We, or rather I (explanation coming soon…), have been very busy over the last week. It seems someone turned on a virtual faucet this Monday and I’ve been running around like a chicken with it’s head cut off! While work is getting done, and on time, I may not be in the office 100% of the time.

I’ll also say, that due to this situation, I will personally bend over backwards (Ok, I’m not quite that flexible) to ensure that you get seen as quickly as possible. I’m known to stop by your location on the way to or from the office or schedule a pickup time (pickups are always free) that is convenient to you.

Our normal office hours are:

Mon-Fri: 8AM to 6PM
Sat: 1030AM to 5PM

We are always on call for businesses and there is no additional fee for middle of the night calls.

With that said, please call ahead before heading to our office, as we don’t want to miss you. There are some changes afoot, an explanation here and there and a few odds and ends that we’ll talk about in an up-coming post.
Justin

We just wanted to say wow, it’s snowing!

While other companies may say that they can’t drive in the snow, or that it may take them a long time to get to you, just remember: Protocol16 uses a 4×4 for it’s on-call vehicle.

So, with that said, yes, we’re open, even if it snows a foot like last year…
Justin

UPDATE: I’ve just been up and down Murray, and it’s a parking lot. So, with traffic the way it is, Protocol16 is STILL OPEN, but with a increased response time, completely due to traffic.

It seems business and the economy is picking up in Portland, which is great news all around!

Hot on the heels of my “Should I start a blog” story where I talked about how the lack of time can cause problems for your blog, I ended up being too busy to publish the normal 11 o’clock story yesterday – yikes! Looks like I’ll need to Q some stories up again.

More later today!
Justin

I had a customer this evening, in Portland, that had called a Craigslist technician to repair his computer. Supposedly the technician found a bad hard drive and offered to replace it with a $120 “used” hard drive since new hard drives cost hundreds of dollars (NOT TRUE!). The customer gratefully agreed and ended up allowing the installation of the used drive. For an hours time, plus the used drive, the customer ended up paying $140.

Damaged Hard Drive From a Craigslist Technician (click it for the bigger version)

The drive worked for about a week until the customer needed to move out of his apartment into another apartment. This caused a general rumbling in the case, if you’re not careful. Well, this caused enough of a rumble to cause the hard drive to fail. The customer decided to call a company rather than a Craigslist technician and I present you with the picture here…

This doesn’t look like much, except a broken tab, but look closely (ok, click on the picture for a bigger version)… Notice the white grooves on the tab? Those shouldn’t be there. Neither should the discoloration under the smaller grouping of attachment points…

I give you… Superglue ladies and gentlemen. This technician sold a poor customer a 70GB hard drive that was superglued for enough money to allow the technician to buy a 1TB hard drive for himself. That’s a REALLY big drive, a full 730GB bigger than what he billed the customer for.

Fortunately, I managed to get the data off the drive and replace the drive with a larger one for the customer. In the end, the customer paid about $145 for everything I did, with a much bigger drive.

Some signs to watch for: The technician never had an anti-static bag to carry the drive in. These bags protect electronic components from damage due to static electricity. The customer never saw a price tag, but he only had seen the $20 per hour cost on the Craigslist ad. Worst of all, the cell phone number has been disconnected and the customer paid in cash – no way to trace the guy.

Please be careful when working with any type of technician. Protocol16 would love to have your business, but even if you don’t choose us, we always recommend that you ensure that your technician is Licensed, Bonded & Insured (we carry a card from our insurance company), has a permanent number on something – a business card, a car wrap, a phone book entry, etc, uses protective covers on electronics, and you see price tags on the merchandise that shows up with the tech.

Personally, I carry around a case that we call “The Football” (it’s a presidential joke) that has several hard drives in fully wrapped packages, with price tags attached, all in a fully padded case. In this situation, I showed up and opened the case and the first thing the customer said was “The last guy didn’t do anything like that, he had it loose in his backpack!”

While we do sometimes provide used parts for customers, in extreme situations, they are always quality controlled to ensure that this type of thing doesn’t end up in customer hands. Again, when calling on any company for any type of computer repair, please be careful.
Justin

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We’ve been busy with new clients around Portland, but a lot of small business owners that I’ve personally talked to have wondered why a business should repair their computer vs having a family friend look at it for them.

Our quick answer is: there are sometimes people that are qualified to work on a business computer, but not always. If you know someone that is a “computer whiz”, make sure they understand your situation. If they come in and clean up your computer, they may accidentally uninstall a program, remove an important backup or just plain cause more problems.

Again, we don’t have problems with others working on computers, but make sure they’re qualified. Our technicians are certified by Microsoft to work on server environments (large, medium and small) as well as workstations and home desktops/laptops. We’ve seen small and large environments and understand those unique needs.

