On 31 Jul 2012 00:29:45 GMT, Allodoxaphobia
wrote:

On Mon, 30 Jul 2012 09:25:32 -0700, Jeff Liebermann wrote:

When I tear apart someone's laptop, I like to take photos of the parts
of the laptop scattered all over my workbench. Showing the customer a
photo of their precious machine in pieces somehow enhances my ability
to charge a fair amount for the time and effort involved.

Sometimes, I use the photo as wallpaper on their machine.

This I like!! Way kewl!

It's one of the many jokes I use to keep me insane errr... sane. If
the customer asks about the wallpaper photo, I declare that it's the
internal web camera giving them a real time photo of the inside of
their laptop. Nobody has fallen for that yet, but several customers
have taken up to 30 seconds to finally decide that I was lying.

For customers that have problems paying my exorbitant rates, I
sometimes use a copy of the invoice as wallpaper.

Another fun trick is do a screen capture of the normal desktop, and
save it as a JPG file. I use this captured picture as the wallpaper
image. In XP, right click on the desktop, select "Arrange Icons By",
and uncheck "Show Desktop Icons'. When the user tries to do something
on their desktop with the mouse, nothing happens.

When I replace a hard disk drive, the customer invariably asks about
the condition of the recovered data and if anything was lost. I
reassure them that nothing was lost, and then hand them a shinny
aluminum platter from a disassembled drive while announcing "here's
your data".

More seriously, I've made it a point of photographically documenting
all repairs that require disassembling the machine. I've had issues
proving that the work was actually done, and whether removable options
(RAM, plug in cards, PCMCIA, power supplies, etc) were delivered with
the machine for repair. A few photos usually settle such debates. It
might also be handy if I'm sued, but that hasn't happened.


--
# Jeff Liebermann 150 Felker St #D Santa Cruz CA 95060
# 831-336-2558
# http://802.11junk.com
# http://www.LearnByDestroying.com AE6KS