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

From time to time Splash Magazines receives complementary products and services from companies. The receipt of these gifts in no way affects our reviews or opinions in our editorial coverage. Our loyalty is to you our readers and we will give you our honest unbiased opinions.

Copyright © 2003 - 2009 Splash Magazines Worldwide. All rights reserved.

Top of Page