The other option you need to think about is experience. Our experience has taught us a lot of things that businesses specifically focus on. Someone that comes in that doesn’t understand the business can really end up costing more money in labor than Protocol16 would charge you. This is because we specifically understand the security requirements of the business environment. In this case, you could pay someone off the street to install windows on each computer and customize each one, or use Protocol16 to customize one computer to be “perfect” and mirror that to all the other computers (there are specifics to this, but we can generally do it).

One last thing you want to think about when bringing in an outsider that’s not associated with a company is insurance. Ensure that whoever you bring in is Licensed, Bonded and Insured. This protects both you and the person you bring in. What would happen if someone broke the company server and your email was down for a week?

As always, if you have any questions, please feel free to call 503-524-9047 or email us on the Contact Us page. We’re here to help the Portland Metro areas.
Justin

We figured we’d have a blog posting about our story too, something a little more in detail than the normal pages, just in case you’re interested…

In the beginning…

Portable Computer, Circa 1982

Our founder, Justin, has been working around computers for most of his life. He started when he was three, when his dad brought home one of the newest computers on the market – a “portable” desktop computer. By portable, we mean exactly what we say: It was shaped like a suitcase, complete with handle.

While it looks like a dinosaur now, it’s green monochrome screen, a blazing 4.77 MHz processor, 128 kb of memory and dual floppy drives was the talk of the house. Sure, it didn’t have a hard drive, but that didn’t matter much back then. Over the years, this was upgraded over and over again, both with programs, bought and custom, as well as hardware. We finally let it go after Windows 3.11 came out, the poor 6 inch green screen couldn’t handle it anymore.

During the usage of this computer, however, Justin realized that he had a cool hobby. Being able to make the computer beep in song, very simalier to this. His dad also taught him how to upgrade the hardware and pushed for more computer knowledge.

Fast Foward About 15 Years

After 15 years of getting in trouble in school, carrying around his own mini-laptop during high school and all that, Justin decided to go for the big time. He started working for a company called MindSpring. In a way, this was one of the worst moves of Justin’s IT career – and it was his first IT job, at that!

MindSpring had a reputation for making customers happy. This was caused by the company making it’s technicians happy and allowing things to “just flow”. A perfect example is: MindSpring would allow a technician to spend hours with 1 customer, if needed, to get them fixed. Most other call centers say you can only spend XX minutes on the phone with customers. This “get them fixed no matter what” mentality became ingrained and has never really left Justin’s mind. On top of this, he learned the true definition of “frugal” due to employees chanting it day after day and the concept of “hearing a smile”. He spent 4 years with the company before being “merged” into Earthlink the laid off when the company started downsizing all of it’s US call centers.

The Unhappy Years

After MindSpring, Justin spent several years at different call centers throughout the US and even started working for two DoD organizations on some major machines. The problem was, the Core Values & Beliefs (see the MindSpring link above) that MindSpring ingrained where allowing him to see how things could be if companies just opened up and changed a few things. He had his share of managers that refused to hear ideas simply because Justin was the new guy in the company – something that can’t be overlooked since he would be a new pair of eyes…

We’ll save you all the unhappiness because this is a happy story, but trust us, there was a lot of unhappiness…

Protocol16 Starts

The Protocol16 Logo

While working in the military community (Justin’s wife is an Army Vet), Justin started getting asked by many people around him to fix computers. These people where family, friends and people that heard about him through the grapevine. Knowing a thing or three about laws and taxes, Justin decided to open Protocol16 LLC as a computer services company in December, 2007.

Unfortunately, this phase of the startup got delayed due to another full time job move that required more time on the road.

Two years later, Justin moved back from Europe to Oregon and officially launched Protocol16 as a full time business. Protocol16 now caters to small and mid-sized businesses as well as consumers that need computer help. It helps with everything from a Spyware infection to installation of a brand new server all while providing 24/7 support throughout the Portland metro area including: Hillsboro, Beaverton, Tigard, Lake Oswego, Wilsonville, Gresham, and more.

Portland Metro’s newest “On Site, On Call, Computer and IT Services” company has launched and we’re running a huge special to celebrate!

From now until the end of September, we’re offering $20 off every hour we charge! We offer 24/7 support for the same price so their is no confusion and we don’t charge a same day or dispatch fee, just a 1 hour minimum. We work with hardware (to include Servers, Workstations, Desktops and Laptops), software and even networks. Our technicians are Microsoft Certified so we’ve got you covered from all angles.

Protocol16 may be new in Portland, but that doesn’t mean we’re not experienced. We’ve been registed as a business in Oregon since 2007, we’re fully Insured, Bonded and Licensed so we can help you. We service everything in Portland from Hillsboro to Gresham, Wilsonville to Portland and everything in between.