Category Archives: Computers

How to take care of your laptop.

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I have been in the computer business for a very long time and one of the most common questions I have ever received was from people asking about how to take care of their laptops better.  Here is a list of some of the things I tell them.  With this list you should get many more years of life from your laptop.

I have mostly gathered this list from trying to fix many broken laptops and looking at why they are broken, and how it was caused.  Yes you do need to baby them a bit, but not too much.

The screen.

The screen is a very high tech, very thin and fragile thing.  Of course we have all seen the guy who drops his laptop and cracks the screen, that can not always be avoided but there are many other things that cause damage to the screen.

The first one is the keyboard, when you close the screen on most laptops made before 2008 the screen touches the keyboard.  This was not a problem years and years ago because the screens were matte but with the shiny polish that most modern screens have the oil from your skin is transferred from your hand to your keyboard and then to the screen, and it burns little holes in the polish, causing damage forever.  In 2008 it seems that laptop designers noticed this and most laptops moved the screen farther from the keyboard, so they don’t touch.  To fix this many other makers would give you a cloth to put between the screen and the keyboard.  If you don’t have one you can make one yourself out of any semi rigid cloth.

The next common problem is the fact that the screen is not too strong and that pressure can hurt it if it is applied in enough force in one place.  Many people hold their laptops when closed by putting their thumb on the screen and then holding it like a book.  This causes a lot of pressure in a very small area.  I have had at least 5 clients crack their screen this way, and countless others cause damage to the backlight causing a region of their screen to be much darker than the rest.  Please avoid this, try to always hold the laptop with two hands, and when you can’t then please remember to always put your thumb on the bottom side of the laptop so that your firngers will be on the screen side and spread out the force.

The next common problem of long term use is a weak hinge.  This is very annoying because the screen does not stay in place and moves around when you don’t want it to.  This is often caused by people twisting their screen, usually they have a bad habit of opening and closing their screen with one hand, and they do it on one side of the screen.  Just like putting on and off glasses, over time this makes them twisted and loose.  The solution is simple, just open and close it from the middle, or use two hands.  Over a few years this habit will make a huge difference.  The other main reason that a hinge gets loose or broken is when people close their laptop when something is inside.  People create the bad habit of putting ink pens at the bottom of the screen, or they may put it in their bag and a wire gets in the wrong place.

The last screen problem I will talk about is the problem of too much weight.  Be sure to keep your laptop in a nice protected bag, and then don’t stack too much weight on this bag, it is best to always stand your laptop bag up on edge when moving it, and be sure to not pack things in the bag that could focus the pressure on the screen.  One major cause of this problem is the power adapter, it has this large brick like AC/DC converter that you lug around.  You put the laptop in the bag, then the converter on top of it and bam, enough pressure and it damages your screen.  The solution is to always put your laptop in the bag in such a way that the bottom of the laptop is towards the converter.

The Battery and power system

The largest failure of laptops seems to be the battery and power system.  Some simple good habits can really extend the life of your laptop.

First the battery.  Laptop batteries (And cell phone batteries) are Lithium Ion and this battery type does not form a “Memory” like the older NiMH batteries of the past.  You do not need to drain them completly to keep them working at full power, in fact this damages them.  In fact is it best to never let them get under 10% full.  Try to keep them plugged in as much as you can.  Of course laptop makers don’t want you to know this, they make a large amount of money off of selling new batteries, so they program the laptop to try to totally discharge the battery.  This is done with “Stand By” (Aka “Sleep”) mode in windows.  What stand by does is to turn off most everything in the computer and just use a little power to run the RAM.  The allows you to “boot” up in a matter of a second and start using your laptop.  It is a great idea in concept, allowing you to hit a button and be up and running.  You will know your computer is in stand by when the power light is flashing.  The problem is that the default configuration for every laptop I have seen, and the way that windows itself installs the operating system is to have your computer go to stand by for everything, even when you hit the power switch.  This makes you think that you turned off your laptop and you put it away.  Then when you open it up the next day to use it you find out that your battery is totally dead, your battery totally discharged.  Do this a dozen or so times and you just killed your battery.  The solution is to go to windows power options and make it turn off your computer when you hit the power button.  There is another great feature in windows called hibernate.  This feature takes your current info that is in RAM, saves it to the hard drive, and then turns off the computer.  When you turn it on it simply reloads this saved data.  It takes about 10 seconds to load.  I love it and make it the default setting on every computer I work on or own.  Here are the power settings that I use.power options

You will also notice that I have it do nothing when I close the screen.  I do this because when I move from one location to another in my house I just close the screen and don’t want it to do anything to mess up what I am working on.  I have a good habit of always hitting the power button before I turn it off.

I live in Arizona and another problem that I have seen is when people leave their laptop in their car during the day.  It it hot enough outside, but air trapped in the car can climb to over 170 degrees, baking your laptop.  Most of your laptop is ok with this, except for the chemicals in your battery.  It does not do major damage just once but over time it can really add up to a dead battery.  I have no experience with cold, but I doubt it would be very good for the LCD screen.

