Get your prescription. When getting your eye prescription, being sure to have your physician provide your “Pupillary Distance.” 2 I’ve put together a chart at the bottom you can take with you to the doctor’s office.
Measure your glasses. Measure your current glasses using a metric ruler. The most important measurement is going to be “Temple Width.” The “Temple Width” is the overall front width of your glasses.
Choose frames. On the website of your choice, narrow down the available glasses by the “Temple Width.” From there you can narrow down the available choices.
Wait. Both of the websites I ordered glasses from took about two weeks to get the glasses to me.
Double check. Take your new glasses back to your eye doctor. They will have a machine that can check the prescriptions on the lenses.
One pair of glasses had “polychromatic” lenses and cost about $35.00. The other three pairs included a regular pair of glasses, a pair of tinted glasses for use as sunglasses, and a funky pair since they were totally free free (complete with frames and prescription lenses!?!?!)
I ordered from two different retailers because (1) $35.00 for those “transition” lenses aka “polychromatic” lenses was too good to pass up and (2) so I could compare the customer service and quality of the two companies.
Service through one company was a little better than the other. However, I’m not qualified to judge quality. Although I’m very happy with the look of these frames and lenses, I’d feel a lot better if I took them to my optomologist to be sure.
That said, I’m going to postpone an in-depth review until I see my eye-doc. When I post the review I’ll include a few tips for ordering glasses online.2
I’ve already said I’m a big fan of NPR. A few weeks ago they ran a story about the “Best-Kept Online Secret: Cheap Eyeglasses.” The author, tired of paying hundreds of dollars for glasses, tried out a few different online glasses retailers. 1
This weekend I ordered glasses from two different websites. (I’m going to hold off mentioning which ones for now. I’ll wait to find out what kind of a job they do.)
I ordered four pairs of glasses for much less than what a single pair used to cost me. If all goes well, I’ll be getting one pair of sunglasses, one pair of color changing glasses, one pair that looks almost identical to the ones I wear now, and one pair of funky glasses (this was the free one).
The trade-off is that the glasses will take about two weeks.
Less than 24 hours later I got a call from their local technician – James. He came to my home that very evening and swapped out my motherboard. 4
Here’s Lionel’s e-mail to me from just after midnight this morning:
“Jay:
That’s great news. I’m really glad to see it all worked out smoothly. I appreciate you being a loyal Dell customer. Feel free to tell any other Dell customers how to contact me directly if they need some assistance.
It’s customer’s like you that make this the best job I’ve ever had.
If you’ve got an issue with your Dell, get a hold of Lionel directly. He’s an incredible guy working for an incredible company. Lionel and Dell took care of me. This Dell XPS m1210 is my third Dell laptop, and my next computer will absolutely be a Dell too.
It died within 1 year after my warranty expired, but by the time I talked to Dell it was more than a year out of warranty. [↩]
It was a very simple and short e-mail, so it took me forever to write. [↩]
Since I had nothing to lose, I sent an e-mail to Dell’s head blogger, Lionel Menchaca about my problem. He was lightning fast in responding to me – asking for my Dell service tag.2
When Dell had lost my prior laptop and replaced it with the XPS m1210 I purchased a warranty extension. I had spent a fair bit of change on that laptop and I was expecting to keep it around a while. However, that extended warranty lapsed a little over a year ago.3 I explained my problem with the bad nVidia video card. He responded telling me that I would be getting a call from someone soon.
Sure enough, less than a day later I received a call from Dell’s corporate customer service program. They told me that as a “gesture of good will” they were going to replace my computer’s motherboard – by sending a technician to me to do the repair.
Replacing a motherboard is so expensive its almost always cheaper to buy a new computer. Offering to repair an out-of-warranty laptop by sending a tech to me to replace the motherboard???
All I can say is WOW.
Two of which were under Paramount Technology’s repair warranty. [↩]
This is a number on a little sticker underneath the laptop. The service tag code is essentially a serial number they use to track your computer when its being repaired or you call for technical support. [↩]
Although, less than a year from when I first started having this problem [↩]
Yesterday I discussed the basics of buying a new computer. The most important first step is figuring out what you need and what you want out of a new computer. There are three main types of portable computers available these days: netbooks, basic laptops, and high-end laptops. Today is all about “netbooks.”1
(Scroll to the end to see my picks…)
Netbooks
A netbook is a very small laptop designed to extremely mobile and portable. They are optimized for portability and wireless connectivity.
Netbooks typically have a display of 10″ or less. 2 They usually don’t have any CD or DVD drives. 3 They usually have very small solid state drives or mid-sized hard drives. On the plus side, they usually have bluetooth, media card readers, and WiFi. They’re typically between 2 to 3 pounds, depending upon brand and type of battery. They’re also relatively cheap – between $350 to $500.
