Why would anyone need "professional service" when they already have "someone who knows computers" helping them? This is, unfortunately, and all too common question. Your computer support firm is supposed to have the knowledge, experience and resources to solve the tough problems and test solutions before "trying them" on your systems. You deserve a partner working with you, not a "computer guy" making money on the side from you. We hope that by sharing the information below, you will better understand the importance of partnering with quality service professionals.

Backups, Your Safety Net
One of the most overlooked areas of business computing is ensuring that you have proper backups. Ensuring that you have an adequate and effective backup plan protects you and your customers from business problems due to lost data. Most businesses cannot replace or reconstruct their data without an actual backup. Notice that we used the terms adequate and effective. These are important words. Many companies religiously put copies of their data on 3.5" floppies. This is dangerous! Floppy disks can - and have - lost their data due to age, overuse or improper storage. CD's and tapes are the recognized, proper way to backup computer systems. These types of media are less prone to data loss and will hold much more data than a floppy.

How often should you perform a backup of your systems? What data should be backed up? Should the backups be automated? These questions are not answered easily. There are several variables that must be taken into account in order to answer this question. Experience and education on the part of your computer technician are the key to ensuring that these questions are answered correctly and that you are prepared for disaster. You should ask yourself, "can my current service person ensure that I don't loose a single piece of data?" Most "homegrown" computer service people don't know how to do this. A qualified and experienced professional service firm does. Even if your needs aren't quite that critical, the question is a measure of the experience level and training of your computer service personnel.

One other often overlooked backup issue is storage. Simply put, if you business were to catch on fire and burn to the ground, would you have a backup of your business data? although this is not a fun topic, it is one that you should consider with your service professional. With proper planning, it is even possible to simply move to a new location, restore your data from a backup and keep operating without more than an hour or two of downtime.

I Have a Back Up, Now what?
Once you have ensured that you have an adequate backup, you need to ensure that you can restore the data. A professional service firm will provide you with a written procedure for performing backups and another procedure for restoring data. Not having a data restoration plan can leave your company inoperable until your "tech" arrives to save the day. Having a documented restore plan with step-by-step procedures that can be easily followed is essential!

We will work with you to establish a written data restoration policy that can be followed when trouble strikes. We will also keep a copy of that policy at our business location so that you can call and get help on the phone if needed. We believe that that your computer support people should be your partners and they should be able to help you when you need it..

Help Me!
Computers can be quite reliable, but problems do happen. Your computer service person should be available to help you during your business hours. Quality professionals will hold regular business hours. They will have easily reachable staff and will have an office. If you often call your "Service Person" and hear children yelling in the background, get an answering machine or, worse yet, some kid's mother, you should consider finding a real service professional. If your service person doesn't have an office, you should probably look elsewhere. A professional service firm will have an office and a business phone. They will have a technical lab so that they can learn new technologies and test solutions instead of using your company as a "guinea pig". Professional Service people should have several years of experience and should be able to quickly solve most problems.


We offer in-shop, on-site and emergency service to our business partners. This allows you to choose the level of service that you need. By offering emergency response service, you can have the responsiveness of a highly trained, $80,000 a year technician on your staff for only a couple hundred dollars. We also offer service contracts which allow you to get the service you need at a greatly reduced price. Our standard hourly rates are:

	In Shop Service $59.00/hr * On Site Service $73.00/hr ** Emergency Service $120.00/hr *** Server Work & Linux $120.00/hr Windows 3.x $120.00/hr

Because we are a service firm, we have several technicians and many resources from which to get answers to your tough computer problems. We routinely train on new technology and build business test systems to learn and practice new technologies. This allows us to be well prepared when we come to your aid and even allows us to test solutions using your business computers as "guinea pigs".

If you would like to learn more about our service contracts or need to arrange service for your business computers, please feel free to fill out our service contact form or call (717) 264-1637. Our toll free number is (877) 717-1637.

* $89 Diagnostic fee
** $100 Minimum
*** $120 Minimum