About Technology

By W. Braverman

In this article, we will focus on the bad business practices and outright fraud prevalent in many TV repair shops around the country. As an electronics technician with 27 years of experience, I can tell you what really goes on with your expensive electronic equipment, when you're not looking. But let me warn you. After reading this, you may be shocked, appalled, even sickened by how you may have been taken advantage of in the past. Just take comfort in the fact that you now have the information you need to next time choose a servicer that is truly a professional. OK, fasten your seat belts. Here we go.

FREE ESTIMATES Let's get to the bottom of this idea right now. Yes, it sounds like a good idea for you and the shop. But this is what really happens when you drop the unit off. Because the shop has not been paid for the time it takes to diagnose the problem, the technicians are forced to repair the easy ones first. That means that after a quick look at your set, if any real troubleshooting is required, they put it back on the shelf. Where it will sit. And sit. And sit. Now here's where it gets interesting. When the service manager or owner asks the tech the unit was assigned to (if such a system is in place) what is going on with it, He'll quickly say it's a dog. In our jargon, a "dog" is a really tough, highly technical repair that requires lots of time.

The service manager will now ask the tech to get back on it ASAP and resolve the problem so that the repair estimate can be given to the customer. By this time, at least a week has passed and the customer has not been called yet. When the customer has waited long enough and finally calls, no one knows whats going on and in some cases, has no idea even where the unit is.

Sound familiar? Has this ever happened to you? I thought so. But it gets better.

The technician will now spend a little more time on the unit. If he can't fix it now, he will appease the service manager by "stalling". In other words, he will order a part that will take a week or two to get, but will not fix the problem. This way he can put the real problem off until then.

And there you were thinking that the part you may have been required to pay a deposit on before it was ordered would fix your set. I'm afraid not. And this gambit can go on for months. This is exactly why you should always use a shop that charges a small bench charge to look at your set. This will usually go toward the cost of the repair, and covers the shops' time and materials. Typically, your job is done faster, and by a technician with a higher skill level.

SENDING A "TECHNICIAN" TO LOOK AT YOUR SET IN YOUR HOME That seems to be an everyday thing, doesn't it? But you are being deceived. In this scam, the person looking at your expensive big screen TV is NOT a trained technician. They are only there to take the back off, give it a quick once over, and then tell you it could probably be fixed for "Y" dollars or less. But he won't tell you what the problem with the unit is. Of course, he will collect a pickup and delivery fee while he's there, even though you called them because their ad said all repairs are done in the home.

Practices like this are a big problem all over the country and should give you cause for concern. Why? Because a REAL technician can tell you exactlywhat the problem is and what the cost will be to repair it. As well, it may be a small problem that can be fixed on the spot. Only an experienced service person knows the difference. Not to mention the unskilled person looking at your TV may cause unintentional damage to it. Think it doesn't happen? I've seen far too many broken picture tubes and broken boards caused by people touching something they shouldn't have or tugging on wires or parts trying to look like he knows what he's doing when the customer is looking over his shoulder.

So make sure the shop is sending you a skilled professional and not a poser. At the end of the day, this is the much better program for everyone.

USING "GENERIC" PARTS TO FIX YOUR UNIT, WHILE TELLING YOU THEY ONLY USE FACTORY ORIGINAL PARTS This is a huge problem. In my opinion, it is outright fraud. Because of the high level of sophistication of modern electronic product, factory original parts are a must. In high quality products like Sony and Panasonic, If the shop uses anything else the unit will fail and have to be serviced again at their cost. If your just repaired unit failed again after about a week, this is probably what happened. And a word of warning here. If audio or video equipment is involved that uses expensive software, be especially careful about the shop you choose. Equipment re-failure could mean irreparable damage to discs, video tapes, or expensive speaker systems.

Accept no substitutes or excuses! Make em' fix it right the first time and have them bring you the old parts.

STEALING YOUR GOOD PARTS AND REPLACING THEM WITH THEIR BAD ONES, CLAIMING THAT YOUR UNIT IS "NOT WORTH REPAIR." This is so they can fix the dogs that are hanging around in the shop at no cost. As well, this phrase is also used to save face because the technicians employed there are not skilled enough to fix your unit, but enough of it works to repair something else they have. The theft can be anything from individual parts all the way up to entire boards and sub-assemblies. Happens all the time. The only way to fight this problem is to get your unit back in the same condition (this means with the same problem) that it had when you gave it to them. Not much else you can do otherwise.

INTENTIONALLY DAMAGING YOUR UNIT Many unscrupulous shops will damage your unit to the point of making it un-reparable if you refuse their estimate. The reason is that they don't want you to take it to another shop and have it fixed AFTER they have told you what the problem is.

