Good Neighbor Podcast: Bergen
Bringing together local businesses and neighbors of Bergen County
Good Neighbor Podcast: Bergen
Ep # 130 The Engineer Next Door: Making Tech Support Human Again
Ever feel like your computer is deliberately trying to sabotage your day? You're not alone. In this conversation with tech expert Andy Blecher, we uncover the surprisingly simple solutions to those maddening computer problems that leave most of us ready to throw our laptops out the window.
Andy shares the journey that led him to create Top Tier Computer Support after witnessing countless people struggle with basic tech issues. "These are the simple things that seem so huge because you get so frustrated," he explains, describing the common pain points like disappearing documents, failed printing attempts, and mysterious error messages that plague everyday users. With 25 years of professional experience in the tech industry, Andy brings engineer-level expertise directly to consumers without the frustrating tier system that makes most tech support so unbearable.
One revelation that might change your daily habits: your computer needs sleep just like you do. "When you don't sleep, you don't perform well," Andy explains, describing how leaving your computer running continuously virtually guarantees problems like printing failures. He also demystifies technical aspects like RAM requirements (16-32GB is now standard), browser performance (Chrome is notoriously memory-hungry), and when you actually need to upgrade your equipment (less often than you might think).
Whether you're a tech novice or comfortable with computers, Andy's practical wisdom and refreshingly straightforward approach will save you time and frustration. Need help with those seemingly small but incredibly disruptive tech issues? Visit toptiercomputersupport.com or call 855-466-8000 to experience support that gets to the point without the runaround.
Top Tier Computer Support
Andy Blecher
Mahwah, NJ
(845) 494 7997
info@toptiercomputersupport.com
toptiercomputersupport.com
This is the Good Neighbor Podcast, the place where local businesses and neighbors come together. Here's your host, Doug Drohan.
Speaker 2:Hey everybody, welcome to another episode of the Good Neighbor Podcast. I am your host, doug Drohan, brought to you by the Bergen Neighbors Media Group. I am coming to you from a computer that I never turn off at night, and we are joined by Andy Blecher, the owner of Top Tier Computer Support, who's going to tell me why that's a problem and a mistake. Andy, welcome to the show.
Speaker 3:Thanks, doug, good to be here.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so we'll get into why I should put my computer to sleep every night and give it time to rejuvenate, so tell. But, uh, so tell me a little bit. You know you have a company called top tier computer support, so, uh, you know a thing or two about computers. Like, how long have you been in? Uh, I guess we'll call it the tech world.
Speaker 3:Uh, professionally, about between 20 and 25 years. Um, I've been dabbling in it since, I guess, 93, 94. Okay, and there was a first career out of college for radio which lasted about 10 years, and then I had to figure out what I wanted to do to to actually have a career.
Speaker 2:So you do have a radio voice, so well, I could have been.
Speaker 3:Chuck, there you go. So yeah, but yeah, this is a. This is actually a lot more satisfying, and why is that?
Speaker 2:The problem-solving aspect of it.
Speaker 2:Okay, helping folks out who find it extremely daunting. Yeah, I mean, you know, when I took a computer class, I was showing my son actually who's 11, what a modem looked like for the fax machine back in the day, where you had to take your phone and put the you know the receiver in a modem, in this little box where the two sides went in I don't know what you call it hearing and speaking and it ran on phone lines, because the way they could analog and digital spoke to each other you had to use a phone line and, uh, somebody called your phone while you were trying to transmit something. You were you know kind of stunk. And what I was really surprised to see when I was doing that research with him was that it really wasn't until the 90s and 2000s, when broadband and everything started to come about, that we stopped using those kind of you know phone lines to transmit data.
Speaker 3:Sure, it went from phone lines to DSL and then finally to broadband.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So you know, when I took a computer class basic, that was in the 1980s and it was a little different back then. Punch cards, yeah.
Speaker 3:Yeah, my son was asking me what does Microsoft do? And I had to explain Word and Excel and all that. But so how did? Why did you get into? Like, what intrigued you about computers?
Speaker 3:Well, it was, it was obviously it was, it was a choice really when I was at a crossroads between going to law school or going into IT, and law school at that point was just going to be just undoable. Not for the price, but just the fact that it's three years, you can't work. And it was just at that point now. So it was it. I already knew quite a bit about it. So I went back to school uh, network security and administration and uh, and I went from there, my first jobs in new york city just really getting my feet wet.
Speaker 3:they sent me all over the place. I had to start figuring things out right away. Then moved up, I got to be a network engineer and now I'm running an IT infrastructure at a global company, while getting this company off the ground. So it really got to where. Even though all the side clients that I've had over the years between residential and business I found that more people were getting distraught over the simple things. Why is my internet so slow? Why is my printer not printing? Why do I have this error? Where's this tab on my browser? Why did it disappear? What happened to my favorites? Why? Why do I have this error? Where's this tab on my browser? Why did it disappear? What happened to my favorites? Why can't I email this attachment?
