On Apr 20, 2005, at 9:20 AM, Stewart Stremler wrote:
I think Linspire is targeting the folks who /don't/ have such an acquaintance yet.
On the other hand, it sounds like a great business opportunity for those
who are interested in such things.
I disagree.
The people who most need help are also the ones least willing to pay for it.
Businesses are similar; only they generally have backups. It's called <sigh> -- paper.
Sadly, my normal prognosis for a dead Windows machine for most small businesses (< 10 people) takes about 5 minutes:
"First, you need at least a new hard drive given the virus infested, spyware laden, piece of crap that was the old drive. Given that a cheap new computer will be marginally more, have a new pristine copy of Windows as well as the latest anti-virus--go buy one.
Second, I can probably recover your data. It's probably stored in slightly encoded form by some random Visual Basic application that you use and is only marginally garbled. However, you likely have paper copies of all of your important receipts, invoices, etc. Paying an individual to retype all of that data at minimum wage will probably be cheaper than paying me to scavenge the hard drive.
Third, no user other than the CEO/President is to have install authority on this new computer. *Ever*.
Fourth, buy me lunch and we'll call it even."
I have never had anybody take me up on the scavenge the hard drive option. The advice generally holds for about 6 months and folks start installing crap on the computer, again. Repeat process in 2 years.
Guess what? That totals to about $500-$600 spent on computers every 2-3 years. It's hard to compete with that.
Or, in management-speak:
"System administration is a negative deliverable. You only notice its absence when something bad happens."
-a
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