 Movies
drwxrwxr-t   7 root  admin    238 31 Jan 20:03 ..
-rw-r--r--   1 mike  mike      73  9 Feb 18:02 .sversionrc
-rw-------   1 mike  mike       0  9 Feb 18:26 .Xauthority
drwxr-xr-x  18 mike  mike     612  9 Feb 18:26 .
-rw-------   1 mike  mike      94 20 Feb 16:25 .bash_history
drwx------   9 mike  mike     306  8 Mar 18:24 Music
drwx------  34 mike  mike    1156  8 Mar 18:24 Library
drwx------   4 mike  mike     136 14 Mar 18:50 Desktop
drwx------  61 mike  mike    2074 16 Apr 07:48 Documents
drwx------  58 mike  mike    1972 17 Apr 12:03 .Trash
-rw-r--r--   1 mike  mike   12292 26 Apr 19:27 .DS_Store
-rw-r--r--   1 mike  mike      13 30 Apr 12:46 .lpoptions
drwx------   7 mike  mike     238 30 Apr 20:18 Pictures
mike-imac:~ mike$ tar
tar: You must specify one of the `-Acdtrux' options
Try `tar --help' for more information.
mike-imac:~ mike$

Korn shell is shipping with the new OS X Tiger, out as of Friday.

What was that again?
 
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wbarnhill said:
Meh. Our ITS dept has service contracts with Dell and Gateway. Gateway has a service support group in Greenville that they send down, and Dell requires we send the laptops to them.
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To the best of my knowledge, and this dates back about 3 years, both Dell and Gateway contracted NCR for their on sight service. I know this because my buddy was the Key West NCR guy and when I was staying with him, I'd do some of his PC stuff while he had to go ATMs and the like.
 
bbchien said:
Hey Mike, would you post some of those forum addresses? I just got a Dell salesperson to confirm the credit to my account- one month later and $100 short. She says, "I'm so sad to hear someone say that, it's so rare!" (scripted, I'm sure). Sigh.
Click to expand...

I couldn't find the comment I saw on slashdot but I googled and found this.

The most of the recent complaints are for Maxtor Diamondmax drives.
http://reviews.designtechnica.com/user_reviews1488.html
http://forums.storagereview.net/index.php?act=ST&f=2&t=18811
http://www.intellirecovery.com/news/archives/2004_11_01_archive.html

Which drive does your have? I'm reading Dell used Hitachi/IBM drives which should be OK.

I ALWAYS buy Seagate Barracuda drives, which are the same industrial quality the server makers have been using for a decade. I think own 15 from over a 7 year period and haven't had one die yet, even the ones running constantly in TiVos.

http://www.consumeraffairs.com/computers/dell_and_back.html

Wonder why they have the "Keep your hard drive" service?
http://www1.us.dell.com/content/top...n/keep_harddrive?c=us&cs=RC956904&l=en&s=hied
 
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mikea said:
*cough*, *cough* *ahem*

From what source did you get that information?


Korn shell is shipping with the new OS X Tiger, out as of Friday.

What was that again?
Click to expand...

I stand corrected. I stopped using Macs at about OS7 and there wasn't anything resembling that kind of functionality. Hmmmmmm.... and if they're getting Korn Shell, then possibly I could give them another look. Maybe. I'll still take my Sun Ultra 30 (I love it when work discards equipment). :-)

Carolyn (Unix still rules... ;-) )
 
wbarnhill said:
I used to work in tech support (in a way I still do, but not in a call center thank god) and I'm sorry, but the reason there's a script is because 9 times out of 10, the person on the other end of the line has no idea that "press control alt delete" means to press all three at the same time. Yes, it's a pain for those of us who are the exception, but that's just how things are.
Click to expand...
As someone who is one of the ignorant masses I appreciate the script and the detailed instructions. They should probably have customer service that is geared to all levels of computer competance, however.

I've generally been satisfied with the customer service I got from Dell. I had the hard drive crash in one laptop and the screen and keyboard developed glitches in another one (that one takes quite a bit of abuse, though). In the first case they sent me a new hard drive with no questions. In the second case I took the laptop to their local contractor because it was inconvenient for me to arrange an appointment at my home, and they replaced both the screen and keyboard within 15 minutes. Of course it would have been better if these parts had not failed in the first place...
 
Everskyward said:
I've generally been satisfied with the customer service I got from Dell. I had the hard drive crash in one laptop and the screen and keyboard developed glitches in another one (that one takes quite a bit of abuse, though). In the first case they sent me a new hard drive with no questions. In the second case I took the laptop to their local contractor because it was inconvenient for me to arrange an appointment at my home, and they replaced both the screen and keyboard within 15 minutes. Of course it would have been better if these parts had not failed in the first place...
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Dell had some fairly weak keyboards in their laptops for a while. They've been beefed up since then, though. That was part of my decision to buy an off-brand for my own personal laptop a few years ago.

Looking at the calendar and new features, it might be time for another. ;)
 
Mac OSX, all versions, have a complete BSD distribution.

Even X11, if you want to run XWindows software, is on the installation disc as an optional install.

It's based on the Mach kernel.

Complete developmental tools also come with it and the OS itself is open-source.

Java is a first class citizen too.

Razor said:
I stand corrected. I stopped using Macs at about OS7 and there wasn't anything resembling that kind of functionality. Hmmmmmm.... and if they're getting Korn Shell, then possibly I could give them another look. Maybe. I'll still take my Sun Ultra 30 (I love it when work discards equipment). :-)

Carolyn (Unix still rules... ;-) )
Click to expand...
 
larrysb said:
Complete developmental tools also come with it and the OS itself is open-source.
Click to expand...
You're telling me that the proprietary master of the computer world is opening up their OS on an open source license??? Got any confirmation somewhere?
 
Brian Austin said:
You're telling me that the proprietary master of the computer world is opening up their OS on an open source license??? Got any confirmation somewhere?
Click to expand...


Uhh, Apple.com would be a good place to start.

Where have you been? Mac OSX is on its fourth release and has been available, open source with all the unix trimmings for years now.
 
larrysb said:
Uhh, Apple.com would be a good place to start.

Where have you been? Mac OSX is on its fourth release and has been available, open source with all the unix trimmings for years now.
Click to expand...
You might want to read up on it a little. It's open source...but a little different:

http://developer.apple.com/darwin/ps-faq.html#APSL

I love 13.3. You develop it, we like it, we can get it.
 
Brian, consult a lawyer to help you understand the license.

The APSL has been extensively peer-reviewed in the open source community and the terms are generally well-accepted. Apple is full participant in the world of open source, both using and giving back to the community.

If you compare the terms of the APSL to GPL or the OSF license or any other company's open-source licensing terms, you'll find APSL to be among the better ones.

But I think the geek talk has gone on long enough.

We should get back to cartoons and smashing hard drives with hammers.
 
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