(Update) – We received new pics of the students with the laptops, skip to the bottom to see them.

In the wake of the devastating earthquake in Haiti last year, over one million people in Haiti are homeless.  In the face of tragedy, some brave people like Serena Clayton from the California School Health Centers Association (a client of ours) manage to step up and make a difference.

Serena approached us a few weeks ago to ask if we could help refurbish some donated laptops (PC and Mac) so she could personally deliver them to a needy school in Haiti (one of her many volunteer trips to the country).  We proudly refurbished 5 laptops for the school to use, complete with fresh installations of the operating system, antivirus, and various free tools for the kids and teachers to use.

You can read more about the school (Kenscoff Heart of Worship School), the teacher (Robenson Cesar) and Serena’s experiences in Haiti here.

Update: Here are the new pics of the kids with the laptops:

You can find us at

2093 Rose Street
Berkeley, CA 94709

Come by and see our new location, pick up a free mousepad, or drop your computer off for repair!

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Our data recovery services cost from $50 (easy fixes) to $150 (our full price for data recovery).  We’ve saved all sorts of valuable data for our customers from family pictures to critical business documents.  If we can’t save your data, we can refer you to a “clean room” specialist company like DriveSavers, with a special Computer Courage discount (you’ll need that discount, as clean room recovery starts at around $750 but can get data even we can’t).

Give us a call, send an email to info@computercourage.com, or come on by our Berkeley office for all your data recovery needs.

Mozy was one of the first giants in the game of online backup, and the first one that Computer Courage strongly recommended.  Over the years, their prices have gone up, and their service has failed to evolve with the competition.

If you’re looking for a new backup service, we highly recommend CrashPlan.  These guys provide an excellent modern approach to backup with free options for backing up locally to a hard drive, paid options for backing up online (including an unlimited option), advanced email reporting, versions (like Time Machine), and more.  Check it out and let us know if you want help setting it up.

Computer Courage is proud to announce that we were ranked the number one “Computer Services” company in the East Bay and the number four company in the whole Bay Area in SFGate.com’s “Best of the Bay List“.

See the results page here.  The top 3 companies are all San Francisco based, as you can see.

This list is completely vote-based, which means you guys made this happen!

Computer Courage has always been dedicated to providing outstanding customer service.  That’s what got us our great yelp reviews.  I’d like to thank everyone who voted for us and express our humility and appreciation.  Word of mouth has always been critical to our success.  Thank you!

Here’s how to switch from AVG Free Edition to Microsoft Security Essentials (also free).  Further explanation of why we recommend switching is below.

1. Uninstall AVG Free Edition.  You can do this by going to your Control Panel, then “Add/Remove Programs”.  Select “AVG Free Edition” from the list and click Remove.
2. You may need to reboot the computer after this.
3. Next, download and run the AVG Remover.  You can get it here.  This cleans out all traces of AVG from your system.
4. Now download and install Microsoft Security Essentials from here.  The install couldn’t be simpler.  Be sure to let it do a full scan after it installs.

Here’s more details about why we recommend Microsoft Security Essentials.

Free antivirus may sound “too good to be true”, but it’s not.  For years, companies like Avira and AVG have been giving out free antivirus to consumers.  How do they do it?  Usually, free antivirus exists as a “gateway” to get you to buy more expensive products such as internet security suites (which we don’t recommend for most consumers).  Instead of spending money on advertising, or on getting trial software preloaded on new PCs, some antivirus makers found that offering free basic protection to millions allowed them to sell expensive “enhanced” protection to tens of thousands.

This model is fine, but AVG has gone too far with it.  Starting with version 9, the product which was once lightweight and simple has become overburdened with unnecessary and slowing features.  Where AVG used to gently recommend a paid version of their product, they now push the paid version too aggressively, with questionable tactics such as unnecessarily complicated upgrades which often confuse the user into paying.

The good news is, Microsoft has released a free antivirus, and it’s different.  Microsoft is not trying to sell you an upgraded version, they are simply protecting the reputation of their operating system.  Their new product is fast and lightweight, without the popups, system drain, and confusion that bogs down other free and paid antivirus programs. It works exceedingly well.  While the world of antivirus changes from month to month, we’re happy to recommend Microsoft Security Essentials as the optimum choice for most home users (for now).

This is a quick message to our base of loyal customers and supporters, reminding you that if you are satisfied with our service, there’s a quick and easy way to help us grow.  Our first two years have been an absolute pleasure.  We’ve been able to help people and businesses use their computers effectively, boost their business with websites, and get help in computer emergencies.  Our customers have always been our first priority; as you know we really value the human interactions and the personal side of computing – we love to help people and to resolve problems.

Over the last few years, we’ve received some really wonderful feedback.  People have been very kind to respond with feedback about our service, our technicians, our web sites, and our attention to detail.  If you’ve had a similar experience, we would love it if you would share with the world through Yelp.com (or other review sites.)  As you all know, Yelp.com is a business review site, and it’s a force that can make or break businesses in today’s economy.  In just 5 minutes, you can sign up for a Yelp account and write a review for Computer Courage.  We’ve had two wonderful reviews so far (both 5 stars, though one was inexplicably deleted by Yelp.)  In order to compete, we need more!

Our Yelp listing is at http://www.yelp.com/biz/computer-courage-berkeley.  Please give us a review when you can!

You can sign up for an account and write a Yelp review on the spot.  Any help is greatly appreciated!

Thank you,
Adam Schwartz and the Computer Courage Team

Computer Courage, a computer services company in the San Francisco Bay Area, is offering this blog to customers and friends who want to stay informed about current computer issues.  Computer Courage provides IT services and computer support to home and business users, as well as web design and search engine optimization.  www.computercourage.com