I simply love this commercial and wanted to share. Enjoy and Boom De Yada!

Boom De Yada

Reminds me of what many great things in life.

Zachary M. Morvik

Services Monitor has been updated!

Take advantage of the new features in this release. If you are already a customer, download the latest version today. If not, consider purchasing this product!

New Features:

• Allow custom email subject
• If status of service is unknown, send an email and inform user to verify that the service account is a network administrative account
• Allow multiple SMTP servers
• Service sorting
• Modified editability of grid
• Allow for verbose or basic monitoring
• Allow setting and auto-truncate logs (default: 30 days)

Our customers love this product. It’s so simple and so effective. It can literally save your job!

Buy Here

Zachary M. Morvik

A lot of computer service professionals eventually seem to get a little egotistical.  They start to think that the customer needs them more than they need the customer.  They believe they are the only person in the world who can service that client.  There is nothing further from the truth.

There are a million of YOU.

Don’t forget it.  You customer, while they may value the service you are providing, is keenly aware that just as they once found you, they can find another you.

It may take them a little time and have some associated hard / soft costs, but you are replaceable.  Do you know anyone who isn’t?

Keep this in mind the next time you start having crazy thoughts about who is  working for who.

Zachary M. Morvik

I was talking to my fiance last night and she asked why there are new cars every year.  She meant what is the same car re-released every year as basically the same car with a new year in front of it.

If you think about it, this is really quite amazing.  The entire automotive industry is based around what year a car was produced.

Then I starting give this more thought and I wonder why computers aren’t the same way.  A computer lasts, or should last, roughly as long as most people keep a car.  That’s 3 to 5 years, give or take.

The customers that I have which adopted the 3 to 5 year rotation enjoy the least computer problems.  They are taking proactive measures to ensure that their business is always running smoothly and the rewards are massive.

It is, sometimes, very difficult for businesses to put a price on loss of productivity.  They don’t know what an hour of downtime costs them.  Or what an hour of downtime of just one person or a single department costs them.  However, they should spend the time and figure this out.  For most, the cost of a new computer every few years is one of the smallest expenses one could think of.  But costs are costs and it just isn’t viewed this way…yet.

So, to all the major computer manufacturers out there, here is my suggestion.  Start dating computers just like cars.  Right in the title.  Not only will you enjoy the same genius marketing benefits that automotive manufacturers have, but you will help solidify all aspects of the computer industry.

It’s a simple win-win.

Zachary M. Morvik

Beta testing is complete and I am now releasing my Service Monitor software.

Since you are a reader of my blog, I want to offer you a special introductory price.  Here are the details:

1. Read about this software here on the blog
2. Don’t order using the order link on the right, your price is only $35 until the end of Monday. A 65% discount!
3. You can send the $35 to PayPal@ComputerServiceDude.com
4. This offer expires at Midnight at the end of Monday.
5. As it is a weekend, please allow 24 hours to receive the download link.

Thank you for your support.  If you were a beta tester, you are welcome to simply continue using the beta version of Services Monitor or you can download the latest version.  Beta testers do not need to pay to retain a license to use Services Monitor.

Zachary M. Morvik

Want to see a screenshot?

It’s coming today!

Zachary M. Morvik

The newest version of the Services Monitor software is in the hands of Beta testers.  As soon as I have the reports, I will release it with a 24 hour special.  If you want to be notified of the release, signup in the top right corner of this page and you will receive an email when the software is released.

Hint hint, I expect the 24 hour special to happen within the next 24 hours.

Zachary M. Morvik

It’s tough to imagine a better response to this application.  People love it.

Once you have this program installed, it is as simple as selecting a computer and choosing the services to monitor.  Once this is done, anytime your services are no longer running, you get an email.

There are too many products to list, but I can think of quite a few that I have personally run into that have a service installed on a server and if that service stops, that application quits logging, or working.  This can be a silent killer because in the computer services business, a log is extremely important.

If an application is running, but the logging service stopped or crashing, it may be days, weeks, or longer before you find out.  Try explaining that to your customer or boss if an incident happens and you didn’t do your job.

I can think of both URL filtering products and Event Log tracking products that have these kind of logs.  If the logging service stops running, the application still keeps churning away, but there are no logs.

Services Monitor is the answer to this problem and it does an excellent job.  It also comes with a special license permitting you to install the application on two machines.  The purpose of the second installation is to monitor the first.  This way, if the Services Monitor application service will to stop unexpectedly, you will know right away.  This is the built-in self checking system and it works wonderfully.

I’m expecting it’s release tomorrow!

Zachary M. Morvik

At some point you will end up with a customer that is not worth trying to retain. If you don’t have some level of turnover in your bottom percentage of customers, you are clinging on too tight.

Time Wasted or Time Well Spent?

Realize that the amount of time and energy that you are spending on this “dead weight” is holding you back from obtaining new customers or giving additional time to current customers.

Cut The Slow Pay / No Pay Now!

Slow Pay and No Pay customers have to go. If you end up with slow pay customers, it makes terminating the relationship very difficult because they still owe you money. Get this number as low as you can and even if you take a small loss, get rid of that dead beat customer.

Confidence Is Key

Part of this business is trading time for money. Whether thats your time or your employees, there is time being traded for money. Don’t waste your time, or that of your employees, by dealing with customers that are holding your business back. You will be better off after you weed out your customers. Try it!

Zachary M. Morvik

I have run into this problem so many times in the past I eventually just wrote a tool for it. I think there might even be others out there, but they weren’t around when I needed them and so I’m releasing mine for free.

I hope it saves you as much time as it saved me.

BTW, when you initially double click on the EXE to run, it may take a number of seconds before it loads. This is because it is building the list of available network machines.

Remote RDP Enabler

Zachary M. Morvik

I performed the upgrade on a couple other Wordpress installations just to make sure it wouldn’t blow up the sites.  I’m happy to report that it didn’t.

So I’ve upgraded this site as well.  It went very smooth even though I have many plugins installed and activated.  I love the new features and interface.

Highly recommend the upgrade to anyone.

Zachary M. Morvik