The next huge problem is the jack where the power plug goes into.  They are just a small plastic thing, usually just soldered on to the motherboard, or, if you are lucky, ran to the motherboard with a wire.  The problem is that you have this wire sticking out of them, bump the wire, pull on the wire, or just use it a lot and it breaks inside the laptop.  It is a difficult and costly repair job.  Some laptops have a much better design than others, but most will still fail with a huge pull to the wire.  My solution to this is that I never move the laptop when the plug is plugged in.  I just unplug it, move the laptop, then plug it in again after I moved it.  I do this almost every time I get up.  If the kids enter the room I unplug it, just in case.  And I now only like to use laptops that plug in on the side.  When you plug into the back it is just too hard to use it on your lap in bed without pushing against the back.  The best laptops have NOTHING that plugs into the back of the laptop.  My last two have been like that, and I totally love it.

Of course you also gotta keep the wire itself safe.  Doing the above things will help in that, also don’t wrap the wire too tight when you put it away.  I usually don’t wrap it at all, it makes too much of a bulge in the bag, I just stuff it in.

If you always leave your laptop plugged in, on a desk, then remove the battery.  On some laptops it always tries to charge the battery and could cause damage from over charging.  On most modern laptops this is not a problem because the battery reports to the computer when it is full and the computer stops trying to charge it.

Other Problems

Another problem is with the Fan on the bottom of many laptop.  People set their laptop on something plush and the fabric stuffs up the fan.  If it is furry then often the fur may even go inside of the laptop and clog up the cooling system.  Most laptops use very unique fans, making a replacement costly and hard.  Dust and dirt is also a common fan clogging problem.  If you are unlucky enough to have a laptop with a fan on the bottom then keep it in mind when you are working.

Of course, as with any electronic device, be careful with food and liquid.  They can really fry the laptop.  If you do spill something on the laptop, please unplug it and take out the battery as fast as you can.  It can’t really damage circuits too bad if no electricity is flowing though them.  Then you can let it dry, maybe a week or more, and it may work.  Take it to a professional first. Here is an old but correct video.

I clean my laptop about once a month with a soft cloth and rubbing alcohol.  It works really week, and keeps it looking and feeling great.  You can clean the screen directly with light pressure, and it works awesome on the keyboard.  On some screens you need avoid alcohol, and just use distilled water.  I like alcohol because it evaporates quickly.

You, or someone paid a lot for your laptop, respect it and treat it nicely and it will last much much longer for you.

My take on windows 7….

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Today I got my hands on Windows 7.  I have used it a few times in the past just to do a task and it always worked just like Vista.  Today I had the chance to install it on a computer that I own.  Here are my impressions.  

The install was almost exactly like Vista, many of the screens were exactly the same except a different background.  It seems to have taken about the same amount of time as Vista to install.  The installed size was 6GB smaller than when I install Vista.  When it came up it looked almost like vista, except the icons on the QuickLaunch were larger.  But then after more examination I noticed that it is a hybrid sort of QuickLaunch, putting programs that are running and those that are not on the same bar.  Basically you see the icon and when the program is running it draws a box around the icon.  If you run more than one it draws more boxes out to the right.  If a program is running and you click the icon again it minimizes the application.  You can right click and select the program name again to launch a second copy.  If more than one is running and you click on the icon it will show you a thumbnail of each copy that is running.  Not a bad way to do things, but will take some getting used to that is for sure.  I am not sure that I really like this idea, and there is no option to do it the old way.

The major thing I noticed is that it was almost exactly like vista.  Almost every menu is exactly the same.  The Gadgets that come with the OS are all the same, except they added a launcher for Media Center, and you can zoom some gadgets to make them bigger and provide more info.  The games that come with the OS are the exact same group that comes with Vista, and the screen saver list is even shorter.  I was really looking for a really nice new screensaver or game idea, but alas there is not one.

Some really nice things I noticed about the OS is that is DOES seem to be quite a bit faster.  AVG installed much faster.  Also when it connected to a network it automatically started to set up sharing.  No more having to turn on sharing in 5 different places in Vista to get it to share something.  Also it has a really cool feature where it changes the background every few minutes, really making it seem alive, and it was very easy to download themes online.  There also was a large amount of great sound themes installed from the get go, much nicer than vista.

Another feature that I have been wishing that windows had for many years is the ability to simply make EVERYTHING bigger.  Before windows 7 if you wanted to make everything bigger the only real way to do it was to use a lower resolution, but this was so bad, especially on LCD monitors, it would make things blurry and such due to not having a 1 to 1 ratio between the resolution and the native pixels on the screen.  If you wanted to make things bigger you had to do things in many different location.  And vista and xp considered the resolution part of the hardware, so if one user changed it, it would be changed for all users.  Now with this zoom you can and should simply set your monitor to the highest resolution that it supports and then zoom for each user that needs it.  I did notice that some legacy gadgets that I installed did not scale, but everything else did.

Wireless was also easier to connect.  In vista you have to right click on the wireless, and choose to open the connection window, and there you can connect.  Now when you right click it shows a list of wireless networks and a connect button next to each one, so easy.  I also liked how all of the buttons were only white…I am not sure if I will still like that in a few days.  There are also many other minor changed that I have seen.  One thing it does by default now, something that I have been telling people to do for years, is that it puts all of the music, videos, public photos and such in a “Library” a place that all users have access to and it sets it up automatically for network shares, and such.  Very nice that it finally is automatic.  And to make it even better it even installed some modern codecs so that the videos actually play.

