Welcome to Charleston Tech Support, LLC

Charleston, SC computer repair, service, and support serving the greater Charleston area. We service a wide range of technology, including Microsoft Windows and Apple Macintosh hardware and software.

• Is your business suffering from a computer solution that is not working the way you need it to?

• Do you ever wish you could bring the IT guy from work to your home to fix your computer?

Having a “Computer Guy” these days is just as important as having a plumber, electrician, lawyer, or accountant on call. You want someone you can count on to be there when you need them, as well as know your computing needs.

We offer you a personal, yet professional relationship at an affordable rate.

Check out our services and rates, then contact us to make an appointment. We pledge to provide the highest quality of service for you and your business. Don’t forget to check out the Frequently Asked Questions.

Looking for information about CompuKids, our pre-kindergarten computer training program? Click Here.

Call us at (843) 767-9500 today!

Latest Tech News Stories:

Google Introduces a New Web Browser

Last modified on 2008-09-03 22:52:08 GMT. 0 comments. Top.

The company also known as a verb for the word “searching” on the internet is now delivering a web browser to compete with the likes of Microsoft, Mozilla, Apple, & Opera. On Monday, September 2nd, tech blogs reported about a leaked virtual comic book describing the reasoning behind Google’s foray into the web browsing software market. By Tuesday evening, computer users were able to test drive the new browser, titled Google Chrome.

Chrome is delivered as a beta product, which means it isn’t quite finished, but like most Google products that are released as beta, it is surprisingly stable and polished. Chrome is also distributed as an open source project, which means that the underlying code for the browser is freely available to download, and you can make any changes you want to the code and totally recreate the browser - as long as you too share the code you add or alter. The underlying rendering engine is the same engine as used by Apple’s Safari, which is called Webkit. It is this rendering engine that contributes to its amazingly fast page loading capabilities. It also handles javascript quickly, which makes web based applications work quickly. So how does it compare to the other browsers out there?

Well, I’m currently typing and posting this article using Google Chrome, and so far I am impressed. It is very clean and simple in design, but has some innovative and powerful features. I personally like the dynamic tabs, which let you drag a tabbed window out of the application to create a new window, and even add it to another existing window. If you have multiple monitors, this is pretty neat. The way Chrome handles download is also pretty cool - it puts them at the bottom of the page and has a button that lets you choose what you want to do with the downloaded file. How does it compare to my favorite browser, Mozilla’s Firefox? It currently is missing the main feature that makes Firefox so great - and that is the thousands of useful add-ons that let you customize it to do exactly what you want it to do. I do like it better than Safari on Windows, but since Chrome is not yet available for the Mac, it is hard to compare. Safari shines on a Mac, but is awkward on a PC because it neglects the Windows design standards set in place and tries to look like an OS X application instead of a Windows one. I have not used Opera in a long time (except on Nintendo’s Wii Console), and honestly have not had a reason to revisit it ever since Firefox came out, so unfortunately I really have no opinion on it. As far as Microsoft’s Internet Explorer is concerned, I still think it is the worst browser ever written. Microsoft is hard at work on Internet Explorer 8, and has just released a public beta version to try out. I still have a bad taste in my mouth from version 7, and from the screenshots it looks like more of the same. The reviews for IE 8 have been quite positive though, so it might be worth a try. But lets be honest, it took me less than 1 minute to download and install Chrome. With Internet Explorer, you’d better have a good 20 minutes to get it up and running.

I’m excited to see what the future holds for this sleek and fast browser. More standards driven web browsers out there means that more websites will be forced to work on different kinds of computers and internet devices, and that is a very good thing.

Backup Your Computer!

Last modified on 2008-09-03 23:11:30 GMT. 0 comments. Top.

This morning I had the unpleasant surprise of firing up my media center computer (a Mac Mini I have hooked up to the family TV that stores videos, music, and pictures) only to have it freeze and then not successfully power back up. After some quick diagnostics, I realized the internal hard drive (where the operating system, programs, and data are stored) had read its last bit. In other words, it died. When I woke up, I thought I would have a computer-problem-free Sunday to sit around and watch movies and the Olympics with the kids all day. Luckily, I was able to quickly return to the day of rest because I regularly back up my computer. Being a computer technician also helps as I had all the tools and a spare hard drive to quickly fix the computer, but for the average non-technical person, the most important thing in this situation is the data backup. Here are some easy ways to backup your computer to be prepared for the inevitable bout of data loss that every computer user will have to deal with at some time or another.

