First off for today is completing the tickets for the Clun Valley South WI Group. Printing tickets is an important part of this event’s preparation.
A nice flowery design, as the speaker is the renowned Margeret Thrower.
Then we are into a bit of Data Recovery on a few old Mobile Phones & a rather tired old Lenovo PC. It’s rather slow going, but eventually everything was transferred to my clients memory stick without hassle.
Next up is a re-run of a local artist’s flyers. Nothing to change after the initial run back in Feb of this year, Kay’s just running out fast!
Tracey, from Affinity Home Care Group over in Market Street gave me a call about Flyer Printing this morning. After a brief chat & a couple of emails, all was sorted without a problem. Good artwork means fast turnarounds!
Then, after a run of “Brain Picking” from a few folks passing by, and sorting out a clients email problem, It’s time to see what’s going on with a little red Acer laptop that’s not playing ball.
It’s very slow to boot (about 10min), and is crawling along once it has finally loaded. A quick inspection of the Hard Drive, and everything becomes clear. Poor thing is flat out doing nothing, meaning the hard drive is on it’s last legs.
As the machine has only had reasonably light use over it’s 4 year lifetime, I would have expected better. However, my clent advised me that the laptop has travelled extensively throughout Europe, in a Camper Van.
Thousands of miles of vibrations, knock’s & bumps would explain the damage to an older style “Mechanical” hard drive. No problem though, In with a nice new “Solid State Drive”, Transfer client documents & files, and a fresh installation of Windows 10 to finish.
It’s booting up in about 20 seconds now, and behaving itself pottering around the net, and dealing with everyday tasks with ease.
And we are off with a high speed turnaround on some A5 Flyers, for a local Autioneer, that are needed by this Friday (Wed’s Today!).
Not a problem for Bluesdigital….
After a final edit @4pm, they are off to my commercial printers & should be with my client by 3pm on Friday, Phew!
Next job is for a local newsletter.
630x Double Sided pages later, and we’re done. (Poor Printers were steaming after that lot)
Last job for today is a Windows 7 Zoostorm PC that is suffering with a dodgy hard drive. As it’s got a decent CPU & 6Gb of RAM, It’s a good candidate for refurbishing.
In goes a nice new SSD & fresh install of Windows 10, and it’s turning out to be a snappy old fella!
Should keep the client going for a few years yet, and it’s good to recycle too….
Kev “the taxi” popped in to grab his latest batch of Business Cards.
Just needed to add his new email address, “Disability Transport” message & tweak the design a little to fit it all in.
Then off to my commercial printers, to be reproduced on his usual Premium 450gsm matt laminated card stock. Such a lovely finish on these, with the highly tactile matt lamination. They leave a great impression with clients, are highly durable & waterproof too!
See what you think……..
Next up, Paolo (La Terrazza) is back again with a few updates to his drink’s & pizza menu’s. All completed in just 30min.
Then to finish the day, a client has dropped off a nice little Acer Aspire laptop that’s freezing up badly, after upgrading to Windows 11. Turns out to be some corrupt partitions after upgrading from a “Factory” installed Windows 10. A clean installation of an original Windows 11, (as opposed to Acer, Dell, HP etc’s version), a pile of Driver & Windows updates, and the little Acer is flying along nicely.
The client will return in a few weeks to upgrade the RAM from 4Gb to 8/12Gb, when funds allow!
Have a nice Weekend
🙂
For more computer services, pop in to see us at Frolic House ( between Newtown Medical Practice and Newtown Driving Test Centre )| Call 01686 610 106 | Message 0783 222 7823
After yesterday’s rail strike, today’s early trains were cancelled, so I didn’t get to work until nearly 11am. However, I was ready to get stuck into some printing jobs. There was also a tricky virus getting up to mischief.
Thankfully, none of my clients needed me first thing!
Photo Printing on Glossy Paper
First little job of the day was a straightforward duplication of a few photos onto some nice 260gsm glossy paper.
Document Printing & Full Bleed Work
Next up was an urgent print job for a new client. It was a simple single print of a document on 80gsm standard paper.
However, the other document had a solid blue background and also needed to be full bleed (borderless). As standard paper will not hold that amount of ink without bleeding through to the other side and looking fuzzy, I used a nice smooth 120gsm matt paper instead. This can accept high-resolution prints easily.
Menu Updates for La Terrazza
Then Paolo, the owner of La Terrazza Italian Restaurant here in town (damn good food!), popped in to update his menus.
After about 15 minutes of editing, they were ready for proof-reading and printing. He had to run off and get prepped for tonight, so I’ll drop them off once I’ve closed for the day.
Virus Removal & System Clean-Up
Last job for today was a virus scan of a local hotel’s main reception PC. This had to be done sharpish, as all the other PCs in the hotel depend on it.
There were a few traces of malware and the remnants of a Trojan Horse that had snuck aboard. I upgraded Malwarebytes from the free version to the Premium paid version to enable shielded protection. That should minimise any more nasties!
I finished up with a couple of Windows updates after a quick service, and we were good to go in two hours flat.
A client has dropped off three old family movies on DVD, that she has been unable to play on her TV’s built-in player. They all start, but then freeze after a few seconds.
Turns out they were originally recorded on DVD+R Disks, in the DVD-VR Format, both of which can be problematic with modern equipment.
As DVD is a bit of a dying format these days, I enquired whether her TV has a usb port & how old it is. That way I was able to offer a conversion to a digital file, so that she can easily play them back on pretty much any device, or even upload to YouTube/Facebook etc.
For the Tech Heads out there, I chose an MP4/H.264 format for ultimate compatibility & reasonable file size. I personally prefer MP4/H.265 for better compression, but only the latest kit can play it back at the moment.
Second job today is an old client who has fallen prey to those darned pesky “Fake PC Service” calls.
He was innocently looking for some guttering, and a window popped up, supposedly from “Microsoft”
It scared him into calling the number, and within a few clicks, the swines were in his computer, and demanding hundreds of pounds to remove a whole host of viruses and other problems with his computer. Thankfully after the call, he realised it was a scam & phoned his bank to cancel his card.
They advised him to seek assistance locally to clear out the Remote Control software that the scammers had installed.
It took about an hour to remove the dodgy software, a few other bits of malware and to install my fav’ Anti-Virus, Malwarebytes Premium.
Also did a few windows updates & gave the Pc a quick service whilst it was in, to keep it running smoothly.