After installing a few progams I also noticed that there are many less confirmation dialog boxes, also the put all of those taskbar notifications together so that they bother you less.  3rd party notification are also put all in one area with no more annoying balloons.  I am sure many of the people I help will really like this.

Conclusion. This OS is basically the same as vista with a few nice and useful enhancements.  If you are installing an OS on a new computer I would go for Windows 7 for sure, there is no real down side at all.  But if I had a computer that was working great with Vista and I had to pay to upgrade I would really think twice, that the benefits are not enough for all the trouble.  All and all it is a good and stable OS, because it basically vista with a new interface, so no one should be afraid to upgrade like they were with vista.  If you still use XP, then WHAT ARE  YOU WAITING FOR, get windows 7, it should run on your computer and it MUCH better.

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Evony, a great distraction.

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So many people have been wondering why I have not been blogging for a long time.  Well one of the main reasons is that I have been totally distracted by a game that I found called Evony, it is really interesting.  It is a game where you build a city, you create the economy, then you build up armies and fight other people.  evonylogo

It is a lot like Age of Empires, even with similar graphics, but it takes place in “Real Time”.  Everything takes hours and hours to build, and some research things can take two weeks.  At first I did not like how it was so slow, then I started to like it.  It does not give people a major advantage by how many hours per day that they play, it is more designed for the person who wants to log on every day for 30 minutes and relax, just like me.  Some days I use it for more than 30 minutes, but other days I know I can set all the things to build and then spend a day or two away from the game.  Also because I fix computers and design websites most of the day I can sit here and do a few clicks on the game while waiting for software to install, or when I am on the phone.  It really is quite relaxing.

There are two nice things that make the game really interesting.  First is the market.  You can buy and sell resources with other players.  But what is really cool is that it is a true market, it works just like the stock market.  In fact the market interface is like E-Trade in the Nasdaq level 2 part.  You can see what other people are selling and bidding at and you can choose where to set your price.  You can even play the market and move prices up or down by moving huge volume, and then reverse the trend a bit later to make money.  I tried it a few times but it was too much work to do that.

evonymarketThe next really cool thing is that you join alliances, and your alliance will team up with other alliances and you organize to war against other people.  You also get to chat with your alliance members and after a while they start seeming like friends.  I have played a few other online multiplayer games but none of them really got me into it like this.  Our alliance has leaders and also people who think they can lead but fail, it is really a good microcosm of the business world.

So if you ever play you can look for me.  I am on server 7.  My username is AzDragon, and my towns are in a place called Lombardy.

There also is a good business lesson in Evony.  Basically that success comes from daily activity towards your goal, just like in business.  Every day for my business I place ads, make and receive phone calls, research the industry, and hopefully make sales.  In Evony, you build armies, upgrade buildings, and attack computer and human players.  But in both over time you get stronger and stronger, you start to have more and more success, and eventually you reach a point where you would be considered successful.

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The truth about Millionaires.

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Everyone wants to be a millionaire.  I always had it as a goal, a first step.  First I wanted to do it by the time I was 25, then I set it for 30.  Now I have a goal of doing it while I am 35.  But this time I have a firm plan to get there.

First off most people think that if you are one you will be set for life.  In many cases that is correct, but in most cases it took risk to get the million and most people who have it take those same risks and lose it.  There are ways to earn without too much risk, but mostly that is very slow.  Other people simply go crazy, they get the money too easily and spend it all.  Over 80% of lottery winners have a negative net worth just 5 years after they win.  They get this huge lifestyle, and then spend spend spend, and when the money runs out they borrow like crazy.

I personally know a lot of millionaires.  I don’t know of any who made the money trading time for money or having a job.  I know a few who won it, but the VAST majority worked hard, ran a business and invested the profits.  Some are in farming, some are in insurance, other have a business in one form or another but most are in real estate.  And all of the millionaires that I have asked about this invest heavily in real estate.  Time and time I hear that no matter how you make your millions that real estate is the best place to store the money.  Another common factor among those that have made and kept millions is that they live WAY below what you expect.  They drive older cars, they don’t shop at the fancy shops.  Most of them live on less than 60k per year.  That is still 5,000 per month.  While they were making their money they lived on much less.  Those people you see shopping at all the ritzy malls and spending thousands of dollars are usually people who earn a lot, and spend even more and have a negative net worth.

So what does it take to have a net worth over a million dollars.  I define it as all assets, at the price you could sell it for today minus all debt.  It is hard to value a business so I usually set that as valued as 8 times last years earnings as long as you project those earnings to go on.  Using that measure I actually was a millionaire once during the years that my business was really profitable, but I could not project that computers would become a commodity and that my business would start to lose money at huge rates until I was in the hole.

