Summer weather – in full effect around the nation – here in the Pacific Northwest we’re having a heat wave. Along with other things like Gramma and Grampa, we need to check our computers for overheating and prevent problems down the road. We’ve seen overheating bring up problems like hard drive errors, power supply problems and all-out failures. It’s important for your computer equipment to be able to dissipate that heat properly. First of all the obvious answer – if it doesn’t need to be on, turn it off. The simplest answer is usually the best but often just not possible. Check the location of your case – is it in a closed area like the bottom of your desk? Make sure it has enough airflow around it. You don’t need a fan pointed at it, but make sure any hot air that comes out of the computer case isn’t trapped in and cycling around to the air intakes. Speaking of intakes – are they clean? A modern case and computer is a delicate balance of space and airflow. An intake clogged with dust can cut off up to 50% of the airflow to expensive parts within. Use a canned air blower to open the ports, or a vacuum cleaner to get rid of the dust. We offer service as well for heat issues – improving airflow in custom cases, cleaning inside and out – get ready for the heat!
We also service those of you who waited too long - full computer repair; diagnosis, repair and recovery of your data!
A smaller web hosting company can be an alternative to the “big box” hosting companies available nationwide. Although the larger hosting companies boast of unlimited bandwidth, unlimited disk space, etc. Do you need massive amount of disk space or do you need customer support and help optimizing your site? Having that massive space isn’t going to help when your company doesn’t show up in the search engines week after week. What will help? Having a person on the other end of e-mail or a phone call, to guide you through what your next steps are and what to watch out for. When you e-mail a support question do you get a form letter back that has no specifics to your problem? For your business or personal web venture – that’s not going to work.
Here’s where a smaller web company can help you. A smaller web company generally has the same amount of bandwidth available for your traffic. The limiting factor for them is usually disk space. With enough disk space available overall a larger company can over-sell the resource – much like an airline oversells seats on the next flight. You’re not the only person on that web server – in a larger company they over-sell those too – that next person is going to be taking up disk space and traffic as well. What happens when they take too much? You and your website suffer. Will the larger company notice or will they wait until you say something? Maybe you should pay more money and get their monitoring package? Where’s your money savings now? A smaller hosting company has it’s advantages here – they’re more invested in an individual customer. Whether that customer is a business or a personal website, they’re looking out for it. Not overselling means when you purchase your package, you’re purchasing an agreement for a certain amount of resources. If you only need 10 gigabytes of space you only pay for that amount – and no other customer will be putting it in danger.
Personal web support comes from a smaller web hosting company as well. Larger web hosting companies rely on web-support systems that take your incoming e-mail and look for keywords – when it finds enough keywords it will reply with a link to a support document or with a canned response. We’ve all gotten these before – do they really work for us? If we’re having a simple problem, sure – but that’s not likely to happen very often. Generally, problems come up and they’re a simple problem with a twist. My website works – except for my comments page, or maybe your blog area is posting, but not responding when you try and view it. These are the most common types of web support issues – ones that are best helped with human interaction.
Smaller web hosts don’t have the keywords you were told to look for “unlimited everything”. They do have what you need though – unlimited customer service.