Goodness we’ve been busy recently – calls out to Portland proper, West Linn, Tigard, Beaverton and more! The Google stats for the website have been picking up, and so has business. On top of that, the office in Beaverton is just about done, so things have been more than hectic to say the least.

This week, I had a customer request something that I didn’t have, so that’ll be offered here shortly – in the next post, in fact. I also managed to do a little charity work on a computer as well.

Anyway – we haven’t gone anywhere, we’re just busy!

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

Beaverton, OR —Nov. 6, 2009— Protocol16, a computer company focusing on on-site computer repair, has formed a partnership agreement with DriveSavers to provide the best data recovery solution for customers.

Protocol16 currently attempts “simple” drive recovery for customer computers. DriveSavers will be used in extreme situations, like fire, water and crush damage for laptops, desktops and servers. DriveSavers will also be utilized during RAID recovery for servers.

“I am extremely excited to be able to offer this service for our customers.” said Justin Royce, owner of Protocol16. “DriveSavers is at the absolute top of the list when it comes to drive recovery. DriveSavers has the clean room technology to take a scorched and almost unrecognizable hard drive, then get data out of it. In the end, it comes down to saving our customers money while offering the best solution for the customer. Due to the partnership, Protocol16 is able to offer our customers a 10% discount.”

About Protocol16
Protocol16 was started in 2007 in response to a growing demand for technical services in the military communities of Germany. Since starting, Protocol16 has relocated to Oregon and launched a website and mobile computer repair business in the Portland Metro region. Headquartered in Beaverton, Protocol16 is quickly becoming a leader in mobile repair for businesses and consumers. Protocol16 maintains that customer satisfaction is the absolute primary goal of the business.

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An interesting thought came to me while I cracked open a 221 page security checklist for Server 2008 yesterday evening. It was nearly midnight, I had to be up by 6:30 the next morning, yet I just sat down to read a security guide that would make any normal person’s head spin. My wife describes these things as “worse than VCR and Stereo setup directions”, and perhaps, she’s right. It’s amazing how halfway through most of these guides, you find conflicting advice and information: “Open port X” then 30 pages later: “Close Port X” – which is it? These security guides can literally make you go cross eyed after about 100 pages.

I guess my point is, most technicians that pour their life into their business, even as an employee, and never really go home and relax. I have never been one to leave work at work and I’m certainly not going to stop now. If I can find something online late at night, that will either make my life easier or can save a customer some time and money, I’m going to take the time to study it.

On the note of always working. I was driving around Beaverton in the Protocol16 mobile computer repair truck and my wife and I pulled into a grocery store parking lot. I got all kinds of crazy looks… My guess was that it seems crazy that a repair truck would roll up to that grocery store, but that’s my mentality. If I’m out of the office and we get a call, I need to be prepared to go to that customer’s location to fix their problem. Why should my customer wait for me to drive back to the home office, grab the truck then head out to their office or home? In heavy traffic, that could be an extra 40 minutes or more. Unless they’re on the other side of the city, I would nearly be there by that time.

I guess that last paragraph says something as well. We are not a business that likes to schedule people into time slots. If we can do it right then and there, we’ll tell our customer that. I don’t know how many times I’ve been met with utter shock when I can tell a business that we’ll be there in a half hour. Your computers are important, why would you need to wait a day or two? I’ve personally been told that no one would be able to look at a computer for a week because one shop was “so busy”. My thoughts: hire more people… Perhaps I’m too deadset on providing quality to my customers instead of worrying about my profit margins.
Justin

It’s been a very busy day. Protocol16 had several computer repair calls in Beaverton today making it one of our busier days of the week – it’s always the end of the week.

It seems that people are so thrifty these days that, again, they are choosing to repair a computer instead of replace it. I’m all for repairing a computer as long as it’s worth it for the customer. If we get a call to repair a computer and the repair itself is going to cost more than an actual new computer, Protocol16 will always recommend replacing instead of repairing. In certain cases, specific parts can be hugely expensive on older machines.

Anyway – later on in the day, my wife and I were in Tigard to check on a few retail fronts to possibly expand our computer repair business here in the Portland area and my complaint about traffic just about caught up with me. While driving down Pacific Highway, a driver decided to all-out run a red light, cross 2 lanes of traffic, the center dividing lane and end up in my lane, right in front of my truck. Thank goodness my wife saw him since she was looking at some locations on my left and was able to get me to slam on the brakes (read: screaming “STOP!!!!”) in time otherwise that would have been a nasty accident. It’s amazing what your peripheral vision misses at times. Luckily no one was hurt.

In a double stroke of good luck, the Tigard police happen to be right behind the Protocol16 tuck. Within seconds of this driver pulling this stunt, they were pulled over and getting a ticket. While I know the police were just doing their job, it’s nice to see a blatant traffic violation that could have hurt many people get taken care of so quickly. In saying that, I’d like to remind everyone that Protocol16 offers an Emergency Responder discount for computer repair in Portland…
Justin

Hello everyone out there in Portland!