Also you can only grow your net worth from your personal profits each month.  If you have $3,000 in monthly expenses you need to deduct that from your income before you see if you have enough.  For me I have about $3,000 that I must spend each month to stay current.  About half of that is servicing debt, and could be gone if the interest rates were not so low.  If I am starting with a net worth of zero and I want to be a millionaire in 2 years I need to pack away about $42k per MONTH.  That is a crazy number, and that is why people with jobs don’t hit it.  Even if you had 8% interest on your side and you wanted to do it in 10 long years you would need to save over $7,000 per MONTH.  This is why less than 1% of the people are millionaires.  Even if you earned $120k per year and spent only $3k per month it would take you 10 years of constant effort.  The biggest problem is that when you earn that much, you usually hang out with other people who earn that much, and they start talking about their new cars, second homes and their vacations, and you feel “less than” for living on such a meager $3k per month and you can not maintain it.  It is like a bucket with a ton of holes in it, the more water you pour in the faster the holes take it out, and it never really gets full.  So the answer is clearly not a job, even a high paying one.  You have the limit of how much you can earn because of who you work for and with.  So a business is really the only answer, but to have a good business you need to be as good or better than all of the other businesses out there, or you need to have an idea that really sets you apart.  If you have a really great idea that can duplicate all over the world you can even become an instant billionaire.  This is what they folks at YouTube, Facebook and Twitter have done.  The first ones cashed out when the company was only 7 months old.  The second two have yet to cash out, though twitter just sold 2% of the company for $200 million, making the company worth over $10 billion.  But it is hard to come up with such an idea, most usually stumble upon it early.

So now we all have an up hill battle to climb.  So if you want to be a millionaire in 2 years from today you need to come up with an idea that makes you $50k per month on a constant basis.  Or if you want to build and sell a business you need make one that earns $125k-$150k next year, and that number is AFTER your take from the company because the company will need your or someone like you after you sell it.  The way you design a million dollar company is much different than the way you design a company that just pays your bills.

When you are looking for a large net worth you need to keep in mind the laws of large numbers.  One of the easiest ways to get there is to sell a product over and over.  Even if you only make $10 each time you do it, that means that you need to sell 100,000 items.  So plan your business accordingly.  If you need to sell 100,000 items that means that about only one out of every 1,000 households needs to buy your product.  Depending on your product that may mean that only 1% of the population even needs to know about your product.  But to even get 1% penetration may be a hard thing to do.  But one good viral video could do it for you, or one good endorsement.  Thousands have made it rich this way.

You can also get there by helping others reach for their dreams.  Imagine if you could help people earn a living and you got a cut of what they did.  For me this was always by hiring sales people.  I basically would set their wages to where they would get 40% of the profits that they generated.  I would pay for their phone, a place for them to work, I would help them close deals and I would design the products that they sold, I would even pay for them to have a base salary in case sales were slow that week.  The more successful they would be the more successful I would be.  If I have 3 or even 4 of these people it would keep me busy.  Imagine if I had 30 or 40, and if they averaged making $2000 for themselves per month, that means that each one would make me $3000 per month.  That alone is a million in a year!  Becoming a millionaire is REALLY a team sport.  I don’t know anyone who has worked to get a million who did not have a team behind them.  Most people I know help out people all of the time because the more people they help the more they make in the long run.

If you want to make it rich selling something, or helping other people get rich you need a system to manage the entire thing.  A system is really the key.  The good part is with a little math you can start to think about the system now, you can design the system now that will take you to the millions you want to have.  A good system with the right principles will take you there.  Run a simulation on your system, if it does average will it get you to where you want to be, is your system too small?  Is your system too hopeful, does it require that something unknown will happen to catapult you into your success, if that is the case it probably will not happen.  You can’t predict such things.

I really hope this helps you put your dreams in perspective.  And I hope you start to think how duplicating a successful system will get you there.  You need to focus on people, you need to focus on results.  Your plan must have the muscle to get you to your goals.

When you get your millions remember the little guys, remember to give back.  Millionaires are some of the nicest, most humble and most generous people I know.  Most millionaires are not they greedy people the movies and media make them out to be.  They usually are very humble because they know that peopled helped them along the way, and that being nice to people and helping others is the key to their success.  They feel lucky that they made it.

As always, please subscribe, and if you liked this blog please comment, I read them all personally.

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MLM Math. The numbers behind the eFusjon comp plan.

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When you are looking to join a MLM you may find that some are VERY VERY complex while others are very simple.  Well I love math, and I always lean towards the very simple ones.  Complex MLM’s tend to not do as well as others, and also you never really know if it is all correct.  Some MLM’s are so complex that you are never quite sure what you are going to be getting paid.  I love math and I like to take a company comp plan and test it by pushing it to the max.  With most comp plans it is easier to do that by flipping it over, seeing how much the company has committed to pay out for any one sale.  Next I look at the MLM from a break even point.

So on to the math.  The MLM is called eFusjon.  My first thought was that they could not spell, I even had to Google how to spell it just to write this blog.  First off this business model is unique to anything that I have seen, it is very interesting and it is PURE math.  And I love math.  The way it works is very simple, you get paid $5.27 for each active person that is in your downline.  It is a 3 wide system, you have a left, center and right person.  But this is where it gets interesting, you share your left and right spot with other people who are to the left and right of your sponsor, the first one who fills the spot gets it.  If they put someone in under you then you are paid $1.20 per month on those people.  To be able to earn money you need to have three active people who you personally sponsored, and if they go inactive for 60 days their spot is erased.  The payment goes for 15 levels deep.  So when the whole system is full that means that 15 people are making $5.27 on your order, and as long as you are not in the center that other people get paid $1.20 off of your orders.  From my count this can be a VERY huge number, well if the company had millions of people in it and no one dropped out meaning that you had 15 levels full of people above you there would be (1+2+3+4+5+6+7+8+9+10+11+12+13+14+15) 120 people who get the $1.20 override.  People.