My requirements may differ from yours. If I were to buy a netbook, I would want:
Minimum 2 USB ports, preferably 3
Minimum 100 GB hard drive
1 GB RAM
Bluetooth
WiFi aka 802.11a/b/g, and preferably also 802.11n
Ethernet port
Modem port
Other things people might care about (but I don’t):
Webcam
Keyboard size
Monitor size
Keep in mind, I’ve never used any of these laptops – I’m just evaluating them based on their prices and my own opinions as to their respective brands and specs. Although, I’m enough of a nerd that I put together a spreadsheet to compare those five netbooks as well as about another dozen or so models and submodels. If anyone is interested in seeing the spreadsheet, mention it in the comments below or drop me a line.
Dell has a new netbook too, but it only has solid state drive options – which are too small to be of use to me. 4 However, I’m sure it would be perfect for some people.
If I were to buy a netbook today, I’d probably go for the Acer Aspire One. It occupies a sweet spot in terms of price, is a decent brand, and has very comparable specs to the higher-end models.
Before I start talking computer repair, I offer three caveats. First, I have no formal training in diagnosing, repairing, or even using computers. Second, I have no experience with repairing an Apple or Mac computer. Third, all of the below only applies to laptop repair. Its incredibly easy to swap out components on a desktop.1
So, you’ve done the math and decided that it is more cost-effective to repair your non-functional and out-of-warranty laptop. You know that having the manufacturer or a big box store like Best Buy, Circuit City2 and Fry’s is a very bad idea.3 About the best you can hope for is that it will only cost you much more money than your computer is actually worth. The worst you can expect is to pay for your computer to be returned to you in worse condition.4
Option 3: Dedicated Repair Facility
Since I use my laptop constantly, it was extremely important to me that I took it someone who I could trust to do a good job. Unfortunately, this is the kind of decision I agonize over. Weighing the various pro’s and con’s, relative merits, creating formulas or spreadsheets to help me synthesize and digest the data.
I over-analyze, in part, because I want to make sure I spend my money well. However, its far more important to me that I make sure that whatever item I am researching is the most perfect fit for me. I spent my free time for the better part of the week Googling for local laptop repair places. Once I had a list of places, I started to par it down.
My criteria included: location, accreditation, apparent familiarity with my problem, initial diagnosis based upon my description over the phone, whether they performed a free diagnosis, whether I could locate any review or complaints, and price. You know, that’s all.
I first created a list of every laptop repair facility in my area and then tossed out the ones with bad reviews.
Question 1: Can you repair laptops?
This is a really good question even if you’re looking to have your desktop computer repaired. Repairing a desktop is dead simple. If a part stops working, you open it up, pull it out, slap in a new one and “rock on completely, with some brand new components“. 5 Repairing a laptop is far more involved.
If they couldn’t repair a laptop, I would not have any confidence they’d be able to repair a desktop and would move on.
Question 2: Can you repair components?
There are a lot of “computer repair” places, but most of them either only deal with software problems or only replace large whole computer parts. Their solution to a laptop problem is to replace the motherboard or tell you to buy a new computer. That’s like a mechanic telling you that you need to either replace the entire engine or buy a new car because spark plugs are just not their thing.
The good thing about a repair facility that does “component level repair” is that they will actually look for what caused the problem. Then they will need to try and replace just that little part. Depending upon your computer’s symptoms, you might need a new power jack, new chip on the motherboard, or even have the solder on the board around a chip melted and re-applied to the motherboard6 .
If the repair facility couldn’t repair a component level problem, I moved on.
Question 3: Can you diagnose the problem over the phone?
When calling a repair facility, ask for a technician and describe the problem for them. Obviously, you can’t expect them to actually know what’s wrong, so don’t hold them to it. On the other hand, they should be have some inkling as to the cause.
A small aside about workers’ compensation defense, and then back to laptop repair:
Sometimes during a doctor’s deposition I need to ask a question that deals with legal issues. Invariably, the other attorney present has a different take on the applicable medicine or, more likely, the law. In these situations, I state my position about the medical-legal issue in terms of, “Doctor, its my understanding that…” Then, I say, “Doctor, for the purposes of this question, assume that my understanding about the applicable law is correct. Now… [insert insightful question here]?”
This keeps objections and interruptions to a minimum and allows the doctor to focus on my question. If the other attorney is correct in their legal position, my question and the corresponding answer are irrelevant. Posing the question in this fashion completely removes any basis for objection since the doctor’s response becomes entirely dependent upon whether or not a given legal position is correct.
When describing my computer problems over the phone and getting a snap diagnosis from the technician, I ask them the following, “Assuming the problem is [the problem you’ve just diagnosed], are you capable of making this repair and how long would it take?”
If the repair facility technician had no idea what the problem was or would refuse to venture a guess based on what I was saying, I moved on.
