One Down…Four to Go
August 27th, 2007 by laurenWe had a great turnout on this morning’s Microsoft/HP webinar - thanks to all who attended. There are four more to go this week, so if you are interested in participating, please “sign up”:1 for one of the remaining times available.
Having been part of this company for two years (my anniversary was earlier this month), I’ve watched as we’ve grown from 4 people in our New York offices at ComputerRepair.com to the thriving, growing enterprise that is OnForce. While there are all sorts of milestones and pieces of big news that have come and will continue to come, today was a big one for me and for the provider community as a whole. To the providers: thank you for being the most impressive, committed group of IT service professionals out there…. To our new partners: thank you for all that you’ve done to bring this program to them.
(And thanks to the random guy who popped in at the middle with the repetitive “hello?” “hello?!” - a little humor for an early Monday morning…)
And it’s just the start…
If you had any questions about the program that weren’t answered or weren’t clear, feel free to ask them here…
For those that are ready to get started on the training, you can visit the “OnForce program page on the HP site.”:2
[1]http://www.golms.com/onforce/index.html
[2]http://www.hp.com/learn/onforce
August 27th, 2007 at 12:07 pm
Great to see things are working well for you event Lauren.
Good luck in the future, I’ll be signing up for a remainder time slot to see what all the hype’s about.
August 27th, 2007 at 4:20 pm
If you are running Vista, make sure you contact HP’s support BEFORE you try attending one of these. I wasted an hour because the laptop I had was running Vista and would not open the HP webinar page. When I finally got it fixed, I was able to log back in and hear Laurn thank everyone for comming and that the call was over. Kind of ironic that the is mainly for Vista training and the call does not support it completely.
August 27th, 2007 at 4:33 pm
Lauren, you said”I’ve watched as we’ve grown from 4 people in our New York offices at ComputerRepair.com to the thriving, growing enterprise that is OnForce.”
Monday morning humor wants to know exactly how many people are now at the New York offices …. 
(Please don’t say 5!)
I’ll be signing up for a webinar tooo..
Lyle
August 27th, 2007 at 5:56 pm
Mmm… I don’t know these days… Maybe 30?
August 28th, 2007 at 1:02 am
Hmm… I did the conference room test - It installed and I was able to log into a test room fine, I definately recomend doing this if you haven’t used the HP conference service before. Though I’m using Vista and did see this message more than once, it seems to work: “WARNING: Microsoft Windows Vista is not currently a supported platform. You may continue to use it, although you may encounter problems or unsupported features.”
August 28th, 2007 at 4:55 am
I tried…they don’t support Vista, they don’t support Firefox, the certificates don’t match and have problems on IE7. It seems like they need some training themselves.
August 28th, 2007 at 10:10 am
Yep. Yesterday was a good showing of providers who are interested learning more about Microsoft’s Vista products. But my question is why the HP/Microsoft/OnForce team-up has not been more published? When the Power Match profiling was introduced, it was in numerous IT news blasts (such as Ziff Davis’s ‘Contract Watch’ this past June 8th named “OnForce Intros eHarmony-like PowerMatch”). On the HP/Microsoft/OnForce team-up, I have heard nary a peep, aside from the self-serveing post on Microsoft’s site (which at last check with Google was the last hit on the first page). Not even from HP, except for a email stating the wrong day for the webinar (Saturday instead of Monday, my scheduled day for the webinar.) This Team-up will impress both potential providers who can get cert training at signifigantly discounted prices and future buyers will be better assured that they are getting certified techs to do the requested workorders. But hey, it’s just my question and a few quarters worth (two cents just do not cut it anymore, not when complancy is the norm and honest Work goes un-noticed. >:) ).
Toi
OnForce.com Provider ID: 26695
OnForce.com Tech ID: 54095
August 28th, 2007 at 5:11 pm
Major kudos Lauren, to you and the OnForce gang down there in New York for all of your hard work and excellent service to the buyers and providers. I cannot thank you guys enough for the opportunities that you have opened up for us all. The chance to get DELL certifications for free really impressed me and made my day thanks to the partnership and generosity of Dell and OnForce. Now just a few months later to have the opportunity to get Microsoft/HP training and certification at a highly discounted rate, demonstrates to me that you guys are a force to reckon with. (no pun intended…) It is apparently clear to anyone watching that OnForce is committed to producing a highly trained, well-organized, efficient and effective service presence in the marketplace. OnForce looks poised to be the successful benchmark of systems service for future companies to emulate. I just wish to express my gratitude to OnForce, DELL, Microsoft and HP for their assistance and generosity creating a readily affordable opportunity for training and skill certification that will benefit my customers and myself.