I recently had the pleasure of spending my entire weekend practicing with my Small Business Server. I literally “burned it down” and “stood it back up”. In the industry, this is also known as a “nuke and pave”, but that term is more for workstations and general computers.

Basically, I decided that I was going to practice my skills and take down my server (with backups, of course), and completely reload it. This allows me to work with the hardware, the software and install everything from scratch. This is basically how a machine would show up to be configured and installed brand new.

The nice part is, I haven’t lost my touch. From throwing the disk into the server to the point where Exchange was checking email and the SharePoint site was up and running, it was 2 hours, 95% of that was waiting for the computer to run through setup, configuration and installation. Add another few hours for Windows Updates and a few other odds and ends and things are rockin’! I ended up only restoring my data since things went so well, why spend all that extra time to restore things when things are working…

To this day, I still recommend that Small Business Servers should be setup and maintained by someone with a good deal of server and administrative knowledge. Technically speaking, these machines are more complicated (in some ways) than other servers due to the software installed on them. One wrong move in one of the applications and someone can send that nice server back to the stone age very quickly. A good administrator can show any business owner the basics of setting up a new user account for an employee or resetting a password on these machines.

As always, be careful who you choose to do your work, even if it’s not us. If you have any questions, please let us know and we’ll be more than happy to answer them.
Justin

A common question and issue that Protocol16 runs across is someone that’s had to many problems with their computer is if they should fix it or reformat it (some people refer to this as “rebooting” the computer.)

There are Pro’s and Con’s to each option:

Fixing:
Pro’s: You save all your data, no reinstalling and setting programs backup.
Con’s: Depending on how your installation is fixed, there may be odds and ends that can still cause problems. Typically, a lot of shops do not modify your security settings either. This may cause a re-infection within hours of use.

Reformatting (aka: Rebooting)
Pro’s: You start completely fresh. This is typically the equivalent to turning your computer on for the first time.
Con’s: Depending on the shop that handles your repair, you could end up with no extra applications, hardware that doesn’t work (Network Drivers, Screen Colors, etc) and you’ll need to reload some choice programs.

This is a hard decision to make, but one that a lot of PC owners are faced with. While I could throw my opinion out there, I don’t want to sway you one way or another.

I will tell you that Protocol16 does it’s best to make a reformat request as easy as possible for everyone involved. Unless you specifically request it, we backup your data and attempt to make everything easy for you. At the same time, we can do something a little painful by implementing a double-account setup for your security. That’s right, we setup 2 accounts, one as an Admin and one as a Normal User. Typically, this is just a convenience issue during the first week or so, but it can occasionally cause problems with Windows XP due to how security is setup.

At the same time, we also go through and load all the software for your computer directly from your manufacturer. Hunting these programs down can take time, but it’s worth it since you are able to use the special buttons on your computer again.

But wait, there’s a secret most computer shops don’t want you to know… You can do this yourself!

If you have the original disks that came with your computer, you can simply find the Recovery or Repair CD/DVD and stick it into the computer. This will ERASE the hard drive (meaning no more programs, data, music, pictures – NOTHING) with a quick wizard like interface. Some computers have this CD built into the hard drive, you simply have to tell the computer that you want the “Boot Options”. This can be any type of F key on the top row of your computer. Just watch carefully right when your computer comes on and it’ll tell you which key to hit for the boot menu options. This second method typically only works with the newer computers though.

As always, if you’re having problems in Beaverton, Tigard, Portland or even over in Gresham, give us a call and we’ll be more than happy to help out!
Justin

A heck of a lot of businesses around Portland and Beaverton seem to think that once they get a few employees, that they’ll need someone specific to handle their internal IT needs. More often than not, this usually turns out to be the person that knows the most about computers. Occasionally, a business owner will panic and attempt to hire a full time IT/Computer guy. Well, I’m here to tell you, that’s not needed.

We completely understand the need to save money. We know, unlike the phone company, the phone book companies and other types of companies, that businesses are not made of money. That’s one of the reasons why Protocol16’s prices are so low compared to other competitors. Some of the big-boys charge TWICE what we do, for the same qualified people. I know first hand, I use to work for that type of company and I would be brought in as a technical expert. I was even flown to a foreign country once to install a network. It’s not fun installing a network in the dead of summer, in Sicily…

There’s a secret in Portland, though. You don’t need to hire a computer guru, you don’t need to worry about problems and if you’re thinking of upgrading your computers, you have someone to call. Protocol16 offers consulting for small businesses.

Consulting through Protocol16 means we show up and take your requirements and offer several types of scenarios that can solve that. That does not mean that we show up, be pushy and tell you what you need to do. If you EVER hire a company to come in and this happens to you – throw them right out the door. On top of that, any company you hire should give you the option of which hardware you move to, or give you multiple offers as to which hardware provider you wish to choose. This is all unless you contact a specific hardware company and request a consultation.

Even if you have an internal computer guy, we can still help take on a bit of the workload for larger projects or suggest options for bringing in new hardware or software.