This is a despicable practice and is a huge problem in places like Florida. This type of shop will even remove the labels showing the model and serial numbers (this should be illegal) or cover them with tape so that when the tape is removed, the label is unreadable. This is wrong because many models of TV's, VCR's, and other products look almost just alike, and without the model numbers the unit cannot be properly repaired. You may as well just throw it away.

Again, the only defense is to make sure you get it back exactly the way you gave it to them.

GOUGING CUSTOMERS WITH OUTRAGEOUS PRICES ON VERY SIMPLE REPAIRS This is another big problem. What can I say? This type of business owner will play on the fears of someone that has no knowledge of anything electronic and take advantage of them. To be sure, charging someone $85 to replace a old fuse that simply gave up is just plain wrong. But unfortunately it happens. Sometimes you will see shops like this exposed on one of those "Caught On Tape" TV shows. I say that's too bad for them. Fortunately, there's no way back from that kind of publicity once it happens. Just make sure YOU stay away from them once they have been caught.

ADDITIONAL TIPS
Here are a few additional ideas you need to know to keep from getting scammed. Keep these tips in mind:

1.Go in to the shop and take a look around. Is it littered with wrecked TV's and other types of products? Is it dirty and disorganized? Clearly, don't leave your expensive plasma TV in such a place.

2.Make sure you drive by the place on a regular basis and make sure it's open. Why should you do this? Because if the place is locked up tight when it should be open, say around 10 in the morning, you are most likely involved with a shop that is struggling to pay it's bills. This owner obviously has more important things to do than concentrate on repairing customer product.

3.Do they have the required equipment to properly repair your unit? Take a look around and see for yourself. Modern electronics are extremely complicated, sophisticated devices. The failures that they have can be so subtle, that it takes highly advanced equipment and techniques to resolve the problem. If they don't have the proper tools, your set may be the next one sitting in the junk pile. Don't risk it. Do yourself a big favor and take the set somewhere else.

With this information in hand, You should be able to choose a high quality, reputable shop for your electronic service needs. I hope this report was helpful to you in your quest for quality repairs. Wishing you the best of luck, take care and be careful out there!

By W. L. Braverman

By Shamil Nizamov

All types of blogs, peer-2-peer audio and video communication via the Internet, e-commerce... all of these no longer amaze anybody. The controversy around Web 2.0 or even Web 3.0 only confirms that the IT community is on the verge of changing from one Internet model to another, but nobody knows what kind of model is coming. Existing technologies, no matter how effective they are, are based on 10-20 years old ideas. Blogs for example were nothing more than personal diaries with a simplistic design, read only by people close to the writer. The latest features, including all kind of data aggregators like folksonomy, mashup, and widgets, ability to find pictures and, as Google promised, video - based on real content, not on descriptive textual tags - and an Internet browser being the only required application to work with an online virtual operating system [1] and on-line applications, perhaps that is all what we can expect in the nearest future.

At the same time, the recognizable trend of the Internet in recent years is a growing prevalence of video content, which is closely associated with technical progress, such as increasing bandwidth and continuously reducing cost of data storage. Real-time video broadcasting via the Internet, as did audio broadcasting some times ago, becomes less and less surprising, while the number of people who are using this opportunity is growing. Further development combines home-theatre and Internet systems, allowing users to order any movie on-line and in the future quite possibly develop a story by themselves.

Such evolutions of communication systems have had a direct impact on mobile systems. Mobile phones, smart phones, notebooks and game gadgets stepping on the heels of each other, and trying to wrest a piece of their rivals' or related systems' functionality. Continuing this trend it is quite possible to say that in the future all these devices will merge into one gadget, if not for one "but". Mobile devices show a particularly evident contradiction between usefulness and device dimensions. In order to be easier to use, the mobile device should as small as possible. As a result we are looking at a screen in the best case the size of a playing card and typing by means of 12 keys. A mobile phone is small. In turn, the notebook has a much bigger screen and a keyboard with 101 keys which is helpful to type blindly, but does not fit to the pocket. Engineers are trying to find a compromise solution creating pull-down, movable, twistable and other types of screens and keyboards, but they are not so convenient to use. Such contradictions may be formulated in the tradition of TRIZ [2] – "the system should be large enough to be easy to use, and should be sufficiently small to be easy to carry". At the first glance, this conflict cannot be resolved. Immediately, it comes to mind a screen folded as a newspaper that is being unfolded is either hard to read or hard to use, for example, a keyboard unfolded to roll over the knees or even sewed to trousers (there is even such patent [3]!) Hopefully, it is still possible to resolve such a conflict taking into account that the user needs an image itself, not just a means. That might lead to a small device that is projecting such an image to glasses' lens, or even directly to pupil. In this case the "screen" will became as large as a field of vision. Unlike a virtual reality helmet, such device is incredibly small in size. Furthermore, such compact devices already exist and are even available for the commercial use [4].

