Hill Top Information Technology

Remember the old shell game?  Put a pea under one of three shells, move the shells around, and bet someone they can find the pea?  It’s really a confidence game to perpetuate fraud because the guy with his hands on the shells palms the pea and the player loses by design.

I think we may have a new shell game, the Computer Shell game.  But in this case [pun], it’s not illegal “fraud”, but legal “marketing”.  In my personal opinion, most marketing professionals are just confidence men.  The new game is “what’s in the computer shell?”  It’s probably not what you think.

In this picture is an HP P2-1374.  It’s detailed very clearly on HP’s website, and to their credit they are not hiding what’s really in the case.  It was brought in by a customer who purchased it from Best Buy, and when we first opened it, we were stunned and shocked at what we found. Continue reading »

We’ve just opened a new second location for Hill Top IT located at 2161 Hillsdale Road in Prescott at the intersection of Highway 89 and Willow Lake Road.  Our new kiosk is located inside the Hair Lair salon, next door to Twin Lakes Automotive and the Pit Stop restaurant in the Twin Lakes Market center.

The new kiosk is a convenient drop-off and pick-up location for customers who need our computer services.  At this location, we can provide free repair estimates, provide limited services on site while you wait, and transport computers to and from our main shop in Prescott Valley for full service without additional charge.

Also at this location:

• Hair Lair salon.
• Twin Lakes Market convenience store.
• Gas, Deisel, Propane.
• US Post Office.
• Twin Lakes Automotive service and repair.
• Pit Stop restaurant.
• U-Haul.

This is straight from azcentral.com (Arizona Republic):

A Prescott man was arrested Thursday in connection to a fraud case at Quad City Computers, officials said.

Beginning in March 2011, Prescott Valley police received complaints from consumers relating to Prescott Valley’s Quad City Computers reportedly overcharging clients for repairs and computer parts, said Brandon Bonney, a Prescott Valley police spokesman.

Customers reported they were being charged large sums of money and at times, the repairs were not done or poorly done, officials said.

The most recent complaint came from a couple in their 80s stating that Jerry Jeff Martin had overcharged them for a new computer system. The pair claims Martin charged them between $8,000 to $12,000 for a job that should have cost them close to $1,300, Bonney said.

Martin was not willing to talk to detectives, Bonney said.

Martin was booked into the Yavapai County Jail on one count of vulnerable adult abuse, one count of fraudulent schemes and one count of theft, officials said.

Authorities are asking people who may have had similar dealing with Quad City Computers to contact Detective Daniel Oen at 928-772-5167.

Update: Daily Courier also reported on this with essentially the same information, plus this:

“On one occasion, they were told to go to Best Buy to purchase items for the computer,” Bonney said. “It was discovered that the items they purchased for the computer were not put into the system he was building for them.”

Wow, this is quite alarming.  This kind of news is why I always encourage people to seek out honest and ethical businesses and then spread the word.  Do your homework, check the BBB, read reviews, ask your friends and colleagues.  It’s easy, here’s how you do it:

Dr. Bower, great dentist, honest, ethical, and affordable.
Prescott Checker Cab, clean taxi’s, honest, ethical, and affordable.
Prescott Flower Shop, superb flowers, honest, ethical, and affordable.
Twin Lakes Automotive, terrific mechanic, honest, ethical, and affordable.
Hill Top IT, fantastic computer techs, honest, ethical, and affordable.

See how easy that was?  In a community like ours, it should be relatively easy for people to know good businesses by reputation.

Competition promotes growth, advances the community, forces us to be more creative, teaches us, compels us to take risks, makes us goal-oriented, makes life more entertaining, and is just plain natural.  I would not want to be in business without my fellow competitors.

An anonymous party has been impersonating us and making negative statements about our competition.  This kind of cowardice has happened before, and normally we just ignore it.  But not this time.  To clarify, I believe in 1st Amendment protected speech, and if I feel compelled to say something that might hurt somebody’s feelings then I will say it here on this blog.  I have before (click here to see).

For the record, I don’t have anything negative to say about any of our competitors.  Most of them are just hard-working people doing their best to make a living.  We have complimentary working relationships with a few of them.  We admire those that excel.  We empathize with those that are forced to close shop.  We avoid the very few that have questionable ethics.  Usually, we are simply unaware of them.

