Authors: Karen Mills
Today, I’m traveling with the President’s Council on Jobs and Competitiveness in
and
WebBrowserPassView – Recover Passwords from Web Browsers
Authors: Bryce Whitty
WebBrowserPassView is a small, portable and freeware utility designed to recover passwords from:
- Internet Explorer (Version 4.0 – 9.0)
- Mozilla Firefox (All Versions)
- Google Chrome
- Opera
Once WebBrowserPassView has gathered all the passwords from the various browsers, it displays them in a single table with the URL the password was saved for, what browser it was saved in and of course the username and password.
From there, you can save it as a TXT file, export the table as HTML and more. This product was created by Nirsoft and in true Nirsoft fashion, the application is very easy to incorporate into scripts due to its excellent command line support.
This utility works on any version of Windows, starting from Windows 2000, and up to Windows 7, including 64-bit systems.
Note: Due to the hacking/password revealing nature of this application. Some antivirus products will detect it as malware or a hacking tool. You can view the VirusTotal.com report here.
Screenshots:
Downloads:
Download from Official Site – 204kb
© Technibble – A Resource for Computer Technicians to start or improve their Computer Business
To get started with your own computer business, check out our Computer Business Kit. WebBrowserPassView – Recover Passwords from Web Browsers
Free Forums at National Small Business Week
Authors: Karen Mills
We’re gearing up for National Small Business Week, which is May 18 through 20. This year’s theme is “Empowering Entrepreneurs.” That’s exactly what we want to
National IT Warranty Companies – The Good and the Bad
Authors: Bryce Whitty
National IT & Warranty companies allow businesses access to a huge range of IT Professionals from all over the country. This means more work for us Computer Technicians, but some National IT & Warranty companies also have a dark side. In this article I would like to talk about dealing with "Nationals" and what to watch out for.
There are generally two types of Nationals. National IT Services allow businesses such as your own to hire Computer Technicians in other states, expanding their reach. The other type are National Warranty providers where a company can send you out to fulfill their warranty obligations. A typical client of a National Warranty provider would be a very large business that has warranty obligations to fulfill such as Staples. Staples primary focuses on office supplies but they also sell computers and peripherals. They don’t want to maintain a network of their own technicians across the country so they outsource this work to a National.
Nationals acting as the middle men will then refer work to a technician who is geographically close to the location of the work and take a cut of the profit.
The obvious benefit of this to Computer Technicians is that we have work sent our way. It really sounds like it is win-win for all parties and I know some technicians who have had success with them. However, it doesn’t always work out that way. The good ones are good and the bad ones can be really bad. Here are some of the reasons that make the bad ones bad:
Lowballin’
A large problem with the National companies is that many of them allow the client to set the rate of the work that needs to be done. The rate is often so low than no legitimate Computer Business would waste their time accepting it. You would believe that the market would sort itself out when no one accepts the lowball jobs and forces the client to pay a higher price. However, this is often not the case as inexperienced and possibly unqualified technicians accept the work.
The client gets work done cheaply and continues to post lowball jobs driving technicians with real overheads out of the Nationals marketplace.
My Monitor Has A Virus
When a client needs some work done, the job gets put the onto the Nationals marketplace for techs to snap up or the National might even directly call a technician who is in the area. The client wants the work done at a price they specify and its up to the technician to either accept or reject the work.
The real danger here is the diagnosis of the initial problem. Have you ever had a client say that their computer has a virus only for you to go onsite and find out that it was a blown power supply? In most cases, the client’s initial diagnosis was wrong.
When you are working for yourself and are being paid on an hourly basis, this is not a problem. You simply tell the client that the problem seems to be X and is not a virus. You let them know the costs of fixing X, get the go-ahead and fix the problem.
When you work for a National you have agreed to do a certain job at a certain rate, even though that is obviously not the issue. In some cases you can get approval to fix whatever needs to be done, but with some Nationals you are just the grunt who needs to do what they say.
