Pay Me Now or Pay Me Later

Remember the Fram Oil Filter commercial that used that tag line?

This is how I feel many times.

I spend about a third of my time fixing client’s computer problems. Printers that don’t print, routers that don’t route, and computers, well you get the picture.

I have a couple of presentations and workshops in which I teach people how to keep their computers working well. I have one called 7 Simple Steps to Trouble Free Computing and another called Safe Computer Use. Both are chock full of tips and tricks that you can use to keep your computers running in tip top shape.

I would love to tell you that people just flock to these sessions and when they leave the are so highly motivated to take action that they rush back to the office and immediately implement everything I taught them.

Oh, in a perfect world!

I spent a lot of time this past week fixing problems that should not have happened. A couple of people got spyware by going to suspect websites or by opening emails that they should not have opened. A client had a corrupt database and restoring the backup go him back up and running.

The most frustrating issue was a client who had their firewall/router fail and though they did have some documentation on how it was set up, I still took me about 2 hours and a whole lot of luck to get them back online.

What frustrated me most was that we had talked several times in the past about creating a network notebook and a disaster plan. Had we completed these, we would have been up and running in about 10 minutes.

Pay me now or pay me later – now is much less expensive than later.