We always tell people: If you’re happy with your current IT / Computer provider – keep them.  Otherwise, please consider using us.

I used to buy these $8 toasters from the local Blah-Mart.  They were terrible.  They burned, or under-toasted, or didn’t toast on one side.  They didn’t do bagels.  And they always broke.  After the 50th or so toaster of my life, I got fed up and went down to the local uber-expensive kitchen store with my wife and bought her the $85 toaster pictured above.  It’s a fantastic toaster.  It works perfectly every time, makes bagels, and we’ve had it for about 7 years now.

Point is: I don’t have a sales pitch.  If I was in the toaster business, how could I sell you on that $85 wonder machine over the $8 perpetual disappointment?  Well, I can’t.  All I really have is my knowledge, experience, and ethics.  All you have is a phone book full of strangers.  However, if you knew me, then you would put value in what I say.

So who am I.  I’m Eric, that’s Mike, his boy Rich, and that fellow over there is the new guy (what’s his name).  Sometimes our wives and daughters come to the shop and help out; after all, it’s a family business.  I’m a Marine veteran and I’ve lived in this community for 20 years.  Mike is a Minister and has been here just as long.  Like you, we live here, work here, build relationships here, and have established roots in the community.  You’re our neighbors, and we’re yours.

I’m also a terrible mechanic.  People that know me know it takes me all day to change my oil.  I take my truck to Bill over at Twin Lakes Auto.  He shows me anything I want to know about my truck including what’s wrong and why.  I go to him not because of the phone book, but because my business partner Mike uses him and knows that he does good work.  But before Bill came to town, I bounced from mechanic to mechanic looking for a good oil change.  It’s tough to find a good mechanic.

I hate it when good people get screwed by the mechanic.  Repairs they don’t need, botched repairs, expensive tires, bad welds, and padded hours.  I hate it more when good people get ripped off by the computer repairman.  Computer people aren’t so different from mechanics.  There’s a lot of crooks and only a few good people in both industries.  Repairs are difficult to understand and expensive.  And like I said, I’ve got no sales pitch in the world that will convince you I’m a trustworthy and proficient professional.  But you can get to know me.  Phone calls are free.

Here’s the easy way to spot crooks.  Crooks don’t want to tell you how things work, especially in clear and easy to understand language.  When you walk into a computer shop, ask them exactly how and why.  If they don’t tell you or it doesn’t make perfect sense to you, then you shouldn’t do business with them.  The answer should be as easy as making toast.  If you come to my shop (or call), I’ll tell you anything you like and you’re always welcome to see how a real computer repair shop works.

Now if you’ve got a computer person you’re happy with, then stick with them.  If you don’t, then stop by sometime and get to know us.

Well now there’s a website for the Occupy Movement in Prescott at OccupyPrescott.org.  I suppose I have to give Mr. Adcock some credit for beating everyone else to the domain name and slapping a blog on it.  However, if this is a serious attempt to enable the local 99% to fight the 1%, then I’m disappointed.

But just to make sure I wasn’t being unfair, I thoroughly searched the Occupy Movement’s website for any mention of Prescott.  I found nothing.  Once again, I am disappointed to find that “action” has been limited to a blog and a smattering of Facebook comments.  Once again, I can’t rely on the local groups, local media, and not even CNN.  They’re too busy name-calling.  No sir, I have to go to a foreign media source like Al Jazeera to find out what’s really happening with the 99%.

I’m not saying the 99% are right, or wrong.  I think both sides have legitimate and illegitimate gripes.  There are rich who prey upon the innocent.  There are poor people of good conscious who are powerless to stop them.  Then again, there are beneficent rich people, and poor who reek with the stench of villainy.  Greed is the real problem.  There’s greed on both sides.

If we want to fix greed, then we must make politicians live by the same rules the rest of us do.  Congress is on the take, and everybody knows it.  Congress is owned by the greedy with money.  Force them to stop accepting what I call “bribes”, take away their special privileges and retirement plans. Make them live under the same laws that the rest of us do.  I just wish I knew how to make that change happen.