In some cases, the person with the failing hardware had to call a support line who diagnosed the issue over the phone and then sent you out with the appropriate parts. The diagnosis might be a little more accurate but it is still possible that they are wrong. The whole back and forth, getting approval and getting parts can get ugly.
Getting Paid
I have heard horror stories where technicians have gone onsite to do a very specific task with parts in hand, find out that the diagnosis was incorrect and are unable to fix the problem. Since the problem wasn’t fixed, the client isn’t going to pay the National and in turn the National isn’t going to pay you, even though you did exactly as they asked.
I have also heard of other payment horror stories where they take months to pay you and make you jump through all sorts of hoops. This is possibly a cash flow issue on their end.
So Should I Avoid National Service Providers?
I don’t believe you should avoid National Service Providers entirely. I know of many technicians who have used them to fill slow times in the day. Apparently, If you have a very specific qualification you might be able to avoid the majority of the issues I have pointed out in this article. If you are the only person in a certain area that is qualified to do a certain job, then you can call the shots and set the price you want.
The trick with working for Nationals is to build your business with your own clients and use the Nationals during slower times. If you don’t rely on them, you have the power to say “Pay my rate and I am happy to do the work. If not, see ya later”.
If you are doing some work with them for the first time, do not accept a large job to begin with and do not accept any more work until they have paid you for your first callout. Many technicians have had problems getting paid by certain Nationals.
If you need some work and want to do a job for a National, always research them first by searching for terms such as:
[name] scam
[name] complaints
Also search for the name of the National (or even just the word “nationals” using the search box in the top right corner of the Technibble site.
I would have listed the names of some of the better known Nationals here in this article but some of the mainstream ones have so many complaints against them that I wouldn’t dare mention them. So, I am going to send this question out to the Technibble community.
Which National’s have you worked for? Which ones were the best and which ones were the worst? Please leave us a comment in the form below.
As always, you do not need to sign up to leave a comment and you can even do so anonymously. Email/RSS readers will need to visit the site in order to leave comment.
© Technibble – A Resource for Computer Technicians to start or improve their computer business
To get started with your own computer business, check out our Computer Business Kit. National IT & Warranty Companies – The Good and the Bad
National IT Warranty Companies – The Good and the Bad
Authors: Bryce Whitty
National IT & Warranty companies allow businesses access to a huge range of IT Professionals from all over the country. This means more work for us Computer Technicians, but some National IT & Warranty companies also have a dark side. In this article I would like to talk about dealing with "Nationals" and what to watch out for.
There are generally two types of Nationals. National IT Services allow businesses such as your own to hire Computer Technicians in other states, expanding their reach. The other type are National Warranty providers where a company can send you out to fulfill their warranty obligations. A typical client of a National Warranty provider would be a very large business that has warranty obligations to fulfill such as Staples. Staples primary focuses on office supplies but they also sell computers and peripherals. They don’t want to maintain a network of their own technicians across the country so they outsource this work to a National.
Nationals acting as the middle men will then refer work to a technician who is geographically close to the location of the work and take a cut of the profit.
The obvious benefit of this to Computer Technicians is that we have work sent our way. It really sounds like it is win-win for all parties and I know some technicians who have had success with them. However, it doesn’t always work out that way. The good ones are good and the bad ones can be really bad. Here are some of the reasons that make the bad ones bad:
Lowballin’
A large problem with the National companies is that many of them allow the client to set the rate of the work that needs to be done. The rate is often so low than no legitimate Computer Business would waste their time accepting it. You would believe that the market would sort itself out when no one accepts the lowball jobs and forces the client to pay a higher price. However, this is often not the case as inexperienced and possibly unqualified technicians accept the work.
The client gets work done cheaply and continues to post lowball jobs driving technicians with real overheads out of the Nationals marketplace.