So this means that on a $120 order that the company must pay out as much as $199.05 in commissions.  This is probably why they stopped paying $10 (Personal) and $5 (Sides) like when the company first started, because at that rate they would actually loose money on each order even with only 30,000 people in the company.  Of course a full system is over 100,000 people and only then would they start to pay out such huge numbers, but it will still be only half that get generate that much commissions for their upline.  I figure they need about 500,000 or so members for the system to stop working, and thus for them to be forced to change the system, I predict they will choose to change it once there is about 200k or so people in the company.  That may be some time from now, as there is only 30k at this time.  Also if people drop out that will also make holes in the chart which will also save the company money.  Of course they also need to produce the product for the $120 amount, and pay all of their bills.  One other thing that may save them is the fact that someone must recruit 3 before they get paid, and many never will do that.

The product is an energy drink, and it is healthy, and if I would buy it in the stores I would probably be willing to pay up to $1.50 or even $2.00 for a can, but I am really cheap.  Others would pay $3 with ease for a quality product that does what this does.  So lets say that it is worth $2 a can.  Well their price, with shipping and other fees is $166, for 48 cans.  So in my book you are getting $96 in product and paying $70 to participate in the MLM.  Now with a payback of about $5 for each person on your team you need 14 people to break even.  But it is much easier, because your upline can only put three people under each person so they must put people under you, and you get the full $5 for people in your direct upline, and $1.20 for people from the sides.  So if you find an active team you can quickly be in positive range.  If you find a superstar who can bring in 100 people in a short time then you would be making $500 a month.

So after looking at all of this, and crunching the numbers it all comes down to the team you are joining, and how many people you think you can bring in yourself.  So I looked at that.  The team that was showing me this has been in the company for less than 45 days, and they already have over 850 people.  They 2.8% of the entire company, and they are a group of builders that should have no problem putting in a 100’s per month.  Next the my good friend Fred was going to be directly above me, and he put in over 80 people in his last MLM in only 3 months, and that MLM was much harder to put people into.  Next I looked at the people I know, and how it would be easy to put at least a dozen of them in, and then they will put people in also, building a large group.  I know I need 14 people to make it even in my mind.  And with all of this I figured that 14 would be easy to get, I can probably even do it this month.  I need 32 to make this business totally free, and I think I can do that in the second month.  So I made the leap and I joined.  Most MLMs are built on math but most people who join them never look at the math.  I have looked at over 20 MLMs in the last 2 years and I have only joined 3 of them, simply because the math did not work on the others.  On those other ones there was no component of your upline building your team so on those I did not make money.   If you want to join in on my team will also receive the benefit of all of this, CLICK HERE to sign up, we will help you build into profitability ASAP.

I try to keep my personal brand to be that of Emerald Computers, the company that feeds me and pays my bills.  Most of the time that is all that I mention to people.   When I was looking at the math for efusjon I also took Emerald Computers into consideration, and that I may be able to sell computers, services, or websites to many of these people because of the fact that this company is very heavy into online marketing.  This made it a very easy decision, just from the few people there I already made two new clients who I should see this week.

One more final thought, another interesting part of this companies comp plan is the fact that you can sign up again and again under yourself.  So you can go a few levels, then you see a superstar, so you join again, and now you are double dipping, getting paid twice on their team.  It costs you $150 each month for each position so if you can create locations that pay more than that per month it is to your benefit to do so.  Plus you get more product to use.

I hope this helps, and I welcome any and all comments.

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Theft by technology.

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For years now my printer of choice has always been a laser printer.  I like the faster speed, more quiet printing and the quality of the output.   The drawback of any printer is that it needs to use ink or toner.  Companies know that you need it, and they also know that they can make a cartrage that works perfect stop working by design.  Designing a way to make something stop working is one of my most hated things in the world.

HP is by far the worst offender at this.  They design their printers to count the pages, and then stop working when they reach a specific number and force you to buy more ink, even if your cartage works perfect they make it stop working by putting a chip on it that tells the printer that is has printed enough pages, even if it is still half full.  This makes is almost impossible to refill or even recycle the cartridges, they simply need a new chip that can only be had from HP.  Lexmark recently sued a company that made chips that worked with their printers.    In Europe these chips are ILLEGAL, because it blocks recycling.

For this reason I have avoided all HP printers for many years.  So I have this trusty brother printer.  It was a really good deal and prints fast and with high quality, but today it stopped working.  It flashed the toner light, and said toner low.  I was just finished with a print job and it worked perfect, nice and perfect then all of a sudden it stopped.  I had to print something really important so I kept turning off and on the printer, I even took out the toner a few times and it would power up and do a test then say flash the toner light.  After I while I decided to search the web and after a ton of research I found that other people were able to fix this.

brother-hl-2140-toner
How brother steals your money

It is so simple.  Look at the photo, in the center there is a hole, the printer shines a light into this hole, it bounces off of a mirror on the other side and then a detector will tell you the toner is bad if it sees light.  But as you can tell the whole is rather high up.  So you could have toner for 100’s more pages left in there.  So I simply took a black sticker, folded it up and blocked the whole, and guess what, my printer prints perfect now!