There’s not a lot of technological growth in the local area that makes the news.  Few are interested in the latest technology used to sell cars or track property taxes, and consequently little makes the headlines.  But tech changes in day-to-day operations of just about anything are interesting, especially when you compare before to after.

In another fine article from the Chino Valley Review, we see that our local friendly ambulance company has upgraded the technology that they employ on a daily basis.  Here’s what caught my eye:

Before the software existed, Kasprzyk said a paramedic took a cellphone camera shot a of the electrocardiogram print out and send that to the Emergency Room, where a doctor would look for abnormalities.

“If the photo was sent, the quality was usually very poor and many times we couldn’t even tell what was going on,” said Yavapai Regional Medical Center Dr. Christopher Lampe. “Now you get these perfect images as if they’re being done in the emergency department.”

I’m just amazed. I see hacks all the time, and just when I think my skin is thick enough, along comes another marvel of “how did it come to this?”.  Seriously, at some point, some EMT had enough creativity and ingenuity to snap a cell phone picture and send it, which was probably far better than what was done previously.  And then it became standard procedure.  I’m certainly glad technology has come far enough along to allow Life Line to upgrade to something that should have existed since the 80′s.

CableOne is now offering 50Mbps business plans as of today.  The old business packages will continue to remain available.  This chart (that I snagged from CableOne’s photocopier) shows their month-to-month pricing.  However, there are bundled rates and other saving available.

It wasn’t that long ago that CableOne made their 50Mbps available to residential customers.  Now with their DOCSIS 3.0 technology fully implemented, both business and residential customers alike will have to seriously consider the power of 50Mbps over the offerings of anyone else.

However, throughput limits are in effect on some of the packages.  Any current CableOne customer can log into their account and see their current throughput to determine if the limits will effect them or not.  Also, CableOne uses an in browser popup warning system to make sure that users are well aware of the potential of exceeding their limit.

There are a lot more questions to answer for any business considering a move to CableOne.  What are the bundles?  What are the potential savings?  If phone service is added, will that save money?  What about existing contracts?  The thing to do is to speak with a CableOne Business Account Representative.  Every business has unique needs, and they are the only ones qualified to fully answer any question for any situation.

The CableOne Business Account Representative that we do business with and prefer is Maryanne DeMarco.  She prefers to be reached on her cell phone at (928) 202-1963.  Tell her Hill Top IT sent you. 

This Saturday 18th from 10:00am to 2:30pm, we are hosting an official Grand Opening and Meet and Greet at our store in Prescott Valley.  There will be free Hot Dogs and sodas, and possibly some other fun stuff.  Some of our business partners will be there as well.  Come meet us and find out why everybody uses Hill Top IT.  Here’s a map, and you can let us know you’re coming through the Facebook event page.

CableOne has introduced a new residential 50Mbps plan for $45/month.  They’ve changed up how they do their residential internet.  Changes are coming to the business packages, but I don’t have those details yet.  Here’s the breakdown in the changes:

Daily caps and bandwidth throttling have been removed.  Hurray!

Economy Plan:  1.5Mbps down for $20/month.  1GB/month throughput limit.  Go over the limit for $10/GB.  This is pretty much unchanged.

Standard Plan:  5Mbps down for $50/month.  No commitments.  No limits.  No caps.  No throttling.  No tricks.

Preferred Plan:  50Mbps down for $45/month.  1-year commitment required.  50GB/month throughput limit.  Go over the limit for $0.50/GB.

There’s an in-browser warning system for users who are approaching their monthly cap.  Unlike cell-phone companies who love to bill people thousands of dollars for going over their minutes, CableOne gives any user fair warning of what their status is so that nobody accidently goes over their limit.  It works with any browser on any OS.  Although, 50GB/month is quite a bit.  Even if a person has two Xbox’s, five PC’s, watches Netflix, and plays World of Warcraft online, the 50GB allotment is enough.

As usual, getting a bundle of services will get one a better deal.  For example, (according to CableOne’s website) $75/month and a two-year committment will provide the 50Mbps Internet, Cable TV, and phone service.  If you’ve got questions please call us, we know the top people at CableOne and how to get things done.