Last week’s guest speaker at the Garberville Rotary Club was Emerald Technologies owner Garth Epling. Emerald Technologies began in Epling’s home in 1998. In 2002, he moved the business to Orange Cat Bookstore, which was owned at the time by his father. Then, in 2005 he moved to his current location behind Umpqua Bank in Garberville.
Epling said he had a very unique upbringing with hippie parents and he wasn’t raised in the standard school situation.
He said, “Due to many of the people in this room, and other individuals, I was able to start my own business and have it thrive and flourish due to your patronage and others.”
One person who stands out in Epling’s mind is David Katz from Alternative Energy. Epling said Katz gave him access to the first wholesale computer location where he was able to purchase parts at reasonable prices.
Epling said, “I would like to thank him for not giving me a job when I turned 18, so it forced me to get out there and try to figure something else out.”
Emerald Technologies offers, among their many services, computer repair, upgrades, and data recovery. They also do networking and backup plans. Epling said thanks to high-speed Internet being available in our area through companies like 101 Netlink and others they can remotely connect directly to your computer to fix certain problems right from the shop without having to drive to your home or business.
He said, “I see it at least once a month, where somebody has lost years of pictures, documents, or financial data. It’s always good to remember to back it up in three places. Once on the computer you have, once on a hard drive or external device, and hopefully once somewhere away from the building where you do your daily business. If the building burns down all the back ups in the world are not going to help you.”
Epling said one of the best things about buying a computer made by Emerald Technologies is that you don’t have to call an 800 number. You don’t have to talk to someone you may have trouble understanding and if something goes wrong you can go directly to the place you purchased it and talk to a real person.
Emerald Technologies also has DVDs for sale. And, if you want to acquire a domain name and website for your business, they can set that up for you, also.
Epling said there is a huge amount of free stuff out there if you just look for it. He said you can even teach your phone new tricks.
He said, “I am a big fan of Google Voice. This allows you to have a virtual phone number, which is like a voice mail number and it is local. I can tell this to forward to my cell phone or my home phone. It has all the features of a voice mail system. I can set somebody on a block list, or send them right to voice mail. In essence, it allows me to give out a phone number to my customers and friends that will always be with me. If I change cell phones or phone numbers, it doesn’t matter. This also gives you unlimited minutes from a lot of the cell phone providers. When you call your Google Voice number, it will call you back and then you can say for example, ‘Call my friend in Seattle.’ In essence you have just made one phone call and it was to a local number.”
Google Voice is free of charge unless you call outside of the United States. Then it is only two cents a minute to most countries. He said the days of long distance are over. Every call he makes from his cell phone goes through Google Voice and people on the other end never see his real cell phone number. And the audio quality is just as good as any cell phone provider. He said it is a very similar service to Skype. But he did say that Skype is more about selling you another phone number, where Google Voice is just a forwarding service with the number attached to it for free.
Epling said, “Google is amazing because they offer everything for free because they make millions and millions of dollars from advertising.”
He also recommended other free programs including one called Google Docs, which is basically what you get with Microsoft Word or Microsoft PowerPoint. He said you can have everything you need as long as you have an Internet connection and can be online. On every computer Emerald Technologies sells they install a free program called Open Office, which pretty much does everything Microsoft Office does and it’s free.
One of the most important programs Epling recommends is AVG Anti-Virus, which is also free. He said you don’t need to pay $50-$60 a year for virus protection.
He did say, “Every six months or so they upgrade to a new version and they will say, ‘Upgrade to our full professional version for $49.95.’ But, if you look near the bottom there is some fine print for AVG Free and we can even help you through that.”
Epling said there are sometimes configuration issues that Emerald Technologies can help you with if you have problems with AVG. Sometimes AVG will block certain incoming data, which can bog your computer down. He said you can turn off your email scanning because you have live protection anyway. If something comes into your email and you try to click on it, the live protection should pop up and say, ‘Don’t click on that, it’s a virus.’
He said, “In the past ten years people have said, ‘Oh, don’t open a suspicious email message.’ That’s still a good thing but more and more viruses are not coming through emails because most service providers block those before they get to you. It’s more about pop up advertising.”
He also recommended Picassa, which is very helpful when dealing with images such as photos. He said there is a really cool feature that has facial recognition. If you have someone in particular that you are looking through your photos for, it will show you where they are. It will even pull crowd shots out.
When asked if these programs would work with a Mac, Epling said some do, but you don’t have to worry so much about viruses with Macs. But, as they gain more of the market share, they will be targeted more. AVG is not available for Macs, because you don’t need it, but many of the other free programs are.
He said, “We see at least 15 of those infections every month. If there are that many in our small community there must be hundreds of thousands of them throughout the world. Most of these people are based in Eastern Europe. What they do is try to get you to buy their fake software and enter your credit card number. Then they start using your credit card number elsewhere and your computer becomes disabled.”
He said if a screen pops up on your computer telling you to click here because you are about to become infected with a virus, it’s probably too late. You can click cancel, you can click okay, or sometimes you can click on the little box up in the corner. But most of the time it’s too late at this point and the virus has already been downloaded onto your computer. You can also manually shut your computer off at this point, which may cause some other problems.
Epling said, “Never forget the three magic keys: Control, Alt, Delete, or the three-finger salute as it is called. This will bring up a task manager and you can click ‘end my browser.’ Most of the time that will allow you to back out. But, if you click the wrong button enough times you will be infected.”
That’s when you give Emerald Technologies a call.
REDWOOD TIMES PHOTO BY SUSAN GARDNER
Garberville Rotary Club President Peter Connolly is shown here with guest speaker Garth Epling who owns Emerald Technologies in Garberville.
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