I know that they are out there to make a buck, they don’t make money on the printer, but they sell the toner cartridges for WAY too much money to compensate.  They design them to fail and this makes them last much less.   This makes the cartridge cost more, due to the added complexity of the mirror and lens.  It makes the printer cost more to make.  It even makes them put more in the landfills.  But it lets them sell many more cartridges.  At least brother is easier to fool than HP.

If you are reading this because you have the same problem I know this will help.  I would ask that you let me know that this helped you by posting a reply, it is easy and free.

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The Cart is up and running, will this be a new era for Emerald Computers?

Business, Computers, concepts, Entrepreneurship, Internet, Marketing, Money,

After over 100 hours of my time and many more time from others, I finally have the cart that I always wanted for Emerald Computers.  It works perfect, it allows people to custom design their own computer system, it is easy to modify, it is easy to update.  Of course this is not the end of development.  I will be updating and adding new products as the market changes, I will also add much more data about each product in the coming weeks.

This cart software is one of the most advanced cart programs that exists today for anywhere under $10,000.  It does all of the advanced tricks that the huge companies do, like cross selling, up selling, layered navigation, full CMS support so you can have many skins and change in an instant.  It has bread crumb navigation also, user accounts with total control of access, tier pricing, built in SEO urls, client feedback system, cloud tag programs, and a hundred other cool features.  I am really glad that I decided to get this software, it totally rocks my world.

Everything us up and live RIGHT NOW, and I am letting the readers of my blog be some of the first people to view it.  Soon I will be linking it in with my main website. If you want to check it out and tell me what you think then CLICK HERE.

On a business note, I am really thinking that this will revitalize my company, and allow me to reach my goals in much less time than I thought before.  Wish me luck.

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My New Project

Business, Computers, concepts, Entrepreneurship, Internet, Investment, Marketing, Money, , , , , ,

I have gone silent on my blog for the longest time since I started it.   I have had two main reasons for this.

Reason number 1 is because my wife has been ill recently.  We spent 8 days in the hospital and I have had to put my business on the side to do much more with the kids.  She is feeling better now, and that leads me to my second reason.

For about 3 years now I have had an idea to help people sell computers online.  There are a ton of people who strongly believe that the future of business is online, and for most types of business I agree with them.   People compare and shop for things online, but they will always need some things to be in person.  For computers it is definitely online.   Now here is the problem, people want to make money online, but they simply don’t have the tools or knowledge that they need.  There are many companies that I have found that take advantage of this.  They take a very basic, and hardly working cart, and they put it online, and they give some basic consulting information.  They sell this to people who don’t know much about the Internet or about computers and they sell this for many thousands of dollars.

There are also many people who want to drop ship products, and for about 4 years now my company has been listed in books and many drop ship websites as a source of high quality computer systems.  We have been contacted by over 2000 people who have asked us about this.  They call me, they email me but 98% of them have never purchased anything.  Part of that is my fault because when I get little return from something I pay little attention to it.   Recently I updated my website and as a part of the application to do something with me I asked them where they currently are and what their goals are.  I would say that 90% of them have not yet created a cart, nor do they have much of a plan.  I totally understand this, because to install a good cart out there takes a ton of knowledge and work.  I am a complete computer expert and I still had to call tech support, and it still took me many many hours to figure out.  If someone does not understand HTML, PHP, JAVA, FTP, Linux Permissions, and 20 other things I don’t see how they would ever get it up on their own.  So they rely on these companies that “sell” carts.  The problem is that most of them leave you with an empty cart, and then they give you a list of companies like me and you need to create relationships with them.  There are a few that fill your cart up with items, but all the ones I found sell either really useless stuff that no one buys, or really over priced items that simply can’t be sold.  All of this is a huge discouraging mountain for the once gleeful and hopeful would be entrepreneur.

There is one local company that we know of that sells websites that are totally cookie cutter, they offer nothing in the way of custimization other than one “About Us” page that lets the merchant put a few small sentences about themself and their contact info.  It sells products that have not changed for over 30 years, like candles, lotions.  The problem is that they charge over $12,000 just to have one of these sites, and they charge thousands more to accept credit cards, and thousands more for consulting.  They then charge monthly hosting fees in the 100’s of dollars and if you ever stop paying you lose everything.  We have a sister company that offers help and consulting to clients of this company, and we have talked to 100’s of people, and we have NEVER talked to one who actually made a profit, yet this company sells 20-50 of their sites per day, mostly focusing on low income or elderly clients who know nothing about computers.  At least 20% of the ones we talked to did not even have a computer, many others could not even put food on their table but were asked to borrow $12k or more from friends and family to start thier business.  (If you can’t tell this type of business practice makes me really mad.)

cart homeSo what is my project.  Well first off I am building a site that sells the best and most popular computer products.  My site will use the latest design techniques and latest eCommerce tools.  I am putting everything on our site with small markup for me and a 20% profit margin for the people who but these sites.  I plan to sell this site for UNDER $1000, and this site will be a REAL oppertunity, something where people can make REAL money.  If they pay us $1,000 to build the site they only need to sell $5,000 in computer hardware to start to make money, and in computers that can take just a few days.  And the prices that I have on my site are VERY good, so they can advertise the site and make money right away.  People will be able to  add any other items they want to sell, they will also have the ability to totally customize the site.  And for a small fee we will even host it and update it daily.

