TOPTECH/THE ELDEST GEEK IS ADDING A NEW STRASBURG LOCATION!
There will be (reasonably shortly) a drop location in Strasburg! our family has moved out there! Now – the Alexandria store is not affected at all, but we will be having at least a drop off location for Strasburg, Winchester, Front Royal folks! Just means (LOL) I’ve a bit longer commute than from Lorton!
The Eldest Geek has a spot in the Strasburg Emporium! Look for us there 🙂 I’m at 425 Stover if you need to bring something by in the meantime! Call first!
VACCINE BLUES!
Many apologies to all – I’ve been having a horrible reaction to the J&J vaccine and for almost a month I’ve had dizzy attacks, spots before eyes and the like which have greatly affected my ability to get to the shop! Hopefully this is almost at an end. Of course when I could not make it to the shop poor Alex was stuck at home with me! Your good wishes and thoughts (and prayers) are most welcome. And this is also why my newsletter is a bit delayed – been over 2 months since my last one!
SOME TRULY EVIL SCAMMERS – WATCH OUT!
Some of our customers have been bitten by the scammers out there – one lovely couple for a LOT of money! PLEASE BEWARE – NEVER
EVER deal with someone who calls YOU and pretends to be your banker, stock broker, from your phone company, from Apple, From Dell and
the like. ALWAYS SAY ‘EXCUSE ME WHILE I PUT YOU ON HOLD’ and CALL YOUR BANK/BROKER/PHONE COMPANY and ask them if they are calling
you! When the answer is NO (and in the case of Paypal Ebay etc they NEVER will call you under ANY circumstances) HANG UP ON THE DUDE!
WINDOWS 10 UPGRADE PROBLEMS
We have run into some PATHOLOGICAL systems where a windows 10 upgrade has really screwed the pooch! I have one where it leaves you with a white cursor on black screen (no desktop) and another where suddenly office could not run – and it turned out the upgrade had blown up AVG Tuneup! Some of the performance enhancing programs actually insert themselves into the launching process (so they can ‘put to sleep’ a memory hog) and in this case it was preventing word from launching period when the Tune UP program was damaged during the upgrade! MOST ODD and had to solve it myself. Had to UNINSTALL, REINSTALL and UNINSTALL the Tune-UP program to get word to open!!
WINDOWS 11 NO NO NO NO NO!
I have told folks for MANY MANY years the ‘Iron Law of Microsoft’ – ANY time they come out with a new version (originally DOS of course, now Windows) wait to upgrade for ONE YEAR or until the FIRST SERVICE PACK is issued (where they fix the REALLY HORRIBLE bugs they should NEVER have shipped with initially). WINDOWS 11 obeys the law! And there are a LOT of things to consider.
First – MANY if not most current systems wont be able to run Windows 11. Unless your computer is fairly new and has TPM 2.0 (not just TPM 1.2 which has been out far longer), your system will be UNSUPPORTED for Windows 11. Even if you manually/forcibly do an upgrade, YOU WILL BE BLOCKED FROM RECEIVING UPDATES! And Microsoft does NOT tell you this! So you may have a system running Windows 11 – but which cant upgrade to get driver fixes etc! SUBOPTIMAL!
ALSO – NO intel-cpu based Mac implements TPM 2.0! (Apple has never supported it!) There is a hack to turn it ‘on’ and patch Windows 11 to install, but its a hack (in the good sense). Much effort on your part. Apple only started supporting TPM 2.0 in their M1 CPU!!! BAD BAD BAD!
What is TPM I hear you ask? ‘Trusted Platform Module’ – its a way for a cpu to ‘store’ keys for security issues. And the TPM 2.0 requirement supposedly increases Windows security/stability by .0001% – at the expense of orphaning MANY current perfectly decent (even 2-3 years old) computers!!
BAD MICROSOFT BAD MICROSOFT!
New iPhone Looks at your pictures?
Its been reported in various places that the new iPhone lets Apple scan through your pictures – to see if you have any child pornography.
Folks are (needless to say) very VERY concerned. There HAVE been cases where the Geek squad has reported pictures on customer’s computers and they customer has to explain what the pictures were. Even when they are their own baby pictures. This is a big hassle no one needs! And they are also decrypting your encrypted texts to see what you are talking about. Privacy advocates are needless to say on both counts!
LIQUID SPILL REPAIRS
We are busy doing these for folks. if YOUR mac or pc is dead lets see if we can get it back on its feet! Estimates no charge, 6 month warranty on repairs!
WEBSITE DEVELOPMENT
Need your website fixed up? Many don’t know that I do WEBSITES – and have done over 700 of them anywhere from $100 to $100k!
Recently have been bringing in some good Irish talent (I went to college in Ireland) and they have been helping do sites with me!
Need help?? Let me know! We also HOST sites on my servers for only $6 per month including emails and minor updates!
NEED HELP WITH GOLD/SILVER? Or Antiques? We have a LOT of expertise 🙂
I’ve been a precious metals dealer for years – started in the Antique Center. And we buy gold/silver – we pay more than pawn shops or jewelers!
And if you have something you THINK is valuable I can find out what pretty much anything is worth!
BLAST FROM THE PAST!
Come look at my NorthStar Horizon! Vintage 1977 – Only computer EVER to come in a walnut case! Nice story to it!
Just got an old PowerPC Apple 7100 system up and running! It has a whopping 250 MEGABYTE hard drive! One quarter of 1 gigabyte!
your phone has 30 times the storage as this apple – at least! and its at least 1000x faster!