Our Comments

by Fred Blesgraeft

PART I

Based on my thirty plus years of experience, I have found that most large sized businesses that have made huge investments in IT, will also pay thousand of dollars each month to maintain them. However, we as small businesses and individuals have rarely done the same. Even though just about everyone that's in business, even if it's a Home Based Business will utilize a computer and some version of a network, will rarely factor in security and maintenance costs past their initial purchase.

And, it's typically not their fault. I have recently added the East Coast to my base of operations and I have found some staggering differences; first, in the way people in business on the East Coast think about computers versus those located on the West Coast (central California, to be more exact) and secondly, in the way their attitudes are about spending money to maintain, upgrade, or update them.

I personally think it's a culture thing on the East Coast, but I may be wrong. I mean, I was raised in Wayne, New Jersey and then after enlisting in the Air Force (during Viet Nam), "Uncle Sugar", as fellow enlistees used to refer to Uncle Sam, decided to make California my final duty station. After being honorably discharged, I decided to stay in California and make it my new home. So, up until I was eighteen I had some experience with East Coast culture.

After 30 plus years of living and working with Computers in and around "Silicon Valley, and after a unique visit and encounter at Newark Airport, I picked Malvern, PA as my new and additional target of operation. Love this area, but little had changed out here.

People were still entrenched in the tight circle of friends thing; which is not bad on the family and social scale, but probably not the best way to go in the Network or Computer scale of things. Regardless of their friend's qualifications, the general comment to me would be, "Well, my friend handles my computer stuff for free."

And, I have to tell you that that exposed me to all kinds of wild configurations. Computers stuck in a corner, with little concern for ventilation or dust. Laptops left in basements, whether converted or not, without regard for the vast amount of humidity. And, if they had, what they called, a "Network" and it was hard-wired, well you can imagine the spaghetti strewn all over the place. Wires place over electrical boxes that they referred to as 'Surge Protectors.' High Speed cables wrapped around high voltage wires. Expensive high speed wires that needed to maintain their original state were pinned, clamped, or hung from ceiling tiles.

Operative word in all this was FREE! What's free? Problem free network? No. Problem free use? No. Problem free data recovery? No. Problem free operations. No. Trouble free contact or repair from said friend? No. So, what's free?

Okay, the budget is free from expense. Well, is it? Not ensuring proper upgrades, security measures, or performing proper and timely back-ups of critical data could be very UN-FREE! I use the word un-free, because I know that everyone likes the word free used in business and computer speak.

When I would ask a individual or business why they contacted me, they would say that they heard about my performance and abilities from, and yes your are correct, a friend. When asked, "Who worked on this before and why is that person not still doing the work?" Again, you would be correct if you were to inject the word "Friend" in their retort; which typically went like:

'Well my friend doesn't do this anymore (meaning, he/she sure isn't going to keep doing it for FREE)', or
'Well, my friend is way too busy to come to my aid right now' (meaning, hey pal you got it for free, what did you expect), or
'My friend figured it would be best to use a professional at this stage of things" (meaning, you got what you paid for, if you wanted it to work correctly, stop being so cheap and call a professional).

Check in later for Part II