So I have been spending almost all of my limited time building this site.  So far I have a 100% functional site, it has RSS Feeds, over 500 inventory items, and the complete ability to clone the site.  I still need to finish a few things so it is NOT open to the public yet, but I think that in the next week it will be.  I am excited to call these people and tell them that I finally have the ability to help them reach their dreams.  I have a great cart, that is affordable, functional and has products in it that allow them to make money from day one.  This has really been my goal for about three years now.  Part of my mission in life to help other people out.

If you would like to be on the list of people who I will call when this goes online, then go HERE.    If I can keep out the distractions I will have it up soon.

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What is in a techs mind when they work on a problem?

Computers, how to, Internet, , , , , , , , , ,

I don’t know in the startup, reboot, same problem. Check the other computer on the router, works perfect. Downloading Firefox on good computer, putting it on thumb drive and loading it on broken computer. Still does not work. Still able to ping google. Resetting all internet settings, no luck. Turning off wireless and using Cat5 cable. Still pings google, but browser does not work. Going back to wireless. Hmmm, what is next?

Let me take the computer home and try it on my home router. OK same thing. Lets try to browse the network, ok this does NOT work either. OK time fore more software. Lets see what HijackThis says. Well two things I see really quick… IERESET.INF with a ton of options that are not so good, also some DLASX_W.DLL, used for a dlink wireless the client tried to get working before I came over. I am going to remove everything other than Norton and Google toolbar. Lets reboot. Same thing. Ok let’s use google to find out more ideas. Running the reset command on the TCP/IP connection. Still broken. Reboot, still broken. OK, resetting the DNS. No help. Is it just port 80, hmm lets test some other program, does RDC work…no, ok so more ports.

Now looking for a tool to reset winsock, ok found a great one, let me pop in my thumb drive. Oops electric shock, blue screen, just rebooted my main computer. Uggg. Well now it is time to install that new DVD burner I bought the other day. Ok done, all up again. OK running the winsock reset, reboot, ping works, ugg browser still broken. This is getting very lame. OK I have some reg tools but I never had them fix much, but worth a try now, we are desperate. Running RegCure, found 894 errors and fixed them. Broken, rebooting, still broken, as expected.

Well I know it is software, but lets see if an Ubuntu live CD will work on this, plus I can test my new burner. The new burner is very fast, only 2:44 to burn, about 2 min faster than my old one. While burning I typed net view, and got error 6118, let me look into that. Nothing really there for browser problems. Did a search for the firefox error message “Though the site seems valid, the browser was unable to establish a connection.” And I got a large number of good information. A bit more research and it seems that Norton has caused this problem for other people, so let me download the Norton removal tool and see if that helps. This is most hopeful I have been that we have a solution, but it is taking forever to do. Ok, done, rebooting, crossing fingers. Yippie, it worked. Stupid Norton, I always hated that thing. So cool now.

Wow, I knew I would get it eventually, but that took a long time. It totally works now, just tested everything out, no problems. I am now installing AVG so the client has a bit of AV protection. Also going to run Windows Update, he has been offline for months with this problem.  Never got to try Ubuntu on this one.

I have had similar problems in the past, and it seems that it was a different fix each time. But if you found this blog because you had the problem listed above try some of the things here, it may just work.

CLICK HERE for the removal tool I used to remove norton.

CLICK HERE for the winsock reset tool.

My very steep mountain I plan to climb. (My Mission in life)

Bootstrap, Business, Computers, concepts, Entrepreneurship, how to, Inspiration, Investment, Money, real estate, The World, , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

This entry is about my mission in life, and my mindset right now.

My goal, is to be very wealthy.  I don’t really have a personal need to be wealthy but I have felt for a long time now that it is my calling in life to be so.  The reason for this is that I can help many people out, so that I can leave a legacy for my children and their children and to help the Kingdom of God in all of this.  I want to be the one who builds schools, churches, community housing projects and so on.  I have had a desire for this for many years but have gotten distracted a few time.  Now I feel like I am behind schedule, I have this huge goal and to accomplish it I need to act now and act aggressively.  I need to have a very steep slope to my net worth mountain.

The good news is that in times like this, with economic turmoil and such it is actually easier for a smart person who sees the trends to gain massive wealth.  I can buy stocks in good companies for huge discounts.  I can buy houses for cents on the dollar.  These things will always rebound, they may take some time but they will.  I can take advantage of the huge wave of people who are eager to snatch onto the dream of finally being their own boss, I can consult with them and make tools for them to get there easier, because I have been there my whole life.  Of course I will charge for this service.

