I saw two clients today who were setting up broadband for the first time. They were having identical problems, but the solutions were totally different.
Client #1 had paid for a package through the local cable network for cable TV and telephone service, but had failed to ask for broadband Internet as a part of the package. They had also told her that it would not work on Windows 98.
I bought her a network card, we called the cable service and asked them to turn on the broadband Internet and I got everything up and running.
Client #2 had the cable broadband running just fine on one computer, but the other computer refused to connect. I installed a new network card and everything worked great.
Each client had struggled for days and, "Finally decided to call an expert." I am not an expert in all areas of computers, but each of my clients said that they were at the point of near meltdown when they decided to call. Both clients took barely an hour each to resolve their concerns. And both clients said, "I will just call you from now on, before I panic."
I am not bragging. I am just taking this time to comment on how experts become experts.
People always ask how I learned how to fix computers so well. In all honesty, it is all on the job training. I see new problems on every type of computer under every situation every day. Gradually I have noticed trends that cause problems and solve problems. Most of the time I can’t explain why the fix works, I just know from experience how to apply the fix.
There are days where I see one or more clients with problems that I can’t fix, but the longer I do this job, the less often that happens. When it does happen it is usually a major hardware problem, or time for a new computer.
