Computer Repairs

Link: http://www.digitaluk.co.uk/when_do_i_switch/west/mendip

The Mendip transmitter will be switching form analogue to digital in 2 stages commencing the 24th March 2010 and the final switch over the 7th April, At Bristol and Bath Home Computers we have experienced flat panel (Plasma, LCD and LED) TV engineers at hand to help you prepare for the switch over.

We can visit you to check out your television setup and advise any changes that may be required to minimise the loss off your television enjoyment.

You can opt for a visit in the near future to make sure you are adequately prepared, advising you how to retune your TV set and DVD recorder when the two switch-over dates are reached.

We can also visit you after each of the switch-over dates are reached to retune the set for you.

Our costs for a visit from our professionally trained and experienced engineers (Not monkeys who have tuned in their own TV’s at home) are as follows.

Option 1/* Home visit at a time to suit (subjection to availability) prior to switch-over to advise you how to easily tune your set and DVD recorder £35 for your first set and £5 for each additional set.

Option 2/* Home visit at a time to suit (subjection to availability) to tune in your TV and DVD recorder soon after the digital switch-over (either date) £30 for the first set and £5 for each additional set.

Option3/* Home visit at a time to suit (subjection to availability) to tune in your TV and DVD recorder soon after the digital switch-over (both dates) £50 for the first set and £5 for each additional set.

* All options will include a free appraisal of your set-up and advice as to what if any other equipment may be required.

We are already heavily booked so contact us now to ensure you do not miss any of the programs you enjoy to watch.

Over the last year Bristol and Bath Home Computers have been working on a large contract for a national retail store, this has left us with little time to maintain our website and blog, I am in the process of implementing new facilities which will allow us to increase our workload and keep the service as you have become accustomed to.

We have reduced our hourly rate to £30 an hour so you can have the experience of our expertise at a price competitive to your local computer shop.

We will be introducing fixed price repairs, installs and upgrades for most desktop computers and more than competitive fees for laptop, notebook and netbook repairs.

Also in the pipeline is an insurance type repair contract for your computer offering you peace of mind for as little as £3.99 a month.

Watch this space for more information as it becomes available or contact us for more details on the above mentioned services.

Would you let a passer bye come into your house and use your phone to ring his family in China, India or Russia for an hour or two or maybe 24 hours or more when they felt like it?

On one day I had 3 customers allowing strangers to use their phone to do just that, they were not aware of it but they were doing it none the less, you may think it will never happen to you, but are you sure? you will not see this stranger, he is invisible, he can enter when ever he wants, he makes no sound has no odour but he can ring up a telephone bill for potentially more than you earn in a month in just a few days.

Have I scared you? good, be afraid, be very afraid, it could quite easily be you next, but hey, do not despair, there are things you can do to prevent it.

Ok this stranger I talk about is not a human, it is a computer program, it is invited into your computer from a website that you found, maybe on Google search engine, maybe your son visited websites that teach him about life in a rather graphic way, perhaps you received a email from a Russian ambassador offering to give you millions of dollars in a rather shifty bank transfer, however you get it it can be very expensive.

Do not despair there is a way to get around this problem and it needn’t be expensive, this hidden visitor is not a Virus as such, it is spyware, I always thought it was a trojan but names change as time goes by all the various threats all seam to cross borders as what type of the threat it is called but the fact is it is a very serious threat.

Most people now have broadband and the spyware dialler should not affect you, it may try to use your modem to dial an expensive premium rate service, but having broadband it will not succeed and not cost you anything, unless, you forget about the dial up modem and leave it connected, this was the case in 2 out of the 3 customers on the same day, the spyware set up an email account on one of the computers and could in theory dial when it wanted, as it happened it didn’t and the users telephone bill was not affected, lucky escape if you ask me.

Don’t rely on luck remove your modem cable from the telephone socket now.

On each of these sites I installed PC Tools spyware doctor, there is a free version that I could demonstrate the infections already on the customers computer, there were 128 threats on one of them, diallers as mentioned, Hijackers, and a host of other nasties.

The reason I chose PC tools is because when I was starting out in my Computer Career, when MSDOS 3.1 was new and Microsoft Windows 3.0 was a high tech interface, PC Tools were there making many of the DOS utilities easy to use and some other amazing DOS based commands, I wish I could remember what they were, I have grown up with PC Tools, I haven’t used them much since the DOS days but it has become a name I have grown to trust, there are many anti spyware programs that are in fact spyware themselves that I decided to go with a company that I knew its roots.

The installation was straight forward on each machine but there was a clash with one who was using AVG anti-virus, for a small extra charge they upgraded the spyware engine from PC tools to include anti-virus.

If you have a problem with your computer that you can not explain, perhaps you get a sales message popping up every few minutes, your phone bill is sky high or your browser keeps going to pron sites, download a free copy of this program and scan your computer, if you find any threats you can decide to buy the product and remove them or hope that you don’t get a £500 telephone bill, pray that you don’t have money moved from your bank account to an obscure Russian bank account.

Free money saving advice for everyone who reads this post.

How much does it cost to fix my computer? that is a question that most people ask when they contact us here at Bristol and Bath Home Computers! for about 75% of our customers that contact us it is FREE, we can and will fix your computer FREE for 75% of our callers, that is a fact.

Why and how can we afford to do that?

The simple reason is if we do not need to visit you for a repair we will not charge you, if we decide you need a visit to rectify your problem you can rest assured that the only way to fix your computer is if we come and have a look, we do not and will not pay you a visit if we can talk you through rectifying your problem over the phone.

If you have a problem with your computer give us a ring, you may well be one of the 75%, if your not then you choose if you want us to visit you and correct your problem.

If you want someone to come and have a look and hopefully repair your computer there are many people who can do that, most offer a no repair no fee option.
If you want someone to come around and repair your computer then call us, we do not need the no repair no fee option, with us failure is not an option we can fix it!

You do not want different engineers coming to your door you want one who can fix it.

You can call us for any reason, to help remedy a fault, for advice on purchasing, or just a computer chat, we are a local Bristol number and eager to help, call Steve 0117 9071966.

In the early days of remanufactured computer consumables I was very sceptical about the quality of inks and toners being used, printers like the Hewlett Packard Deskjets have new heads when the cartridge is replaced, in this scenario if you had a damaged head because of dodgy inks its just a case of changing the cartridge and you would have a new head, you could even go back to manufacturer cartridges and be non the worse for the ordeal.
The problems could occur when printers like the Canon BJ330 where the head is a part of the machine and ink changed as a single cartridge, changing the head was costly at the time a new head was £130 and £60 for my labour, I must have fitted hundreds of these heads even using the correct ink from Canon, imagine if it was using substandard inks for that, it would have cost the earth and at that time the printers were £600ish, with the introduction of the Epson stylus again using the inbuilt head the chance of a repair bill was quite a bit, luckily the printers were a lot cheaper so not worth repairing but cheaper to replace, luckily in my experience the stylus print heads were quite robust and problems with them that could not be sorted with a cleaning cycle were rare.

The companies that refill cartridges have had many years of practice and now I have every faith that their cartridges are as good if not better than the original cartridges, the companies are still trading and the use of remanufactured cartridges has increased, most companies offer guarantees about their products so you are sure to get a good deal, the price of remanufactured cartridges is so much cheaper than the originals that even getting a few bad cartridges you will have saved the cost of the printer after just a few cartridge changes, that’s like getting a free printer after every few cartridge changes.

I have been doing some checks and the company below appears to offer the best deals, if you find otherwise let me know in a comment and I will change the recommended supplier.