Question 4: Who will be doing the diagnosis and repair?
I located a surprising number of local people who represented via their website or a posting on CraigsList.org that they were able to repair a variety of laptop problems. Some of these were just people who did the work out of their home. They may very well do a good job and certainly charged less – but they weren’t for me. I had a little more confidence7 in a repair facility employing a repair technician than I did in a some guy who put up an ad or website.
Occasionally, a local repair facility will actually out-source the diagnosis and repair. This, of course, begs the question – why do I need you?
As I mentioned above, I wanted to talk to a technician – preferably the one who would be performing the job themselves.
Question 5: How did you treat me on the phone?
Some technicians can’t help feeling superior to the their clients. 8 If the technician was the least bit rude or condescending, I hung up and moved on. Repair facilities are in the customer service industry as much as they’re in the computer repair industry. All it takes is one unfriendly or unknowledgeable person answering the phones for you to lose a potential client.
If you follow the above criteria to create a list of local computer repair facilities and ask the above questions, you’re going to stand a decent chance of finding the best place to get your laptop repaired. Good luck!
This is called a “re-flow,” since the original solder is melted and made to flow back around the chip or connections. If your computer gets heated and cooled a lot, this might be your problem. [↩]
And, perhaps wrongly so. This is just a gut feeling. [↩]
Unfortunately, this is also true of some attorneys. [↩]
I upgraded the website to WordPress 2.7 RC 1 over the weekend.
I generally do not bother installing the updates between the major upgrades. My major concern in upgrading is eliminating possible security issues and obtaining additional program features. I maintain a totally separate website from PDRater.com, also running on WordPress, where I install the very latest versions of WordPress and try out new variations on the look-and-feel of this website, new calculators, and new ideas about how best to present the current calculators.
Very late Wednesday night I upgraded this website to WordPress v2.7. I’m not sure I fully appreciate how much better it might be than the various release candidates.
Thursday morning I discovered an unintended effect of upgrading is that it “broke” one of my plugins. (Reza: Thanks for pointing it out!) I had modified an existing plugin, EasyPayPal, to allow this website to accept credit card payments. WordPress v2.7 changed the user profiles area of the website – and made it so that instead of seeing an option to become a paid subscriber, you just saw a cryptic PHP error. This is nothing that would have compromised a credit card number or anything – it just would have prevented anyone from giving me money.
A little bit of bug testing, one new line of code and its back up and running. :)
There are many different ways to put together a website. Flat HTML which does not interact with the users at all. Javascript enabled pages which allow the user to interact with the webpage a little. AJAX enabled pages which allow the user to interact with the web server and even other users.
The worst way imaginable for a website to be built is one entirely powered by Adobe Flash animation. I know of at least one workers’ compensation defense firm that has an all Flash website – and I feel sorry for them. Their clients probably never use their website. They’re squandering one of their best marketing tools.
Here are just a few of the problems with Flash websites:
Bandwidth. A picture of the word “website” is much much larger than the text “website.” In a similar way, a Flash website is going to be much much larger than the same information presented in pure HTML. The bigger your website, the longer it will take for it to load.
Maintenance. The smallest change to the website needs to be handled by the original web developer. If you “invest” in an all-Flash website, you’re basically hiring that web developer for life. With traditional websites, you can hire any code monkey to adjust your website.
Unnavigable. Flash websites do not work with the browser’s “Back” button. If your users can’t navigate your website in a normal fashion, they will leave and never come back.
Search Engine Optimization. Or, SEO, as it is known in the business. If your website is basically a bunch of moving pictures, it can’t be indexed by a search engine, so it doesn’t know what your website is about, so it doesn’t know when to show it to people who are searching for exactly the kinds of things you are trying to sell.
Repeat Business. If your website is meant to be something people look at once and never return to, I suppose its fine. The problem with a Flash website is that it will not allow users to bookmark or link to particular pages. This means if your clients really love a particular page on your site they can’t e-mail the link to their co-workers!
I know why web developers sell Flash websites. These websites show off how great you are at creating swooshing logos and nifty pages transitions. And, if your client ever needs a little change, they have to come back to you or pay someone else to build them a website from scratch.1
I also know why businesses invest in Flash websites. They want something stylish and unique. In reality all truly successful website forgo snazzy animations for functional user friendly pages. If Amazon, eBay, and Google don’t build their websites out of Flash, why should you?
This isn’t to say that Flash animation doesn’t have its place. It think its great for product demos, presentations, and banner ads. Its an excellent way to present information in a graphical format. That said, you should never ever purchase a Flash website.
Website Development Tips:
Never build a site out of Flash.
Never use Flash to show words.
If its good enough for Google, its good enough for you.
Focus on what your customers want to see, not what you want to show them.
Make it easy for your customers to tell people about you.
Heaven forbid you have a new hire or, you know, the law changes. [↩]