As always, if you have any questions, please let us know and we’ll be more than happy to help out. Don’t worry, we don’t speak geek, we talk in your language.
Justin

I hope everyone is keeping warm in Portland! Fall is here and Protocol16 is now offering special discounts to some special people…

We’re offering a permanent $20 off discount,  for labor, for the following groups of people:

• Military (Army, Navy, Marines, Airforce & Coast Guard – including Guard, Reserves & Retirees)
• Emergency Responders (Fire, Medic, Police as well as Mountain Rescue and Ski Patrol)

Just show your official ID or DD214 to your technician each time you call us and it’ll be an instant $20 off.  Oh, and we’re not done!

We’re offering a permanent $20 off discount, for labor, to the following organizations:

• Emergency Responder Organizations (Mountain Rescue, Ski Patrol, K-9 Search)

We’d love to offer discounts to Fire, Medics and Police organizations, but we know you typically have internal IT departments. If you don’t, give us a call and let us know. As long as you’re orginization is not-for-profit, we’ll give you the same discount each time we visit.

If you have any questions or you need some on-site (or even pickup) computer support or repair, let us know!
Justin

It’s no doubt that the internet has allowed anyone that wants to be an author to write, but there are blogs everywhere, about any subject.

Oddly, there are not that many dedicated specifically towards computer repair. It seems that each company wants to maintain their own blog so that visitors stay on their websites. This is known as a Search Engine Optimization technique. The longer you stay on X website, the better it is for their rankings.

Now, while searching through Portland’s blogs, I was met with a full wall of information. I’ve never seen so many blogs dedicated to a city before. Most of these blogs are dedicated to topics throughout Portland and are not businesses trying to gain traffic either – they’re just normal people that love to write…  There’s even a Blog dedicated to staging homes around Portland (Business Blog) with a huge following of visitors. There are blogs devoted to Biking in Portland, Wine, and even a blog search engine to find other blogs around Portland.

Should I Create A Blog For My Business?
Now, since we work with businesses, this story does have a point. We often get asked “Should we make a Blog?” Our answer varies due to several factors. It also matters why you wish to setup a blog. If you’re looking at setting it up “because everyone else has one”, we’ll probably recommend against setting up a blog since your passion won’t be in it (it’s better to have a blog and update it occasionally than to set one up, update it a few times then abandon it). If you’re interested in sharing information with customers on a normal basis and looking at possibly getting better rankings on the search engines, then blogging can help.

Time
A blog doesn’t create itself and takes a huge amount of time for someone to sit down, write, edit and re-edit each entry. Some of the entries here on Protocol16 take upwards of an hour to create, others are done in just a ten minutes. Can you, or someone in your business, devote that much time to a website? I’ll guesstimate that I spend about 10 hours a month, just writing on the Protocol16 Blog. There are stories that are done, but haven’t been published, stories that done and waiting to be published and even stories that are just a title to remind me of what to write about.

Topics
Time is not the only consideration here. Many people feel they can come up with story after story after story of new ideas. That’s hard to do – I’ll be the first to admit that.

I currently run two personal blogs, the Protocol16 blog and I write for a Computer Industry website called Technibble. All those stories are floating around in my head, I have to be careful not to duplicate content.

It’s very easy to accidentally take a story from a personal blog and put a business spin on it. It’s much harder than most people realize to continue to coming up with topics. It’s best, when you first start, to write down a whole bunch of topics that you can write about for your business so you have a good foundation to start with.

Regularity
You’ve also got to consider how often to post your stories. Are you going to post one story every two weeks, once a week or are you going to attempt to go all-out and go for one-a-day? In the beginning, I always recommend with starting slow and ramping your speed up as you get more familiar with writing for your blog. This is so you don’t burn out, or start missing deadlines when you’re first starting. Even I miss an occasional deadline…

Don’t Abandon It
There is nothing worse than your clients showing up to your blog and finding that your last story was in 2004, even though you were posting regularly and just walked away from it. If we see this situation on a clients website, we always recommend removing the Blog all together. If your clients see that you started something and just left it, it can leave a sour taste with some of them.

In the end, a blog can be a wonderful tool to use to interact with your customers and help with your search engine traffic. Best of all, it’s free! If you have any questions about blogging or any computer type issue, please let us know. We’ll be more than happy to help!
Justin

I’ve said before that I read a lot of industry news and talk with a lot of people in the industry. If you use PayPal, you need to be aware of the following:

If you use the Internet Explorer, Google Chrome or Apple Safari browsers during PayPal transactions, now would be a good time to switch over to the decidedly more secure Firefox alternative.

That’s because a hacker on Monday published a counterfeit secure sockets layer certificate that exploits a gaping hole in a Microsoft library used by all three of those browsers. Although the certificate is fraudulent, it appears to all three to be a completely legitimate credential vouching for the online payment service. The bug was disclosed more than nine weeks ago, but Microsoft has yet to fix it. Source: The Register

As the news story states, Firefox does not have problems with this issue. Hopefully Microsoft will update Windows soon. Like always, be very careful of anything you get via email.
Justin