My Monitor Has A Virus
When a client needs some work done, the job gets put the onto the Nationals marketplace for techs to snap up or the National might even directly call a technician who is in the area. The client wants the work done at a price they specify and its up to the technician to either accept or reject the work.
The real danger here is the diagnosis of the initial problem. Have you ever had a client say that their computer has a virus only for you to go onsite and find out that it was a blown power supply? In most cases, the client’s initial diagnosis was wrong.
When you are working for yourself and are being paid on an hourly basis, this is not a problem. You simply tell the client that the problem seems to be X and is not a virus. You let them know the costs of fixing X, get the go-ahead and fix the problem.
When you work for a National you have agreed to do a certain job at a certain rate, even though that is obviously not the issue. In some cases you can get approval to fix whatever needs to be done, but with some Nationals you are just the grunt who needs to do what they say.
In some cases, the person with the failing hardware had to call a support line who diagnosed the issue over the phone and then sent you out with the appropriate parts. The diagnosis might be a little more accurate but it is still possible that they are wrong. The whole back and forth, getting approval and getting parts can get ugly.
Getting Paid
I have heard horror stories where technicians have gone onsite to do a very specific task with parts in hand, find out that the diagnosis was incorrect and are unable to fix the problem. Since the problem wasn’t fixed, the client isn’t going to pay the National and in turn the National isn’t going to pay you, even though you did exactly as they asked.
I have also heard of other payment horror stories where they take months to pay you and make you jump through all sorts of hoops. This is possibly a cash flow issue on their end.
So Should I Avoid National Service Providers?
I don’t believe you should avoid National Service Providers entirely. I know of many technicians who have used them to fill slow times in the day. Apparently, If you have a very specific qualification you might be able to avoid the majority of the issues I have pointed out in this article. If you are the only person in a certain area that is qualified to do a certain job, then you can call the shots and set the price you want.
The trick with working for Nationals is to build your business with your own clients and use the Nationals during slower times. If you don’t rely on them, you have the power to say “Pay my rate and I am happy to do the work. If not, see ya later”.
If you are doing some work with them for the first time, do not accept a large job to begin with and do not accept any more work until they have paid you for your first callout. Many technicians have had problems getting paid by certain Nationals.
If you need some work and want to do a job for a National, always research them first by searching for terms such as:
[name] scam
[name] complaints
Also search for the name of the National (or even just the word “nationals” using the search box in the top right corner of the Technibble site.
I would have listed the names of some of the better known Nationals here in this article but some of the mainstream ones have so many complaints against them that I wouldn’t dare mention them. So, I am going to send this question out to the Technibble community.
Which National’s have you worked for? Which ones were the best and which ones were the worst? Please leave us a comment in the form below.
As always, you do not need to sign up to leave a comment and you can even do so anonymously. Email/RSS readers will need to visit the site in order to leave comment.
© Technibble – A Resource for Computer Technicians to start or improve their Computer Business
To get started with your own computer business, check out our Computer Business Kit. National IT & Warranty Companies – The Good and the Bad
Conference focuses on government, corporate business for diverse suppliers
Authors: Mitalis
By Allison Bruce
Posted April 18, 2011
What: Power Your Business diversity conference<br
Entrepreneurs Share Keys to Success in “America’s Best” Video Series
Authors: Karen Mills
We’re constantly working to ensure that small businesses with big potential have the support they need to scale up and create hundreds – or thousands – of jobs.
RESULTS: What Do You Think Of Registry Cleaners?
Authors: Bryce Whitty
In my last post I asked the question “What do you think of Registry Cleaners?” and the community spoke. At the time of writing this there were 164 responses and after taking out the discussion comments (where they didnt say one way or the other), here are the results:
There were 86 Yes’s with 66 of those recommending CCleaner. 22 No’s and 9 Unsure’s.
The majority of the people who answered Yes said that they make use of a registry cleaner in most system cleanup jobs and they mostly use CCleaner. Glary Utilities also got a few mentions.
