Computer support/repair?

susanderavish

Can anyone recommend a good Windows support center anywhere in the area? My laptop is about to die and I want to take everything off it, reinstall all the programs and then transfer everything back on.

Anyone know of a trustworthy place that isn't too outrageously priced? Would even be willing to go to the city if they're awesome...

Thanks.

jeffrey

Ed at Park Slope Computers is great.

7th Ave at the corner of Prospect Ave in the South Slope.

All the great reviews on Yelp are spot on:
http://www.yelp.com/biz/park-slope-computers-inc-brooklyn

http://parkslopepc.com
(718)768-7070

slopehead

If your laptop is really about to die, the first thing to do is buy an external drive and copy your entire 'C:' drive onto it. That simple step will save you $$. Things get much more expensive once it becomes a "data salvage" operation, i.e. trying to extract data from a dead or dying machine. As for someone to help with this, I unfortunately don't have any local suggestions - do you have any computer savvy friends that owe you a favor? I'll just add that what you're proposing is not that terribly difficult or complicated (though it may involve a few hours of work), so don't allow someone to charge you an outrageous amount of money. Good luck!

whynot_31

I agree with what Slopehead said.

If you don't want to get an actual external drive, get your self a few USB thumbdrives (Sandisk is a big manufacturer). You can at least put alot of your pictues and documents on there before your hard drive finally bites it.

susanderavish

Thanks, all. Very helpful.

independent mind

In terms of backing up your data, you can also purchase an online storage account to upload your files to. Mozy is popular.

don't go to the computer repair on 9th st (off 5th ave) its a rip

hitokiri

Slopehead wrote: If your laptop is really about to die, the first thing to do is buy an external drive and copy your entire 'C:' drive onto it....

lol @ this one.
if you do it that way, just buy an external drive LARGER than the one in your computer

Slopehead wrote: I'll just add that what you're proposing is not that terribly difficult or complicated (though it may involve a few hours of work), so don't allow someone to charge you an outrageous amount of money. Good luck!

Prices should range from $150 - $250

however, what it sounds like you want to do is to wipe the whole computer after a backup and reinstall the OS along with the programs.

So maybe $350


however, if your computer is about to "die", then you might have a hardware issue. Enjoy!

stooplady

Please keep me on this stream. Have the same issues!

slopehead

hitokiri wrote: [quote=Slopehead]If your laptop is really about to die, the first thing to do is buy an external drive and copy your entire 'C:' drive onto it....

lol @ this one.
if you do it that way, just buy an external drive LARGER than the one in your computer


The chances of anyone having an old internal laptop drive BIGGER than most external drives these days is almost nil, however, yes you should make sure that the external is larger than your internal of course.

This is a process designed to be as straight-forward as possible and will give you some peace of mind knowing that *everything* is backed up. Should your laptop kick the digital bucket next week, you will at least know that your data is safe.

I work on both Macs and PCs but I'm very impressed with the built-in backup solution that Macs have called "Time Machine" - it automatically backs up everything to an external drive, silently, in the background, incrementally, protecting your data. It's nearly a fool-proof system. Anyway, that's my small plug for Macs. ; )

Good luck.

anthonycm

I love Mac's Time Machine. I use that for both my laptop and desktop. If you use Apple's Time Capsule you can do this backup on wireless, and can be set to backing up every hour.

I'm paranoid about backups after losing a bunch of data a decade ago, so I second Independent Mind's suggestion of off-site back-ups, for which I use BackBlaze. Having an at-home back-up is important, but it isn't going to do you any good if there's a fire or if the back-up drive gets stolen in a break-in.

flognoth

I've mentioned these guys before, but I've had really good experiences with Nocturne Technologies.

http://www.nocturnetechnologies.com/

That's if you don't want to do this yourself. That being said I've got to agree with Slopehead, backing up to an external drive is a really good idea.

fancy

Try: Armandine Jacotin
Information Technologies Services
917.826.2964(c)
www.infotechserve.com

winnicot

Subject: computer support

My husband usually does this sort of thing (IT, networking, all that stuff) for companies as a consultant, but but he'd be happy for some side work helping you out with this issue. Let me know if you'd like to contact him. You can also check out his website, konamitech.com.

Good luck!