Update: How To Switch

Just found a program called Outlook2Mac that looks like it simplifies all the problems I tried solving transferring from outlook to a mac entourage (as mentioned in the last post). It’s only 10 bucks, and of course requires a pc and mac (still no way to just translate a PST file, alas).

haven’t tried it, but if I run in to this problem again, I will…

Tales from the Trenches: Rough Day

Man, it’s been a couple rough days on the computer repair front.

Today was some ram installation in the west village, and then an msblast casualty from Boerum Hill, the owner of which I convinced to bring in-store, instead of me traveling to him. I think we’re going to give up on service outside of Williamsburg; it’s just not worth it — too much time to travel, and no direct access to the supplies at the store.

Yesterday I spent about 7 hours on a compaq that had stopped accessing the internet. Damned if it didn’t escape every possible attempt I made at getting it back online, until finally I backed up and made way into a quick restore (using Compaq’s original disks to return the computer to it’s factory-new state) — which still didn’t work!
Continue reading

When The Lights Go Down In The City…

Where were you when the Blackout of 2003 hit? I suspect it will be a question on everyone’s mind for, oh, let’s say the next week or so. I happened to be working at Mikey’s Hookup when the lights dimmed and our computers shuddered, and then finally gave up. For a good 10 minutes the lights just flickered before fully giving up the ghost, at which point everyone just sort of headed outside to see what was going on…
Continue reading

Tales from the trenches: RPC exploit / worm!

UPDATED
I49204-2003Aug12.jpgIn case you haven’t heard, the Blaster worm has made some serious headway. We’ve seen dozens of computers in the last few days affected, with a variety of symptoms, from email not being sent out to the common system restarts. Wild stuff…

Weird confluence of bugs (did I just say confluence?) today. Guy drops off his laptop; it persistently, while he’s online with RoadRunner cable, shuts down, alerting him with a message about some RPC service error needing to quit… I plug his computer into the network to run Windows update, and another computer gets the same shutdown message… 15 minutes later we get a call from someone with the SAME problem… God Bless You Microsoft.
Continue reading

Tales from the trenches: Brand New Computers

I had a client today who bought a new Compaq and wanted the old hard disk installed as a second drive. The machine had never even been turned on, and I was stunned by a couple of things:

  1. how long it took to start up the very first time (At least 10 minutes of various Please Wait… screens)
  2. The ridiculous number of shortcuts for various services and offers on the desktop: AOL, Yahoo, RealOne, and half a dozen other free-for-now, pay-us-later jobbers.

Continue reading