Business Support
This week we had all the techs, our reception manager and myself all doing overtime again due to the number of customers coming in with Windows 7 devices. When Microsoft makes a change such as dropping all further support for Windows 7 it has far reaching world-wide implications! When you consider that about 40% of all Windows based computers users are still using Windows 7 you can start to see the logistics and sheer volume of this change.
As I have reported in previous weeks, we are upgrading around half of these Windows 7 devices to Windows 10 as they easily have enough power to run Windows 10, with the other 50% of devices needing to be replaced entirely. Also this week we had a huge number of back to school customers taking up our $595 laptop offering which either meets or exceeds all the specifications laid down for ‘bring you own laptop devices’ by the various local schools.
Another topic that has sprung to light this week was the hurt and inconvenience a prominent local businessman suffered with his computer support company. For reasons of privacy, in this article we shall refer to the businessman as ‘Ralph’ and his IT support company as ‘Chain’ since, in this case they are a large Australian retail corporation. This leads to a question. If you are running a business and after great technical support, why would you go to a chain store?
In this instance Ralph’s own computer needed sorting out and he was given a date by which it should be fixed. When that date approached he was then given another date a full 10 days further down the track. Upon wanting further explanation of the delays Ralph was called an expletive and told to get over himself. Anyway, with the benefit of distance and lack of emotion, lets’ look at what is happening here.
Chain retailers are setup for sales. Besides this they are setup for sales and if anything else more complex is needed they are setup for sales. Regardless of any of the latest trends in computing that are marketed as ‘easy-peasy’ (such as cloud computing) our IT world is NOT becoming any simpler. We have techs here that have spent 5, 10 or even 25 years in IT that still need to do research and “homework” to keep up with the latest.
It is certainly optimistic and even bordering on unreasonable to expect any IT chain store to be able to cater for all of the in’s and out’s of such as fast moving and specialised industry. Putting it simply – if you were a food and wine connoisseur, would you really depend on going to a chain restaurant for important dinners?
Ralph might read this article and might start coming to us for all his professional IT needs. If not then Ralph needs to become used to ongoing IT problems and a lack of security for adequately protecting his business.
Future Byte Me topics can be emailed to [email protected] and Bruce is contactable at Kerr Solutions, 205 Musgrave Street or on 07 49 222 400.
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