Speaker 2:What happened to that document I was working on. It disappeared.
Speaker 3:Right, exactly when did it go? I've been working on it all day and now, oh my God, what am I going to do? Yeah, so it finally just got to me with a client of mine sometime last year We'll call him Lenny, because that's his name he had that very same thing. He went nuts, he was working on a deal all day and he couldn't get this Excel file to mail. He was going to blow the whole deal. So he called me up. He says can you connect to my computer? Yeah, absolutely. He was trying to blow the whole deal. So he called me up. He says can you connect to my computer? Yeah, absolutely. So he was trying to mail a shortcut. He didn't realize the difference between the shortcut and the actual document.
Speaker 3:So I showed him, asked him how his family was doing so, on and so forth, and he was able to email the document. They made the deal. He called me back, he was more thankful than anything and it just dawned on me at that point wait a second, these are the simple things. These are the things that all the folks that I know in other management companies IT management companies don't even want to deal with. They feel it's big with them. They'll put you on hold. You have to go to tier one, two, tier three, like like anybody, do you?
Speaker 2:who likes that, nobody, nobody likes that, right so uh instead of going to tier two and tier three, they can go to top tier, top tier, and I was.
Speaker 3:The whole idea, for that was I was explaining it to my love. We were just driving around and I said I, I just it's, it's crazy. I feel so bad for all these people because it's just it. I, I understand how to do it all. I've seen it a billion times. It's only to a printer problem. That could be maybe two or three reasons why, and that's it. So uh, there's gotta be a way from way from for for me to get it out there that people don't have to go to to level one or top one or she says well, why don't you call it tier, top tier?
Speaker 3:I said that's a wonderful idea, wonderful. And then so we, we, we put the whole idea together, we put out there that it's for the simple, the simple things that seem so huge because you get so frustrated by these little things. There's some, there's some place to go now for it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's great. Yeah, and I think it's important because my wife works for a big company, for EY, ernst and Young. She's always having computer problems and she gets on the phone with their tech guys and I guess they're pretty good at responding, but she has like so many issues. Sometimes it's like, yeah and you know, but I think like guys like you get it and guys like me you know, oh, it's just zeros and ones. You know what's, what's so hard about that?
Speaker 3:right, but if you think about, it it's like zeros and ones.
Speaker 2:Okay, you might as well tell me it's the genetic code of the DNA and again, for you guys, like a network engineer, it kind of reminds me I'm trying to think of the movie where it was like Beautiful Mind not Beautiful Mind, but one of these things where somebody sees it all in their head and it kind of just opens up and they and the problem is so simple to them.
Speaker 2:Um, whereas a lot of us just don't see it that way and maybe it's just a different way of looking at it, to understand how computers talk to each other. Because you know, back in the day, if you had different systems they couldn't talk to each other. And now you know and you understand why the ciscos of the world and things like that have done so well, because you know before we're going back to the 90s not that many years ago, right, I mean, for me it's not that many years ago. But when you say 30 years I'm like holy cow, yeah, that's right, that was 1995. But yeah, so it. You know.
Speaker 2:I guess there's one thing you learn as you get older, especially if you own your own businesses there's certain things you're good at and the things you're not good at just hire somebody. And the frustrating things about computers is that you rely on these things so much. All your files are on here and if all of a sudden something happens or your computer goes down, you're done for the day or week or whatever. Correct, so all right. So you're done for the day or week or whatever. You're full-time. You're a network engineer, computer network engineer, which I'd say that in itself is. You know, a lot of those jobs are outsourced to India and places like that these days. So it's great that you know you have a career and still have a career in that, because I know that field is kind of been diluted in some ways through.
Speaker 2:You know, I think the more people, more people that were educated in it, the more corporations saw that they can outsource it. So I think it's great that you're. You know you've been at it for so long. But yeah, so you mentioned that you love what you do because you help solve problems, you're helping people. So what are some of the common things that you mentioned? So what you know? Slow computer performance. So without giving away too much, so if I have slow computer performance sounds like an ED commercial, but my computer doesn't perform, take this pill. So what are some of the main simple remedies for slow computer performance?
