South Valley Computers

04/21/2023

This is probably going to be the last post from this account, but I don't mind it being at the top.
On March 30th 2023, a man was murdered at 11th and Grangeville. 10:30AM. Broad daylight.
More than 20 days later not one word about this has appeared on the Hanford Sentinel website.
Nothing. Zip. Nada.
Support your local media? Castrated steer f***s.

03/30/2023

This is going to be tough.
Nancy witnessed the aftereffects of the murder, in broad daylight, of a man at 11th and Grangeville. She did not see the shots fired, but she did see the body and blood.
This is the final straw. After 25 years, South Valley Computers is closed for new business effective immediately.
She will be finishing up the computers already in the store, and we are done.
I'd like to thank Hanford, Selma, Visalia , Reedley and Fresno for hosting our business over 25 years. It's been fun.
Thank you to all.

03/10/2023

A heads up from Gary in Michigan. Where it's snowing again.

02/27/2023

A post from South Valley Computers eastern division.

02/24/2023

Ever since the introduction of Windows 11(W11), we have seen numerous ads on craigslist, facebook marketplace, even places that allow third party sales like Walmart and worst of all, Amazon advertising used computers running W11.... that don't meet the minimum specifications to run W11.
How? The software we use to create the Windows 11 installation flash drives (It's called Rufus) offers us the opportunity to disable certain security features that would allow someone to install W11 on an older, non applicable system.
As an ethical business, we would never ever do this. But the opportunity is still there.
Now, the latest W11 update from Microsoft addresses this...
a watermark will appear in the lower right corner of every W11 computer that doesn't meet specs, stating "System requirements not met. Go to Settings to learn more".
Some people are in for a rude awakening.

02/15/2023

Hey everybody, just thought I'd pass along a heads up.

"Internet Explorer 11 was never Windows 10's primary browser—that would be the old, pre-Chromium version of Microsoft Edge. But IE did continue to ship with Windows 10 for compatibility reasons, and IE11 remained installed and accessible in most versions of Windows 10 even after security updates for the browser ended in June of 2022. That ends today, as Microsoft's support documentation says that a Microsoft Edge browser update will fully disable Internet Explorer in most versions of Windows 10, redirecting users to Edge.
Edge will "automatically" transfer over bookmarks and other browsing data from IE and display a dialogue box letting users know what has happened so that the last few people using Internet Explorer out of habit, ignorance, or spite will be fully aware of what's going on.

Just thought you should know.

01/24/2023

Sorry we haven't posted in awhile. Been kind of busy. But I thought you all deserved this heads up...
"Multiple users have reported that the health of the Samsung 990 Pro, one of the best SSDs, is deteriorating at a breakneck pace. The problem seems to affect the entire Samsung 990 Pro lineup regardless of the capacity, with some drives showing over 10% less health in a matter of days or weeks." (h/t tomshardware(dot)com)

12/10/2022

Holy Toledo. Talk about spinning your wheels in mud.
A customer brings in a iBuyPower gaming rig.
i5-10400, 32GB DDR4, RTX3080 video card. This was NOT a cheap computer when bought about two years ago.
The customer can't get it to update to Windows 11.
We look to see why and it's TPM related. To make a long complicated story shorter (wheels spinning), the answer is very simply a BIOS flash.
Go to the motherboard manufacturer (Gigabyte) and download the latest BIOS and it won't install.
To make a long complicated story even shorter, (wheels spinning) it turns out the iBuyPower is using a custom BIOS, and if you want a newer one, Gigabyte says contact iBuyPower. And many have. To no effect.
So, here we have a two year old, damn expensive computer that unless iBuyPower gets off its @$$ is only going to be usable for another couple of years.
Obsolete years before its time.
Our recommendation? At his convenience, change out the motherboard (to one less proprietary) and CPU.
Btw, all that wheel spinning took about 5 hours. Seriously. It took 5 hours to figure all that out.

11/26/2022

I can't wrap my head around this.
You buy a new car. You pay a LOT of money for that car.
Now Mercedes wants an extra $100 A MONTH to make it even faster.
How is this legal? WHY is this legal?

Mercedes is now offering an acceleration increase for its electric models for an additional $1,200 yearly payment.

11/23/2022

The only time I ever fired someone was when I found them copying data from a customer's computer.
He claimed it was "only" music, but that is a trust violated, and totally, completely, and utterly unacceptable.
(PS- that person now owns another computer store in town. I have no idea what his current policy about such things are.)

"Researchers at University of Guelph in Ontario, Canada, recovered logs from laptops after receiving overnight repairs from 12 commercial shops. The logs showed that technicians from six of the locations had accessed personal data and that two of those shops also copied data onto a personal device. Devices belonging to females were more likely to be snooped on, and that snooping tended to seek more sensitive data, including both sexually revealing and non-sexual pictures, documents, and financial information."

11/17/2022

Welcome to Bay City, Michigan. Home of Bay City Computers (or South Valley Computers - East).

11/15/2022

Ahhhh. Michigan.

Shot outside the door of Bay City Computers, 1314 Kosciuszko Ave., Bay City, Mi.