"Bread and Butter" and Other Random Thoughts

.....or in this case, toast and butter, but anyway.... in my IT consulting business, there are certain jobs that are just simply that. They aren't glamorous, or really even much fun at all, but they do pay the bills (or in my case, the PayPal balance). 

Probably half to two-thirds of my business involves rebuilds on Windows machines. If you've been on a computer for any amount of time, you know that your machines slow down almost immediately upon arrival at your house. And by the end of the 3 to 5 years (or 2 if you've bought consumer HP or Acer), when you've finally decided that the sluggishness is so bad that something needs to done about it, then I get called. Now if it's gone the actual 3 to 5 years, it'll need to have RAM upgraded since all those updated have succeeded in majorly slowing it down. However if you've actually gone all the way out to 5 years, it probably needs to have the hard drive replaced too (it's mechanical). Anyway, having been in this business 6-7 years now, I've accumulated enough of a clientele that there are usually several of these in the average month. It's as boring as it gets, but like I said before, it pays the bills. By the way; these people come to me because I'm better at it AND charge something like half of what Best Buy/Geek Squad does!

Of course you guy should know that the bulk of my remaining business is flipping computers, since I written about it quite a bit. Specifically, I do "business class" machines that my clients have come to rely on due to their build quality/price-point balance. These machines like the Dell E6400 (my current favorite) can be delivered to them loaded, updated and ready to run for around $250, plus or minus. They are easy since I have the official Dell restore disk for the OS that they are licensed for and can be found in the thousands. On occasion, I'll do a ThinkPad for someone if they are willing to pay a little bit more for the attributes that they are famous for (keyboard, better build quality, etc.), or even Apple products like MacBooks..... crazy huh!?! I've done about 5 Apple products in the last year and a half. I don't mind do them; they're just expensive for what you get. 

Lately, I've gotten into laser printers. I don't mean, I've just recently started setting my clients up on them! No, I've been doing that for 4-5 years since they are so much more inexpensive than inkjets to operate. I've moved 3 of my 4 commercial clients to them. I have actually started repairing them. Recently, I accidentally came across some videos on YouTube showing how to do simple repairs on the mid-sized ones like the Laserjet 5/6p, 2100/2200/2300, plus I stumbled into a little shop in a neighboring town that had a bunch of them. They all seem to have some sort of small issues ranging from worn "pick-up" rollers to bad fuser grease. He doesn't have time to mess with that so he sells me several at a time for a relative "song". So I fix them and send them off to happy clients who probably won't have to change a toner cartridge for 3 or 4 years!

Now, I'm not exactly Super-Green guy running around in my woolen socks and Birkenstocks, but if I can help cut down on techno-waste, I will! 

And now for the "random" part: my brother is moving. .....So he's decided to thin-out his massive collection of stuff. So a couple of weeks ago he asked me if I wanted one of his old 35mm cameras. Obviously since it was an oddity (Topcon Uni), I said shoot yes (or some thing to that effect). Anyway, when the box arrived it contained the Uni, some various other old camera gear, but also a Nikon Coolpix 995, with a "fisheye" attachment (!) and these!!! The Coolpix 8800 and Coolpix 8400 twins as well. They are both 8Mp of the "superzoom" category which originally sold for around $1000.... apiece! I used to own a 8800 so I'm familiar with it, but they're be a post just on these guys when I can get around to it.