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What do you do when you’ve got 8 computers that take 20
minutes to turn on? What about that that huge home theater system you bought for
your mother that she has no idea how to setup? From iPods, cell phones and computers
to home theater systems,
Make It Work
can help with your technology problems. Their goal is to make technology work
for you, whether in your home, office or car.
They service Los Angeles, San Diego, Orange, Ventura and Santa Barbara counties. They usually provide same day service and offer appointments Monday through Friday
from 8am to 6pm. They can stay later than 6pm if necessary. You can call on the weekends 10-4 Saturdays and 12-4 Sundays to setup an appointment. They can also
do remote service assistance if you have a PC and a high speed internet connection.
They service a panoply of technologies, including Home
Theater Systems, Audio Systems, Computers, iPods, Digital Photos, Remote Access
to your Computers, One-on-One Training and much more.
They also have a complimentary in-home Technology Concierge program predesigned to
provide assessment and advice on how to improve the quality and performance of
the technology in your life as well as give you advice on new technology you may be interested in pursuing.
Our Technology Problem
We had six desktops and three laptops in our office that
needed work. They were very slow and each had their own problems. We
asked
Make It Work to speed up our
computers, and we evaluated their service.
Donovan
Donovan, a tech
guy from
Make It Work, pulled up in a standard issue white and red
Mini Cooper ready to work a day for us. He previously worked
in a movie production company managing 10 computers.
He got his job with
Make It Work through Monster.com.
Donovan knew a
lot of little tricks that helped. I asked him about a stuck cd-rom drive and asked
if I had tried the pin trick, pushing a pin through the front little hole on a
cd-rom drive to manually eject the drive.
He explained everything he
was doing so I knew what was happening and could understand what was going on.
Working his Computer
Magic
First thing he did was go to the startup menu and checked for obviously bad
software. He checked the running processes, removed any peer to peer, disabled unneeded things, and more.
He told me his goal was around 30 running processes for an average user and 50
for a heavy user. The more processes running at once, the slower the
computer is. Even though we have updated virus scanners, he was able to pick
out traces of a new dot net virus on one of the computers equipped with the
nod32 virus scanner.
He went through all the programs that start up when the
computer turns on and asked which we use and which we don’t.
He restarted the computers in safe mode. He then used a special batched file, by
Make It Work
Developers, to run programs to remove spyware, temporary files, unneeded files, malware and much more.
He
explained that if he had found any viruses, he would move on to very specific tools
to remove them.
Success
Donovan was
working on 3-4 computers at a time for us going back and forth between them. He freed up 1 gig of hard drive
space on the first computer, 2 gigs on the second.
All the
computers were running noticeably faster and two desktops that were full of
junk became useable again.
He even had the tools to examine a hard drive that was having problems. He figured out why there was no sound on two of the computers, helped with a stuck cd-rom drive and much more.
Driving the Make It Work Mini Cooper
I asked
Donovan about the how all the Make It Work employees drive company
Mini Coopers and he said, “It’s Brilliant. It’s such a hip car and noticeable
you can’t help but notice and remember
Make
It Work.”
I asked him about working in various peoples'
homes, and he gave me some interesting comments: “Sometimes the husband and wife are
screaming at each other and fighting but they are paying for a premium service
so I’ve got to do good job and be professional.”
The most common problem het gets is virus removal, general
speed up, and windows errors. He
typically
spends an hour and half at each location.
One particular place he remembered going to was a women’s
house who had a massive home theater system that she inherited, which hadn’t worked for the last 8
months. It was a huge system intergrated throughout the entire house and
backyard that was worth about $10,000. He was worried
about having to pull everything apart to deal with the massive wiring. He then looked
at the receiver, checked
the panel, and
changed the sound from zone B to zone A, and it worked!
"In training we go over virus removals, basic networking, wireless
networking, software training, Mac training, etc. They have an order of
approach to problems. First they apply their own knowledge, then second they try to Google
it, third they consult team members, and last they call support
center. For me I rarely get to third or fourth level," he explained.
Make It Work employees
are paid more then Geek Squad, and have more
experience and a higher level of technical ability.
Make It Work employees all have BlackBerry's and do about
200-300 emails a day. The company keeps the employees up to date with company
and technology news. If anyone finds out something new, they tell the entire
company. They also have a team of programmers at the office that are in-house
support to innovate new tools such as a special boot cd to look at problems
before Windows loads.
Make It Work also stocks their
Mini Coopers with hardware in case you need something. They have
hard drives, network cards, wireless routers, and more.
Make It Work’s Customer
Service is top notch. If you have technical issues of any kind,
Make It Work has the network, knowledgeable staff, and experience make
sure your problem gets fixed and the solution works for you. They are a premium service that is well worth it.
They received the 2006 Software Industry Awards’ Software Services
"Company Of The Year" award for
their Excellent Customer Service. They were Rated the 741st fastest growing company
in us and 78th fastest growing IT company by Inc. 5,000 and were
Best in Computer Repair in a Santa Barbara Independent Reader’s Poll in 2007.
For more information on
Make
It Work, or to setup an appointment, contact them here:
http://www.makeitwork.com/
877-MAKEITWORK
877-625-3489
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