The same is happening with the keyboard. Readers can formulate the contradiction for the keyboard themselves. Instead of seeking the compromise between size and usability, it is possible to offer a crucial solution to the problem, namely a virtual keyboard. The device, worn on the wrist, tracks the movement of the fingers and the on-screen display shows where the fingers are now and what key is pressed or released. There are several solutions for that, the simplest one in the form of gloves [5], the other defined by the movement of muscles [6], or using the reflection of laser or sound beams [7]. It is important that hands in the case of the virtual keyboard remain free. For that reason, the mobile computer with a large screen and the keyboard with any number of keys, localizations and layouts may have the same size as mobile phones now. (If necessary, the central processing unit may be on a belt, in a bag, or even in a home wirelessly connected.)

For what other reason, except existing diversity of applications, could this individual mobile computer be used? Perhaps for 3-D broadcasting. Indeed, if our glasses' "monitor" can project separate images for each eye, it skyrockets the Internet to a new, hitherto unattainable level. 3-D movies, news, sport events and concerts – the user will be able to see them as if he directly participated in the event. Changes in software and hardware to provide this will be significant – new video codecs, further increase of bandwidth to provide the quality, editing and playback software.

As is often the case, many ideas seem to be science fiction and no one expect them to appear in the next hundred years. In the case of mobile devices, systems have not only come as ideas but have been already translated into actual devices, though they are not a single system yet. Possibly, the negotiation between separate device vendors and steps towards collaboration would benefit users, and be a new impetus in the development of mobile devices and the Internet.

By Bill Healey

Did you know a small piece of hardware is more important to listening to music on your computer than speakers? That small piece of hardware is called a sound card or audio card and it’s much more important that you think. Sound cards are nifty pieces of hardware that makes all those pretty sounds come from your speakers. Without a sound card, you would never be able to listen to anything.

Uses of sound cards can basically be divided into three main categories: People who want to watch DVDs or listen to music on their computer, those who want to hear every little audio bit of the latest video game, and those people who want who want to make and mix their own music on their computer. All three of these things can be done on your OE soundcard but you’ll be missing out on a lot of sound quality.

The role of audio for your computer is increasing with the popularity of Ipods, music streaming, the digitalization of music and home theater systems being run through PC’s. That’s a lot of music and sound quality to be wasted by using an outdated or overwhelmed soundcard. With all these different uses for your computer, here is a list of the best PC audio cards that you can use for your desktop PC.

1. Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi Platinum – The Creative Company has been involved in the accelerated PC audio hardware market since its beginning. Now, they are one of the last and only companies to offer any type of hardware acceleration in a PC audio card with their latest X-Fi line. Their Platinum model is not the best model around but it does offer a lot of features, including a multimedia remote and an inter-connect box allowing for audio connections on the front your desktop computer.
   
2. Auzentech Xplosion 7.1 - Computers are quickly becoming a major and central component for home entertainment systems. The problem with this is that the majority of PC audio cards use individual audio connectors for each channel instead of a standard digital surround sound standard like Dolby Digital. The Xplosion 7.1 does just that. Its support of Dolby Digital Live allows the card to automatically encode audio from the computer to connect with a home theater Dolby Digital audio receiver for a high quality surround experience.
3. Turtle Beach Montego 7.1 DDL – Much like XPlosion’s audio card, the Montego DDL card supports the Dolby Digital Live for connecting to home theater systems, as well. Unlike the X-Plosion card however, the Montego offers both an input and output optical SPD/IF connectors giving it more flexibility. The prices are about the same as well as the Xplosion with all of the same features, so the choice really comes down to any driver support and connectors that you will need.
4. Creative X-Fi XtremeMusic – This is the one for those looking for high quality computer audio for gaming, movie watching or audio creation but don't need any add-ons which normally come with expensive X-Fi models. It comes with the same audio processor as some of the more expensive models do so it can still perform tasks like sampling rates, surround sound up-mixing, surround simulation and 24-bit Crystalizer. This is without doubt a great choice for those wanting a better feel in their gaming experience.
5. M-Audio Revolution 5.1 - If you’re not looking for any elaborate surround sound support or hardware acceleration but still want a reliable good quality audio card to replace your desktop’s integrated audio solutions, the Revolution 5.1 is perfect for you. This is a great yet inexpensive audio card which works for music, movies and gaming.