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My coworker and I decided to perform an experiment. For six weeks we called computer repair shops across the US and Canada and asked them what features they would like to see in hardware diagnostic tools. We received a wide range of feedback from you guys. Some used words not appropriate for this blog, one guy invited me to be a guest speaker on his
radio show and several of you used the phone call as a forum to vent about some man in Redmond, Washington. The majority of the technicians we contacted did have questions--the same three questions, actually.
1. "Why Would I Need Hardware Diagnostic Tools? I've Been Fixing Computers for Twenty Years!"
I heard this statement a lot. It was often followed by a grumble, or perhaps a dial tone. The answer may not be obvious, but understanding the value of hardware diagnostics will save a technician time, money, and frustration. As we all know, operating systems are more complex than they used to be. Determining whether an issue is an actual hardware problem or a software problem has become increasingly difficult. For example, a system can have random blue-screens in Windows and yet the dump file doesn't have any specific information as to the problem. Is it hardware or is it a software problem? In one particular case, a portion of the memory was bad and had not been detected in the Windows OS because the OS was masking the problem. It was only when DOS diagnostics were run to completely verify the system that the faulty memory location was identified. Twenty years of experience in fixing computers could never identify this problem!
2. "I'm already using free tools I downloaded off the web, or some other product. Why should I pay for yours?"
Because I said so. Really, there are lots of reasons. I'll explain a few.
- Simply put, we are the market leader. No other diagnostic company ships more diagnostic licenses than PC-Doctor. We ship more than 1 million licenses per month and, according to a recent report, own more than 50% market share. Our Service Center product is based on the same software that the world�s largest OEMs ship on more than a million PCs every month. That means we create builds every day that big companies like IBM, HP, Lenovo, Fujitsu and others use in manufacturing, support and service environments. Hence, we are able to refresh ourService Center product with the most up-to-date, reliable diagnostics. For example, we have supported the Vista OS since its release. No other diagnostic product/company has announced native support forVista.
- We are more economical. Leaving accuracy and currency aside, products that compete with Service Center cost anywhere from $200 to $800 more.
- We are more accurate. We test on dozens of systems and against scores of leading components from the world's leading PC manufacturers and component manufacturers before their products are released to our customers. We have a large QA (Quality Assurance) lab with more than 100 systems. Additionally, through our CHV (Certified Hardware Vendor) program, we work directly with the major component manufacturers to assure diagnostic accuracy for their devices.
- That brings up another point:. "Wait, then how are your products better than the diagnostics I currently get from OEMs?"
While OEMs write diagnostics specifically for their hardware components, they are not able to effectively write diagnostics for all hardware components. We have acquired vast experience through working with numerous OEMs and component vendors. That gives us a better overall hardware diagnostic vision.<
- "What could be wrong with free diagnostics offered on the web?"
Besides legal implications that have been occurring lately, you do not know the expertise of the person or people writing these. It's just risky.
3. "Most of our issues are software related. How can we justify the cost of hardware diagnostics?"
To quickly and easily determine if you have a hardware problem. I'll give you an example. A large test instrument manufacturer had a problem which the software engineers were saying was a hardware issue. They were able to run PC-Doctor diagnostics for a couple of hours on burn-in and everything passed. They went back to the software engineer and said the hardware passed. The engineer, knowing how accurate and reliable PC-Doctor diagnostics are, was receptive and found the problem with their code. You will probably save the entire cost of the software the first time you quickly run our diagnostics and prove it's not a hardware issue.
With that said, we learned a lot from you guys during this experiment and welcome your feedback regarding new features and functionality.