Speaker 3:Well, the first thing I'll ask is how old is your computer? That's one, because with that come the specs, which would be how much RAM do you have? And as time goes on, all of these programs require more resources. So the older the computer is, naturally the newer programs are going to run a little bit slower. So it would be like trying to run a Lamborghini with a 1975 Fiat motor. Got it. Next thing I would say well, how, how often do you turn your computer off? You know and that's a big difference, because I look at computers as people yeah, when you, when you don't sleep, you don't perform well. Yeah, and we're not going back to the ED commercial either we, we have to refresh ourselves every night, and the computer, without getting into all of the technical aspects of it, has to do the same, and so the longer it stays on, the slower it's going to get. Things stop working. Generally speaking, you're going to have an issue right away with printing. Your printer is just not going to print. It's one of those services that just stops working why?
Speaker 2:I don't know. That happens to us a lot, correct. That's why we should turn the printer off. It's not the printer reboot your computer.
Speaker 3:Okay, printer is fine, okay. Um again, there could be other other reasons, but for the main reason, that's. That's generally it. If you don't, okay, if you don't, if you have your computer on for two weeks, I guarantee you you're not going to be able to print.
Speaker 2:Got it. So my computer has 500 gigabytes of flash storage. So is that that's RAM?
Speaker 3:Flash storage is your hard drive.
Speaker 2:Read access memory is that.
Speaker 3:RAM. Ram is your, yeah, it's your memory. The, the storage you're talking about, is your hard drive. Okay, and that's that's called an ssd. Now they don't have moving parts anymore. So, uh, the more ram you have, the more area there is for your programs to run, run from, because everything from your hard drive goes into your memory and then it runs from there so how do you know how much ram you have?
Speaker 2:because if I look at my mac, I go to um overview and it's it just shows me my gigabyte storage, flash storage well, on the mac, there's, there has to.
Speaker 3:If you go to system, uh, I don't remember exactly but if you go into a mac, uh, the system area should tell you all the specs uh, I got it okay, because I just went on about this PC, not PC about this Mac about this, mac Thank you.
Speaker 2:That was interesting.
Speaker 3:There you go.
Speaker 2:Wow, that was interesting. I'm playing around my computer and all of a sudden something happened. Anyway, I said I have eight gigabytes of memory.
Speaker 3:That's not a lot anymore.
Speaker 2:No, okay. And then when I go to tab it says memory usage 88.6 megabytes.
Speaker 3:Right Megabytes or gigabytes.
Speaker 2:It says MB, mb. That's just not a lot. Yeah yeah, Megabytes, gigabytes. What comes after gigabytes?
Speaker 3:After gigabytes, terabytes. I think it's terabytes. Yeah, you're right, that's a good one. I don't usually use that anymore. But yeah terabytes and then, I think, petabytes Okay.
Speaker 2:And then we'll get a couple of coffee bites.
Speaker 3:Got it no-transcript to people's homes, but then they had to wait and then this was all. This was all part of it. I want to be able to get to people immediately, yeah, and I, and I can do that now with the advent of all the technology. It's just wonderful. You know, they call me up, I say, hey, go to my website, click on this link, and I can just jump right in and help you right there. So and then, but the main, the main thrust is to have not just computer support, but engineer level computer support, not level one, but all the way to the top, right off the bat. So we'll get you resolved, we'll, you know, get to know each other, have a good relationship, and I'm always here.
Speaker 2:Do you offer any kind of maintenance, like like a subscription where you could have bi-yearly maintenance, or do you recommend that or no? Is it really more just a subscription?
Speaker 3:I don't think it's necessary, honestly.
Speaker 2:Yeah, okay, okay. So you give access. You know somebody has to grant you access into their computer.
Speaker 3:I guess there's a little bit of trust involved there, because you're giving somebody access to all of your yeah, yeah, but it's not something that's installed, it's just a one-time thing, and then, once I'm gone.
Speaker 2:It's over. Right, they can delete the access. Yeah, so what is it? You know what is it like running a business while you're still working. You know another career.
Speaker 3:It's, it's, it's tough, especially sometimes if somebody calls me during the day.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:Yeah, you know, I'll ask you know how how severe is it Does it? Does it need, does it need my help right now? Can?
Speaker 2:you wait about an hour.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, can let me get to lunch and I'll just jump on and I'm all yours.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah it's, it's a little it's but um, but a day, a day where you uh do this is, you know you retire from? I don't want to, I don't want to put you in hot water with your boss, but uh, at some day, someday, this is your um, you know, this is something you're doing, yeah, I don't this.
Speaker 3:This is my favorite part of the job. Yeah, that that's, and that's one of the reasons that I love to do it so much. So, with all of the switches, the routing, the firewalls, the servers, all the high end stuff that I do, this is always been my favorite part of the job. Connecting with people yeah, I get to see. So, for instance, in in in my company, I get to see everybody, every department. I know everybody, I know the names of their dogs, I know everything, and it's a wonderful thing. It's almost like saying, hey, let's have a cup of coffee and let me fix your computer.
