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

The Lincoln, NE Police Department is looking for a Dell Inspiron notebook with service tag JKXQHC1. It was stolen in Lincoln, NE on or around May 13, 2009.

If you have any information about the location of this notebook, please contact the Lincoln Police Department’s non emergency number at 402-441-6000.

I tend to welcome my employees unofficially on my blog once they have worked for us for a few weeks and we know they are the real deal.

In fact, it’s almost an inside joke among Schrock’s employees that once you make it on Thor’s blog you know you are good to go.

If that’s the case, then I am happy to report that Schrock’s newest employee, Scott Long, is good to go. Scott will be taking on a management role in the Lincoln Service Center.

Scott brings an official Apple certification to Schrock as well as additional HP and Dell certifications. Anyone who has been through the certification process for these three companies understands the training and experience required to gain these certifications. His presence in the service center will help us keep our turnaround times to same-day or next day.

If you have purchased a Dell notebook or desktop between April 1, 2005 January 19, 2008 Dell might owe you some money and you need to claim it before April 13.

The State Attorneys General form 34 states (including Nebraska) all settled with Dell this week over claims about misleading financing terms, lack of promised warranty service, and other violations of its customer service agreements. Dell is creating a $1.5 million fund to pay back its customers for the failings.

Mid-2008 Walmert and Dell teamed up in an experiment across 15 of their Dallas-area super centers to create a competitive answer to Best Buy’s Geek Squad. The experiment was called “Solution Station.”

The experiment is old news, but I think it is interesting that there has been no mention of the effort since its launch.

Google searches for “Solution Station” only bring up spammy sites and a few press releases dating back to the project’s launch. Normally you at least find a few complaints online, but there is not a single one.

If you are in the same boat and need your Dell Inspiron 1721 and want to run Windows Vista instead of Windows XP, here are some of the drivers you will need to get the job done.

Word of that success made its way from Nebraska all the way to Pennsylvania where a Vista-strapped Dell Inspiron 1721 longed to run Windows X instead. The owner of that notebook decided to ship it all the way to Nebraska to have our technicians take a crack at migrating it back to Windows XP, even though Dell would not provide XP drivers for the unit.

In the past week, a number of OEM manufacturers as well as Toshiba have joined Dell, Apple, HP, and Panasonic in the list of vendors who inadvertently provided defective Sony batteries to their customers. After receiving a few emails and getting dozens of phone requests to check the recall lists, I have decided to put together one complete resource for laptop users out there so you can easily find out if you should be the proud recipient of a brand new laptop battery (not a bad deal if I say so myself!).

To start, you are most likely to be effected by these recalls if you own a Dell, HP, Toshiba, or Apple notebook computer. Ironically, Sony has not recalled any of its own Sony Vaio notebook computers. I would assume that Sony uses Sony batteries in their systems, but as of now they are considered safe. (They may have been built by a different subcontractor than the afflicted batteries). In a separate recall unrelated to Sony batteries, Panasonic is also recalling some batteries in its notebook computers.

Channel 10/11 stopped by the Lincoln Service Center today to interview someone about Dell recalling 4.1 million batteries that could overheat and explode. The batteries, made by Sony, span more than 4 years of Dell notebook computers.

I was giving prepared remarks at the LIBA Luncheon, so Blaze filed in for me and did an outstanding job. You can watch the video on the 10/11 website!

Dell has announced it plans to begin shipping its laptop computers with the brand spankin’ new draft version of the 802.11n wireless network standard. However, those who adopt the “n” standard now may have a headache on their hands next year if the standard is not adopted as written today.

802.11n promises a faster connection, greater signal range, and more networking possibilities, but not everyone is in agreement that the technology is ready for prime time.