My goal is to have a net worth of $5 million dollars by the time I am 40 years old, and $10m by the time I am 45.  (I am 33 now)  I will consider any donations I have made to be part of my net worth.  To get there I would need to earn a huge amount of money.  I will invest most of that money until I get to my goal.  This is a very steep mountain to climb.  I have made money at this rate in the past buy I grew my company too fast and trusted people who screwed me and soon I was bleeding 10k+ per month.  I have learned that lesson but I do know that I can not do all of this myself.  I need to use other peoples money and other peoples time to get to where I need to be.  If I do everything that needs to be done I will never make it, never even get close, I have to hire others to join me.  For over 10 years now I have always had at least a few people who work for me, people who I can call when I make a sale.

So to make this goal I need to really start to climb, to earn huge amounts of money.  Well that is actually much easier than you may think it is.  There is more opportunity now simply because the market is totally inefficient right now.  This means that prices are all over the place for the same item, mostly caused by crazy desperate people who are selling things at fire sale prices.  This lets us take advantage of research and work to find the best price on something and sell it to someone who does not do the research.  This can be done on houses, cars, computers, information, labor, and almost anything else that can be bought and sold.   You can buy cars for $5k that sell for $10k the next week.  You can buy houses for 20k that were once worth 200k and sell them for 80k with ease.   I just bought over $1500 in computer parts from a guy for $100 simply because he got them from a guy who went out of business and had no idea what they were worth.  Money is just sitting there everywhere waiting for someone to pick it up.

Right now is the best time I have ever seen in my life to buy Real Estate, and probably the best time there will be.  You can buy a house now for such a low price that you can rent it out and have the rental payments cover the entire cost in under 5 years.  You can then hold on to these houses for 10 years and sell it for many times the purchase price.  This is the main way I plan to make my long term money, but I need to fund this with short term money.  My plan for this is to sell websites, sell business opportunities, such as this one or this one.  I have another huge idea in the works that I think will make a million dollars in the next 3 years as long as it is done right.  I need all of this because I have a high goal.

Mindset is Key.  mindset

Less than half of a percent of the population in the US has a net worth over $1 million dollars, and with the current market that number is falling.  Most of the population is deep in debt and the ones that are not don’t have a huge net worth.  Most people simply do not posses the entrepreneurial spirit, they do not have the mindsets required.  They do not even have this as a goal.  There is probably less than 2% of the population that is serious about being an entrepreneur, about being truly wealthy and free.  For me and these others like me we must have a different mindset from the rest of the world.  What works for the normal, happy to have a job, people in this world actually hurts us.  And what works for us does not work for them.

There is about 10% of the population that thinks that they are an entrepreneur, people who have gone out and created for themselves a business, or they dabble on the side trying to run a small home based business but most of these do not have the correct mindset.  They simply do not see it.  For years many of my friends have fallen into this group, and for years I have talked to them, tried to show them the way.  Given them books on the subject like the awesome E-Myth by Michael Gerber.  All with very little result, they almost never get it, and they just can’t figure out why even when I tell them directly, so for the most part I have stopped.  I love to deal with the people who have the right mindset already.  You can tell someone simply does not get it when they keep saying “You can’t do that” but in reality there is very little we can not do.  We can buy houses for 10 cents on the dollar and not use one cent of our own money, we can sell a service to a client for one price and then hire someone else to perform that service for a much lower, yet still fair price.  We can do something once and get paid for that work for a long time to come.

entrepreneurTo have the correct mindset you must realize that there are different rules for us.  I have found that people like Donald Trump, Robert Kiyosaki, Ric Edelman, Dean Graziosi and Adrian Cartwood can equip you with the correct mindset.   For the other people who are not entrepreneurial they can listen to people like Suzy Orman, Clark Howard and David Ramsey but for us much of the information they say is toxic to our mindset.  They focus on what to do with the money that you earn, how to divide it, how to save it and such, and they focus very LITTLE on simply making more.   They focus on how you should not used debt at all.  I agree with all of this for “normal” people.  I think that normal people should only take on debt to go to college and buy a meager house, and maybe to buy a first car.   They should save their money for retirement and live a very frugal life.  They should max out their 401k and invest in mutual funds.  (For all people even these I strongly suggest that they separate their home equity from their home, it make much more sense.)

But for us E-Type people this is crazy talk.  I know I can do much better in life than that sort of existence.  If we have a good idea we should borrow to make it happen if we don’t have the resources ourselves.  We should keep an eye out for the needs of others and look for ways to fill those needs.  We should delegate anything that we can to free up our time to focus on growing our business.   We should focus on increasing our income 10 times as much as we focus on where it all goes.

E-Type people should give away money with abandon to worth causes.  I personally believe in Christian education and I help out many children go to private Christian schools, third world children who would not have a good education if I did not help out, now they have a chance to be something great in the future.  Almost every millionaire I know gives away more money per year that most people earn.  I remember a few years ago my Grandfather walked into his local church and gave them $100,000, just a few months before he died.  I remember growing up with my uncle and seeing him write checks for $5,000 when a missionary came to his local church.  I remember he would always give us $10 or so every time the offering came by and we would dump it in, teaching us to give.  I have a good friend locally who makes over $50k a month and gives over $10k of that away each month.    We are blessed to be a blessing, the more you send out the more you will get — people just don’t get it.

Final Thoughts

I really hope that you have gotten inspired by all of this.  I was inspired by the 7m7y project recently.  And just this week by two other great guys.  We really