I have decided to share an example anecdote to help me express a pet peeve. Over the years I have seen things done or, worse, not done that I have long felt is dirty-pool, unfair, clever in the bad sense of the word & borderline unethical. Some of this from independants & small IT service shops but, certainly from 'big-box' stores. Talking about things like explaining nothing @ time of sale, so-called fixing or cleaning puters and seemingly playing on End Users/Consumers innocent naivite. Some of this includes not telling ppl to burn recovery discs, do Windows Updates @ the onset, that bundled securtiy will expire, etc. None of this is isolated incidents. Anyway, here's the wee story & I'm sure you will see my point... Recent client had their laptop @ a big-box store. Had then called me to set it up for them and get it connected to the internet. I saw the receipt from the store's work of a day or 2 prior. $80 for a physical cleaning of plain old dirt, debris & dust. Then $180 for what was labeled Major Repair... HDD had been formated & Win7 installed. Now, on top of this they are paying me big money per hour. Here's the disgusting, madding part. Not only had they explained nothing... no education, instruction @ all... ALL they did was put the OS in AND STOP. NO Updates put in, NO security product installed, Connectivity not enabled, which, actually was a good thing cus had the owner been able to connect, like the machine would have been sick & infected (again) faster than you could blink. Creating this kind of 'repeat business', knowingly making ppl have to get something (mysteriously) done again is just nasty & cruel & taking advantage of folks who happen to be unaware of things. All too frequently I have been called to deal w/ scenarios like this, after the fact. I'm, certainly, glad of the business but, also, glad I don't treat my customers just as badly as what brought me to them. Drew MS Partner / MS Beta Tester / Pres. Computer Issues Pres. Computer Issues www.drewsci.com

Hear hear. Maybe part of an "Educate Users" month. I've always felt an informed customer is one who will bring repeat business. With some education as to what's going on and what good practices to follow, users can keep a Windows installation working at peak efficiency virtually forever. Some might think that would take business away from IT folks, but there's always work to be done and smart customers will seek out people who help them be smarter. Can you imagine being asked to, say, install new hardware or a new software package on a system that's a clean, well-tuned platform to start with... Leaving the site without the feeling that you will be called in 5 minutes when something unrelated to what you did breaks down... -Noel

Exactly, Noel. Repeat clients w/ 'new' business, not cus things were not done right the 1st time (by someone else). Or referrals cus you did something right initially. Give EUs some info, options & awareness of what you can offer them & what's available for them, @ the time or in the future. And give enough instruction that w/ certain tools or utilities, native to the OS or added, that they can be educated & empowered to know they, themselves can do easy, daily things to keep their machine(s) clean, healthy & running @ their optimum. & Noel, thanks for supporting the point I was making.Drew MS Partner / MS Beta Tester / Pres. Computer Issues Pres. Computer Issues www.drewsci.com