[svlug] Open Source Geek Squad Alternative

[Alvin Oga]

> John Conover wrote:
> 
> Bill Kendrick writes:
> > 
> > It's not a business, and not in the Silicon Valley, but the
> > Linux Users' Group of Davis (LUGOD) has the "Linux Emergency Relief Team"
> > (LERT, a pun on CERT):

that is a good thing to do .. to learn ... since its volunteer based

however, one can't make a living with volunteering if one doesn't have
the other half with a trust fund to pay for daily hamburgers and beer
and silly gas at $99/barrel

> Linux machines can be remotely administrated, too, (since the system
> was designed to run headless/handless.)

and its also designed to run brainless as is the case when one goes
to see broken machines that needs fixing

> Of course, if there is HW problems or the machine won't boot, there
> would be travel required.
 
that's when you tell the secretary on the other end of the phone
to stick the removable "bootable usb-stick" in and you should be able 
to boot it back to life to remotely fix the problem

and if you're the unlucky, the bios, when shipped by tom-dick-harry-inc
would not be configured to boot off usb-stick

otherwise, traveling to far away countries would not be feasable 
to fix hardware problems...

	my rule ...
	- if you have hardware problems for machines less than 3-5 years,
	than you are buying the wrong hardware from the wrong people !!

> There is an opportunity for a biz, there.

definitely ... and do-able ... but its not for the average "me too"
that spends 90% of their time on windoze or fixing email/printer/web problems

too many people can fix windoze email/printer/web server problems
and do it for $10/mon fixed pricing or some randomly $$ amt

volunteers is another class of competitors but they're not really
competitors since they do it for fun, not for a living

c ya
alvin