What You'll Find in the October Newsletter

Store Front Now Open in Travelers Rest
Custom Picture Mosaics Make a Perfect Gift
Quick Tips for Vonage or Verizon Users
Favorite Cases from the Last Month

Store Front Now Open in Travelers Rest

It has been too long since I've been in touch, and OH so much has changed. Call Brady, Computer Services now has a storefront at 27 S. Main Street in the beautiful downtown of Travelers Rest, South Carolina. We are located in the same building as Leopard Forest Coffee Company, and are open 11am to 6pm Monday-Friday. I also have an assistant helping me with office, marketing, and repair. Stop by and meet Wendy soon!

While I'm still available for home and in-office visits, the storefront allows people to drop off their computers for repairs and optimization. We have an on-going "$99 Computer Clean Up Special" where we will clean your computer of viruses/spyware, optimize the start-up of your system, and make it run faster than it has in ages! Stop by and see us and be sure to enjoy a cup of Leopard Forest's excellent coffee.

Custom Picture Mosaics Make a Perfect Gift

At the top of the page you'll see one of my custom picture mosaics. I took a picture of my son, Noah, and then re-created the picture using hundreds of pictures that my wife, Jennifer, and I have taken over the last year (pregnancy and Noah's first year). Talk about a conversation piece! You can see a large version of the picture at my Flickr page or at the shop at 27 S. Main Street, Travelers Rest. We have a 24x36" copy there, and I hear people raving about it daily. I will have more examples in the coming weeks.

The great news is that we are offering our custom Picture Mosaics for you to give as a gift. Bring in a backup harddrive, a laptop, or even a desktop with all your pictures, let us know which the "parent picture" should be, and we will create your custom mosaic to give as a gift or to use as your own conversation piece. Beware, you will stare at it for hours over the next year!

Call us for more details at 864-335-8672.

Quick Tips for Vonage or Verizon Users

One of my recent customers gave me a great tip for Verizon cell phones. Dial *228 (Star-228) from your Verizon cell phone and select Option #2. This will update your cell phone's recognition of new or updated cell towers. It can provide better service, add battery length to your phone, and cause you to roam less. He recommended doing this update once every two months.

Do you have Vonage service for your telephone? I recently found that incoming calls to my Vonage phone were unbelievably choppy for people calling my office. The Vonage technician told me that this was typically a sign or some type of upload happening from my network. Sure enough, my Carbonite backup was causing the issue. I love Carbonite, so I edited my settings so that backups would only occur during my off-hours, and our call quality is back to normal! If you experience Vonage issues, look for programs on your computer such as Carbonite file-sharing programs, or anything else that may be uploading files to the web.

Favorite Cases from the Last Month

One caller reported that he has just spilled a cup of coffee on his laptop and it was leaking out the bottom. OUCH! I advised that he unplug the computer immediately and remove the battery, and then submerge the laptop in rice (covering the bottom of the laptop and the top of the keyboard, NOT touching the screen) and leave it there for 24 hours. Sure enough he called me back the next day and, aside from a few sticky keys on his keyboard, his system was working beautifully! (Remember: backup your data frequently, as disaster can strike at anytime. This is easiest with a program like Carbonite! See the bottom of my homepage for a link.)

Another customer told me that their harddrive had recently died and contained a collection of photos of her late father. These were precious photos, and a local big box store had quoted her $900-2000 to retrieve the photos. The next day, I had her complete photo collection restored to a DVD for her, and her charge was under $150. She was so relieved to have her pictures back. It was touching to be able to help her out!