Calling all technicians

[Matt]

I figured since I'm asking for info about this subject, I'd put it here.

For anyone who is or knows a PC technician, I am interested in learning more about what they do, as I'm considering making it a career.

For instance,

What must they know overall in order to be successful?
What are the current know-how standards required to be considered for work?
What do you or someone else enjoy most about PC Repair and networking?

I ask these because I am getting a certificate that only requires two semesters of school in order to recieve one. I prefer to implement my education to provide technical repair, as well as customer service and support. Teaching English just isn't enticing to me right now.

[Malakai]

I guess there are several levels of PC techs, but most techs, on the hardware side of things, just replace cpus, motherboards, power supplies, etc. In other words, whole circuit board are replaced rather than taking out a resister, diode, or capacitor, and everything is pretty much plug and play.

Many things 'appear' to be hardware related, like sound cards suddenly not working, etc, but sometimes, there is data loss for whatever reason. Software issues can be hard to diagnose. Do you want to completely wipe a hard drive and replace the OS, taking a chance that it will help solve the problem, when it could be hardware? More importantly, what the client/customer wants has to be taken into account. If they say they have to keep all of their data, you have to make sure they don't lose it.

That goes into something I've never messed with, hard drive recovery. Sometimes, hard drives crash but can still be used, either with problems or by re-installing the OS. Other times, the hard drive may crash and refuse to boot up or work at all, and if the client has important information on that hard drive, it's your job to salvage what you can.

On the hardware side of things, like I said, everything is plug and play. The problem with most motherboards and computers today is that everything is integrated. Sound, video, ethernet, wifi, just about everything is on a single board. Many boards have little or no PCI, PCI express, or AGP slots now days. So, if sound goes out, you replace the whole motherboard. If the video goes out, you replace the motherboard. If ethernet or wifi go out, you may be able to get by with a USB ethernet or wifi adapter.

In the DOS days, most people went to technicians to have their PCs fixed. Every piece to the computer was expensive. An integrated motherboard back then was one that had an IDE (hard drive), floppy drive controller, and I/O board on board, the coup de gras if you will. Most motherboards, you had to buy those things separately. You had to use drivers that came with larger hard drives, to 'trick' your bios into letting you use the full hard drive capacity. You had to manually set the IRQ address and com ports on individual components. From the DOS til the windows '98 days, you could make a lot of money as a PC tech and web builder. Now days, it's easier and cheaper for the average computer user to do, and there is a lot more competition in the marketplace. Good luck.

[Matt]

Thanks for the info. I'm devoting the rest of the year to computer studies, so I hope to land something good by New Year's. I get the impression that having a certificate/diploma/degree/BS barely passes the "ten-second hiring manager's glance" test.

Not to mention most applications are screened for key words. This is where Word 2010, a website, and a thesaurus might come in handy. I know what I'm up against, but I enjoy working with technology. So, that makes the challenge to find work even more worthwhile.