Lesson two: Do enough research. As a tech support person, do you subscribe to news feeds and blogs about the products you support? Do you spend time each day reading articles and books related to the products you support? Have you set up a virtual lab using VMWare, VirtualPC, or Xen so you can experiment and test your solutions before you offer them to your users? Knowledge is power and the more knowledge you have, the more you'll be empowered to delight your users with relevant, accurate solutions.
And then along comes someone else. Amazon, and their attractive EC2 services. I discovered EC2 late one night while surfing the internet. We spoke. And I was so enamored that I wrote about them in a blog on this very website only a few weeks ago. EC2 seemed like an easy and affordable way for a small company to take their business into the cloud. "No more in-house servers." I reported. "No more tech support I.T. No more Windows headaches. 100% access all the time. From anywhere." Admittedly, I was smitten.
There will be tricky decisions in many areas. Where servers are being used to tech support I.T applications that are used by multiple departments you are going to have to find ways to divide up the expenses between all parties involved. Bozzo went about transitioning to this new way of doing business in a clever fashion.
So I dove in just before lunch. The thing asked me for prompt after prompt, then went blank. I repeated the processes, so did the drive. I uninstalled the software and tried to find it on the web to re-install it. Running diagnostics on the drive, a serial number and model number were produced. This didn't check out with the numbers for an external drive, and after many troubleshooting and FAQ inquiries it seemed insurmountable so tech Managed I.T support uttah was finally called in.
Why does the current state of tech support so often leave something to be desired? Answering this question won't really change anything, but it might make you feel slightly better if you understand the dynamic involved. The one-word answer is: Money.
So in the next few years, your computer will become like any other major appliance. The maintenance and care of its few "moving" parts will become your sole responsibility, warranty or not. When was the last time you saw a refrigerator repair guy?