First of all, you need something to backup to. In the old days, people used floppy disks and magnetic tape to back up. These were slow and unstable, hence a lot of bad back-up habits were born. With the introduction of writable CD’s and eventually DVD’s, the act of backing up remained unchanged, as the process was slow and for a lot of people, too complicated. The biggest issue with these older back-up methods is that they require you to remember to do it! That is why I prefer an automated system. There are two main types of media that an automated method works well with.

The first type of media I want to discuss is an external hard drive. These are relatively inexpensive - for about $100.00 you can get 500GB of disk space to back-up to. These are really easy to install - they do not require any special software to work - you just plug in the USB cable to your PC or Mac and the computer should recognize it automatically. The only difficult part is picking a backup method to move your data to the hard drive.

If you’re running a Mac that has OS X version 10.5, you will have the easiest possible back-up software ever written built right in. It is called Time Machine, and it is so easy to set up that when you plug in a new external hard drive, the computer asks you if you want to use it for backing up. If you say yes, then you are done. As long as you have the disk plugged in, the computer will automatically periodically back up your Mac without any further interaction. For older Macs, there is a great free program called SilverKeeper, which will let you set up scheduled back-ups, but it takes a little setup and testing to make sure it is working.

For Windows-based PC’s, you have a plethora of options. In Windows XP, you can use the built-in back-up program. Microsoft has a great article on their website on how to make use of their back-up solution. Windows Vista has an even more user-friendly back-up program - you can read about the features here, and you can take it a step further by checking out this in-depth guide to using the Backup and Restore Center in Windows Vista. On my Windows based systems, I prefer to make image based backups of the whole computer hard drive. What this does is create a complete copy of the whole hard drive, so that if a hard drive fails, I can replace the physical hard drive and restore the image to the new drive. This saves me hours of time because I don’t have to install Windows or any programs first, once I restore the image to the drive, I’m back in business. I used to use a program from Norton called Ghost, but like most of their software, I believe it is now a waste of space on my computer. I have found a much cheaper and quicker program that I love from Paragon called Drive Backup. For $40.00, this program is well worth the price and is quite reliable. It comes with a program that creates a bootable CD, so that in the event of a failed hard drive, you can boot off of the CD and run the program to restore you backed up hard drive image to a new drive. Like the built-in backup programs in Windows, it lets you set a schedule to automatically backup your computer.

The other type of “media” I want to talk about is online backup solutions. There are a bunch of companies out there that do the same thing, but you really need to ask yourself who you would trust with your most sensitive data. I personally trust EMC, who have been in the computer information management business since 1979. Their product, called Mozy, is affordable and painless to set up. It also works on Windows PC’s as well as Apple computers. The way it works is that you you set up what data you want to back up, and it works in the background encrypting and then uploading your data over the internet to their remote backup servers. It does require you to have a high-speed internet connection to work, and in the event of data restoration, you will have to add the amount of time it takes to download all of your data to the time it will take to get you back up and running. Still, in the event of a disaster such as a fire or a tornado, nothing beats having an off-site data backup solution in place to ensure that your data is safe.

The best practice is to use both the external hard drive backup and the online backup solutions to cover any disaster that comes your way. In the event of a hardware failure, a hard drive backup will get you back in business very quickly. In the event of a disaster, an off-site online backup will ensure that you won’t lose your important data.

View the rest of our news here.

Quick F.A.Q.

• Does Charleston Tech Support service my area?

We service the greater Charleston, SC area. This includes the barrier islands such as Isle of Palms, Sullivans Island, Folly Beach, Kiawah Island, Seabrook Island, & Wadmalaw Island. It also includes Wando, Daniel Island, North Charleston, Summerville, Ladson, Hanahan, Goose Creek, Moncks Corner, James Island, West Ashley, Hollywood, and Ravenel. If you are not sure, just give us a call and we’ll let you know.

• Are there any hidden fees?

No. We charge an hourly rate and if parts are needed you pay for the cost of the part as we are not a reseller. We are not currently affiliated with any software vendors either, so we will not push any unwanted software on you.

• Do you support my systems?

We support a large variety of the latest (and oldest) information technology. This includes servers, laptops, and desktops running Apple and Microsoft operating systems. We support and install networks, both wired and wireless, including installation, addition, and repair of your medium’s infrastructure and routers. We support mobile devices such as Blackberry devices, iPhones, Windows Mobile, and PC air cards. We also repair and maintain laser printers, scanners, and just about anything that plugs into your network and/or computer (yes, we support iPods too).

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