Peanuts to Profits With Thor Schrock
Peanuts to Profits With Thor Schrock

Today Microsoft released some concept photographs of what the office of the future may look like. Their presentation was complete with photos, and I have selected two of the best and added them to my blog album (Credit: Daniel Sheehan Photography). The interesting thing is that with the new technologies and operating systems that are just on the horizon, one can almost feel a paradigm shift taking place.

As you might imagine, Microsoft envisions that the office of the future will be devoid of CRT monitors and even single LCD displays. Both will be replaced with much larger dual screen displays. Perhaps it is just my keen insight into the world of computers, but this doesn’t really impress me much. Who wouldn’t want a huge 26″ high definition plasma computer monitor? And if one is good, two would most certainly be better, right? While the pictures are fun to look at, and touch screen keyboards with no sign of a mouse is a sexy idea, you would expect the office of the future to have something more.
Read More

For those of you who listen to our weekly radio program, Computer This (Saturday mornings at 10:00 on Lincoln’s KFOR 1240), you know that I fell victim to a website called notebookparts.com. I ordered a *new* piece of equipment, only to be sent a used component. I returned it, only to be sent a defective component. I asked for a refund, and suddenly all sales were final.

Those of you close to Schrock also know that I have had my software development staff dabbling in Search Engine Optimization (SEO). SEO is the art of posting your information on the Internet in such a way that it ranks highly in the Search Engines.

Today I did a search in Google for “notebookparts.com” in quotes. I was amazed to already find that the small piece about my experience with them on the Schrock Innovations home page was the 13th highest result – and climbing I might add.

Sometimes online companies try to hind behind the fact that distance separates them from their customers. Its reassuring in a small way that with the right knowledge, a guy can make this world a little smaller (and a little less comfortable) for those who believe that customer service has a direct correlation with the distance between you and your customer.

Don’t forget to head to the polls and vote on Tuesday, May 9th. There are a lot of great candidates on the ticket. If you want my unbiased (lol) opinion, I would vote Hinemann for Governor and Stenberg for Senate.

Sorry coach Tom, but people do trust you – to win football games. I am sure you would make a good governor, but I think you might find that governing is a whole lot different than legislating. That is one of the reasons a US Senator rarely gets close to winning a US Presidental election. The jobs are as different as night and day.

The Spring edition of the Schrock Innovations newsletter is off to the presses, which means it should be in the mail by next week. If you have ever done business with Schrock in the past, or if you requested to be added to our mailing list, you should get a copy. Once they start hitting mailboxes around Lincoln and Omaha, we will also make the newsletter available on the Schrock Innovations Website.

There is a valuable coupon in this quarter’s newsletter, as well on tip and tricks for your PC and some awesome webites from the Lovely Kimberly that will keep your kids occupied throughout the summer, no matter what their age!

You guessed it… Another wonderful spyware infection is causing problems for our customers. This infection is a variant of the SpyFalcon infection. We detailed its removal
with our Remove SpyFalcon Tutorial.

This new variant will not respond to those removal instructions, so we have created a new tutorial to deal with it. If you think you have the SpywareQuake spyware infection, or are not sure if you do, you can take a look at our Remove Spyware Quake tutorial on our DIY website. The tutorial has pictures of what the screenshots look like and everything.

I wish people had better things to do with their time than make this garbage.

Listen up computer shop owners out there! whatever you do, do not do business with notebookparts.com or any other company owned by Abbassi Rahim (a.k.a. “John”)!

This company is questionable at best in my opinion. I ordered a new 8x CD-RW drive for an older Gateway laptop from notebookparts.com. I received a used, defective drive. I called notebookparts.com and Abbassi Rahim agreed to send me a replacement. The replacement was supposedly *new* but is also defective.

This whole mess took more than 4 weeks to play out after shipping, and my customer finally got tired of messing with it and cancelled his order. So I emailed “John” (I suspect Abbassi Rahim) and asked for an RMA number from notebookparts.com to return the second defective drive for a refund.

But guess what…. All notebookparts.com CD drive sales are now final. You are taking your life into your hands if you deal with Abbassi Rahim or notebookparts.com.

It also looks like I am not alone in my opinion. Check out these horrible reviews of Abbassi Rahim and notebookparts.com

http://www.resellerratings.com/seller_info.pl?seller_id=5223
http://www0.shopping.com/xMR-notebookparts++com~MRD-302006~S-1
http://www.epinions.com/pr-Online_Stores_Services-Notebookparts_com/display_~reviews
http://www.pricegrabber.com/rating_getreview.php/r=2496
http://www.resellerratings.com/seller_info.pl?seller_id=5223

People pick political candidates for odd reasons sometimes. In this election, Nebraska politics is really interesting because you have a ton of qualified candidates all from the same party who are vying for the same jobs. In the case of the Nebraska US Senate Race, voters will have an opportunity to select the Republican who will face off against Ben Nelson (D. Neb) in the general election.