Speaker 3:And they call me from all over.
Speaker 2:So if you're buying a new computer today, what is the typical RAM storage?
Speaker 3:It's funny because most of the machines now they'll come with about 16 gigs of ram. Um, but now they're starting to now they're starting to include 32. And I would say scale the the extra few dollars is really worth getting the 32 gigs of ram now in the old days, you could add on to your existing computers.
Speaker 2:Can you do that or no?
Speaker 1:you just said, I only have eight.
Speaker 2:I only have eight. My computer's from 2021. So it's four years old, um, should I start thinking about getting a new computer? That depends on the performance. You know I never turn it off, it stays on all the time and uh no, but actually it performs fine. I have, like right now I have one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve, let's just say 20 browser windows open. Uh, and then I have that's on chrome, then I have safari, with about eight browsers open.
Speaker 3:So chrome is a chrome is a memory hog. I will say that off that, off the bat. Okay, um, but if a lot of things don't, run on safari anymore.
Speaker 2:You got to go to chrome. Chrome is a memory hog, I will say that off the bat. Okay, but a lot of things don't run on Safari anymore. You got to go to.
Speaker 3:Chrome. They haven't run on Safari in a long time. Yeah, without the glassy-eyed explanation, it's just better to go with something like Chrome or Firefox. Firefox is a wonderful browser as well. Okay, but if the machine is still serving you well, there's no reason to go out and get a new one.
Speaker 3:I've had that question so many times. Andy, do you think it's good tonight? Should I go out and get a new computer? Is it running slow? No, it's fine, then stay with it. Yeah, I'm not looking to bilk people for money. There's so many folks out there who just don't know where to go. Yeah, and I hear that more than I can tell you.
Speaker 2:Well, yeah, so let's use that as a segue. Where do they go if they want to reach you? How do they contact you?
Speaker 3:Why Doug they go to?
Speaker 2:Come on, hey now, hey now, hey now hey now.
Speaker 3:Hey, now they can go to toptiercomputersupport. com All one word. Or they can dial us toll-free 855-466-8000. 855-466-8000.
Speaker 2:And just to be clear, because this podcast will be found on Spotify and everywhere, so somebody on the West Coast could be hearing this. So you are on the East Coast, correct?
Speaker 3:We are in the US.
Speaker 2:Right, yeah, so, but you could help people out in California.
Speaker 3:I help people actually all over the world. Nice, it's a pleasure to do it with remote products now. Yeah, it's great I've helped. I've actually the funny part. I'll tell you a quick funny story. Somebody called me. They were having a problem with their laptop. They were in Germany in the middle of a meeting. Wow, wow, she said, I'm having a problem. I think it was Excel or something stopped working. Can you jump in and take a look? Wow, yeah, sure.
Speaker 3:And I was so I connected to her machine. She was in the boardroom I'm working on this thing. I fixed the problem and then opened up notepad and said okay, you're. You're all set. I'll talk to you later Wow.
Speaker 2:So yeah, very cool. So one last question. It's personal I'm, you know I'm taking advantage of your free advice. So when I shut down every night and I have like 20 windows open, I should close all those windows first.
Speaker 3:uh, you can a lot of times the browser will try to. When you restart, it'll ask you if you want to restore those pages.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, yeah, so yeah you can absolutely do that or I could just shut down with leaving them all open. You could, yeah, okay, it doesn't affect anything, okay no because I like to restore.
Speaker 2:I like to come back because I have all these browsers open many times for a reason. You know, I'm researching things and I found the answer and now I want to, you know, keep it on my screen as a reminder. Um, so, all right, good to know. Um, yeah, you know my pc and I've always been a pc guy until, and even I still have it. But man, that thing is so slow I couldn't deal with it anymore, could not deal with it. I was like, oh my God, now, you know, now my Mac's getting a little slower, but that's probably because I never shut it off, but anyway, so, hey, listen, this was, you know, andy, this was a great, great talk. I really, you know. I'm hoping our listeners also get something out of this.
Speaker 2:But you know I'm hoping our listeners also get something out of this. But you know they want to get more out of it. They can give you a call. They can always call. Yeah, go to toptiercomputersupportcom, absolutely. Thank you so much for being a guest on the show. We're going to just say goodbye with Chuck and then you and I will be right back. Okay, great, unless you want to do the goodbye since you got the voice.
Speaker 3:Well, thank you for stopping in today and seeing our show here at the Good Neighbor Podcast. There you go.
Speaker 1:Thank you for listening to the Good Neighbor Podcast. To nominate your favorite local businesses to be featured on the show, go to gnpbergen. com. That's gnpbergen. com, or call 201-298-8325.