Fathers' Day and more

I got a call from my eldest son at the unusual hour of 0930 this morning - apparently he was on his way to a fund-raising event held in Bath every year. Local teams play boules in aid of a local charity and this time it is a shelter for homeless men and women in the area. I asked him what he knew about boules; he thinks he has to throw a big ball at a small ball. I'm not sure they will raise much this year!

Maintaining your PC's

Someone asked me recently if I could recommend someone else to repair their PC, because Windows had picked up a gremlin. As it happens I've been giving some thought to how your PC's can be looked after in future. I did a quick count and it seems that the number of people I help is now well over fifty - and yes, I was surprised too!

One of the general problems I face when someone's machine fails is that they often don't have backups, and taking them adds about an elapsed day to the repair time. I propose to kill two birds with one stone, and to suggest that in future if you'd like me to fix something, you will agree to buy some backup software and a hard disk which I will recommend. Then, your repaired machine can be backed up to your hard disk, and repairing it in future is a simple question of running the backup/restore program yourself. This will return it to a clean, working condition, and all you need to do is update the anti-virus. All other updates should be automatically applied. I will even provide simple instructions for the process. Not only this, but all your precious photos, music and documents will be backed up daily!

I estimate that the cost of the software is about £25, and the hard disk is about £50-60, depending on the size you choose. Given that the average cost of a Windows rebuild in one of the local repair shops will be £40-60, this seems like a good investment. Some of you already have external hard disks which can be used for the purpose.

Perhaps I can ask you all to think this over, and to contact me by email if you are interested in going down this route. I can then get this set up over the coming weeks, and hopefully prevent failures from happening.

Be aware also that if you need a PC fixed from now on, this is the arrangement I will want to use.