I must admit that I had a tough time choosing between Don Stenberg, Pete Rickets, and Dave Kramer. All three have very attractive qualities – Don is an experienced hand at politics and could use that experience for his constituents; Pete is an outsider who has the brains and the connections to get things done without the usual political strings that get attached to a candidate who has to beg for money to run; and Dave has helped countless other candidates get elected over the years and a LOT of people owe him a LOT of favors, which could be called in in the interests of the people.

But in my opinion, right now there is one issue that the US Senate has the ability to tackle and has refused to do so – Immigration reform. The Senate is in a deadlock with procedural measures being used by politicians who are more concerned about their political future than solving the problem at hand. I want a Senate candidate who will protect our borders with a double or triple layer fence BEFORE they talk about pathways to anywhere for anyone.

So in the May 2, 2006 Omaha World Herald there was a single graphic that helped me make up my mind. NONE of the Republican Senate candidates support building a fence along the US southern border. None of them. Ok, let the compromises begin… Who at least is willing to deal with the problem of 12 million people who have already entered our country illegally? The graphic indicated simple yes and no answers, and it indicated that Don Stenberg is the only candidate who opposes amnesty in one form or another.

Right there – BOOM. Got my vote. See you on the 9th. And I never thought I would hear myself say this, but Ben Nelson, if you read this, support a fence and I will vote for you in the general election. Security for our country is more important than the political sniping of a minority of US Senators, and my vote will be behind ANYONE Republican or Democrat who is willing to step up, and have the raw guts to do the right thing.

Oh by the way, some of you may be wondering what this is doing on a computer blog. Well, the title of the blog states this is the place for everything that does not have a place elsewhere. So here it is, and comments are welcome.

Last month we posted a free removal tutorial on our website at http://www.schrockinnovations.com/removemoviepass.php that showed our customers how to remove this software from their computers. It seems that while people have been surfing the internet, an advertisement has been appearing that offers free video content if you click on it and install some software. The next thing you know, BOOM you have Movie Pass’ Media Pipe software installed on your computer.

Of course, it is a free trial, but unfortunately you probably did not read the fine print. If you do not cancel, your computer will become a pop-up nightmare and they WILL send you a bill. Technically, its all above board, but in my opinion, this technique is deceptive and a bad business practice.

As always, watch your back and remember that there is no such thing as a free lunch… or in this case a free video.

Industry wide, April is typically a slow month for computer repair. For the past three years, Schrock Innovations has braced for a slow April as people get out in their yards, start taking their children to practices, and generally spend less time at home in front of their PCs.

This April has been very different. There were two massive spyware outbreaks with the SpyFalcon and MoviePass infections that caused annoying pop ups and threatened to damage consumer’s credit reports. Additionally, the sudden increase in computers with the “missing windows/system32/config/system” error brought us a workload that we haven’t seen in many moons.

On top of that, we also launched sales and authorized two week-long vacations for staff members this month in anticipation of slow business. Needless to say, we were absolutely clobbered this month. The good news is that the record sales burst has allowed us to explore a radically new way of repairing PCs that at worst gives us a new support tool, and at best could revolutionize the way we fix computers.

All of the above is my round about way of apologizing for not keeping the websites and blog as updated as I should. I will be working through the backlog of tutorial requests, blog entries, and other number crunching as fast as I can. Keep visiting our websites, and thank you to those who have provided feedback from places as far away as Ontario and the United Kingdom.

We have seen over 30 customers in our Service Centers over the past three days or so who have been suffering from an error message that states their “windows/system32/config/system file is missing.” Typically, we would simply restore a backup copy of the system file and send them on their way. But the problem has taken a new twist recently.

It seems that the entire windows/system32/config/ folder is missing entirely. This folder stores information about your stored passwords, your registry, and your Windows profile. Without it you will not be able to reboot your computer, and there is no way to completely recover from this problem.

The only solution to restore functionality is to back up all of your data, reformat and reinstall from scratch. This solution is NOT FUN!!

While no one knows why this is happening or how to prevent it, the Schrock Innovations software development team has whipped together a quick batch file to help you backup your config folder now while your computer is working so that if you are hit with this problem you can recover from it without the heartache.

Visit http://www.schrockinnovations.com/preventsys32config.php to read the tutorial about this problem ad how you can back up your config folder. There is no charge for the tutorial or the backup file, and it will not harm your PC. Pay special attention to page 4 of the tutorial.