You never know what you're going to get when you randomly pick a winner for a raffle, but we couldn't be happier with the winner of our Holiday iPad Raffle. Meet Lisa MacDonald. Lisa is a senior at Northampton High School where she is the Secretary of their chapter of the National Honor Society and president of Model UN. In fact, the list of awesome stuff Lisa does never quite seems to end; she speaks Chinese and has studied Latin, she got her black belt in Taekwondo and she throws shot put and discus, which she will continue to do at Oberlin College in Ohio this fall! Lisa entered our raffle after seeing it in Thornes' email newsletter. She hasn't used an iPad too much, except playing Fruit Ninja on her Mom's. She told us that's the first thing she's going to do on hers, now that she has one, and is also looking forward to seeing how it can be utilized in the classroom this fall.
Thanks again to everyone who entered, and let's all wish Lisa the best of luck in school this fall!
Comments
Dude!
Dude!
I just saw this video of you on Google News Top Stories! PC's rule and you suck for lying to everyone!
Some places are more, some
Some places are more, some are less... I think we? do a good job.
I do think people can easily maintain their computer but a lot of people's time is better spent going into work and having someone? else maintain their system. ...and we charge a lot less than other places... we also tell people how they can fix their computer, but then they tell us to do it for them, oh well. I wouldn't call them "lazy" either. Go easy on them man, they have enough to do in life...
Furthermore, no software project is immune to security holes... I think OSX isn't as much of target right now because it only has a small percentage of the population using it. We tell our customers this. But then they ask what problems do we see coming through doors.
The raw statistics from our location is that macs don't come in with virus problems.
Come on, $90 a repair? what
Come on, $90 a repair? what kind of idiot pays that? I'm not taking my PC to be serviced in YOUR shop! People can save money by learning to sort out their own computers and not being lazy. They don't have to buy a mac, and macs are not the right option for allot of people, there's more to it than viruses and it's irresponsible to inform people that its as simple as that.
dude, calm down.
@Anonymous: If you want to fix it yourself or upgrade hardware on your own, more power to you. But computer repair stores are still in business because most people don't know how, don't have the time/skills... OR they just feel like it.
I used to be the webmaster for an Apple Specialist and PC repair /sales store in New Hampshire, and $90 is a lot less than the average price people pay to have their machines fixed. And 90% of them were PC virus removals. The ONLY times people came in with an Apple computer problem, it was a hardware problem like a broken screen or keyboard because their college student spilled beer on it and, surprisingly, it's not covered by AppleCare. In these cases, they have to ship out parts back and forth from Apple, it takes a lot longer and is more expensive.
You're right, Macs aren't for everyone, but most of them last 10 years without a single hiccup. That was the point "kelly" made earlier, and if most people used Macs there would be more viruses written for them and thus more problems. Unix-based machines are inherently more secure than ANY Microsoft product will ever be, so even if people were to write viruses they'd have a much harder time.
In my experience, $90 for a PC repair is chump change, especially in MA;
Take the following into consideration:
A user comes into the store with a PC that starts beeping when they turn it on.
Let's say a company charges a flat-rate fee of $30 to diagnose his computer and $35/hour for all manual labor thereafter. They replace the RAM and the computer starts up fine, and the user is charged $30 + $35 + $60 for the new RAM.
That was a pretty common occurrence where I worked, and most of the time the customer requested a RAM upgrade from 1 to 2 or 2 to 4GB depending on the architecture and recommendations of the technician.
They're just happy their computer works again, and now it's a lot faster. Instead of $60 for new ram, they opt for $100 to upgrade it. Grand total = $165 and the customer got their machine fixed in just over an hour.
And say this person had all their business documents on it, or some killer porn videos they were afraid of losing. They're MORE THAN HAPPY to pay this money -- they got their computer fixed AND upgraded in the same day!
Bottom line... as long as the user, Mac or PC, takes necessary precautions to install a good antivirus and firewall, and stays informed of malicious sites and software, they won't experience ANY problems until something inside physically goes awry.