Those who said No consider registry cleaners as modern day snake oil or find its just better to work on the specific issue rather than a scattergun approach.
Those who were unsure typically hasn’t really been proven either way or they are unsure of any speed improvements after using one.
Lets look a little deeper into each answer:
Yes, I use registry cleaners
The registry is a large and complex database of information and there is no doubt that after a while there will be many entries left behind by applications that have since been removed. Less entries means a smaller registry and therefor makes it load faster right?
I spent some time looking for a study from a reliable source on the performance improvements of registry cleaners, but I couldnt find any. I could definitely find many sites talking about the benefits of a registry cleaner, but those sites are either directly selling a registry cleaning product or its a third party site that is making a commission for every registry cleaner product they sell.
One of the few trusted sources I could find was from Mark Russinovich’s blog. Mark is a widely recognized expert in the Windows operating system internals as well as operating system architecture and design. You might have heard Mark Russinovich before as he is the creator of Process Explorer and Autoruns.
On Marks blog, he said:
A few hundred kilobytes of unused keys and values causes no noticeable performance impact on system operation, but I figured it was natural for a Registry cleaner to be an essential part of running a tight ship for the anal retentive systems administrator.
So reducing the size of the registry by removing unneeded entries probably wont speed up the system, as Mark said, removing these entries would only reduce the size of the registry by a few hundred kilobytes.
But what about the contents of the registry keys? not so much the amount of space they take but the fact they are referencing a missing file? I expect there would be some speed improvements there, but I really couldn’t find any data from reliable sources proving this.
Wikipedia had something to say about it. While you cannot ever fully trust Wikipedia due to the fact that it is volunteer based, it is usually pretty good.
From Wikipedia:
Metrics of performance benefit
On Windows 9x computers, it was possible that a very large registry could slow down the computer’s startup time. However this is far less of an issue with NT-based operating systems (including Windows XP and Vista) due to a different on-disk structure of the registry, improved memory management and indexing. Slowdown due to registry bloat is thus far less of an issue in modern versions of Windows. Defragmenting the registry files (e.g. using a Microsoft-supported tool such as PageDefrag), has likewise been de-emphasized due to this increased efficiency, and is largely an automated process under Vista.
Are Computer Technicians following old information? Are we doing something we have always done but never actually tested it on a modern system? The comments left in the previous article were overwhelmingly in favor of registry cleaners, so there is definitely something there.
No, I dont use registry cleaners
Much of the hate towards registry cleaners seems to have been caused by the many questionable products out there with advertisements saying that “You have 1000 critical errors with your registry. Press OK to fix it now”.
This is known as “Scareware” and even if you believe in good products like CCleaner, you can understand why people believe that registry scanners are modern day snake oil with this kind of advertising going on.
Some of the nay sayers also mentioned that most technicians dont fully understand the Windows registry and unless you know what you are doing, you cannot trust an automated program to do it for you. This is good advice. If you use a registry cleaner such as CCleaner or Glary Utilities, take a look through the list of what it is going to do and untick things you arent sure about. Dont use it indiscriminately and before you do any work with the registry, always back it up beforehand with something like ERUNT.
I am not sure
Some of the “I am not sure” responses said they do use registry cleaners but cannot see any obvious speed improvements, but it doesn’t hurt to do it anyway.
Other “I am not sure” responses said they weren’t sure because there aren’t any studies to back it up so they cannot make an informed decision.
In conclusion, the majority of the commenter’s do use them and when they do its usually CCleaner. I am personally in the “Not sure” camp since I haven’t seen any research to prove it one way or the other. The only time I dive into the registry to do something specific like a registry tweak or removing remnants of Malware, but thats about it. Anyway, a big thank you to all who commented!
© Technibble – A Resource for Computer Technicians to start or improve their computer business
To get started with your own computer business, check out our Computer Business Kit. RESULTS: What Do You Think Of Registry Cleaners?