Sincerely, Mark Noyes
August 28th, 2007 at 8:43 pm
Having a certification is no guarantee that an engineer or technician will be knowledgeable about the work requested by a buyer. I have more faith in an engineer who has 5 years experience in his given field than I do for a recently graduated engineer with every certification obtainable. During the years, I have consistently experienced real world situations where non-certified but heavily experienced engineers (OJT-on job training) out perform those with “paper certs”. I personally have studied and taken many of the supposed industry certifications and I can tell you first hand that they fall short, very short, of preparing an engineer for what they will experience in the real world. A Google search often offers better training and problem resolution tools than any industry cert course of study ever has or probably ever will. Now don’t get me wrong, I support the pursuit of certifications and I think that they are needed, but cerates shouldn’t be the driving force behind whether someone is routed a work order or not.
Sorry if this upsets anybody (not really though) but it had to be said by someone.
August 29th, 2007 at 12:42 pm
I guess some people just won’t take “yes” for an answer…
I’m glad that OF is big enough to get MS and HP to put announcement on their corporat eweb pages about this. It is a big deal to the rest of us…
August 29th, 2007 at 4:55 pm
Calcorp,
Im right there with you on the field experience over paper experience anyday. Ive had “kids” fresh out of college and had real world “techs” be my assistant and ill take the people who know the real world hands down everytime. Not only do you not get whining when it comes to a little manual labor along with the IT work, you get years of knowledge of “situations” that books just cant fathom.
August 29th, 2007 at 5:01 pm
I’m setup to be there tonight at 7pm but I must say, I am not sure if I am still going to go through it now that I see what is available.
They are all fluff certs. I know enough about Vista already, and highly doubt that getting these certs will increase my ability to have work orders sent my way. Personally, I don’t see what all the hype is about. I’m a bit disappointed that a msce or mcp type of track is not available. Am I missing something or did I not do my cross referencing correctly to M$ to see if taking those classes will put us one step ahead for a real cert track?
Those aren’t tracks or certs toward and real certs.
August 29th, 2007 at 7:06 pm
I am in agreement with Scott. MSVista training is not going to get you anywhere in the real world for at least a year or so. No one is buying it for office IT. Vista is buggie to say the least. No one buys things before the first SP.
25 years of IT work say the tech in the field beats 2 with a cert!
Just a thought!
September 1st, 2007 at 4:40 pm
Linux is NOT supported! I do not have a Windows box, so I’m out of luck. Please address this with HP.
September 1st, 2007 at 7:00 pm
Okay, being the newbie here, I have a question concerning just how to get INTO the doggone thing. When I click to sign up, I”m asked *first* for my “Signup Password”. I have no idea what this means, and I’ve tried every one I can think it might be but to no avail. Where do I get this password?
I visited TeraLearn’s website where they have the identical registration page, and there the Signup Password is “GUEST”. This doesn’t work here.
Help, please?
Thanks!
Chris
September 9th, 2007 at 5:21 pm
After the Canada roll out, it will be time to go public. If you guys need any programmers, let me know..I would like to work for Onforce when the big bucks start rolling in from an IPO.
September 9th, 2007 at 5:26 pm
Oops! Am I commenting in the wrong forum? Curses! Did it again. Oh well. Propeller Heads get confused sometimes…Sorry everyone, please continue…
September 9th, 2007 at 5:31 pm
Oh yeah, the question is, when are we gonna have an IPO? I got some money saved, I want some stock in Onforce so I can quit repairing all these plasma t.v.s and live on Easy street. heh-heh
September 16th, 2007 at 8:59 pm
Okay, now that Trent has effectively derailed the train, I’ll re-ask my original question.
When I click to sign up, I”m asked first for my “Signup Password”. I have no idea what this means, and I’ve tried every one I can think it might be but to no avail. Where do I get this alleged password?
September 16th, 2007 at 11:45 pm
Personally the HP VISTA training and certs are nothing but garbage. Why spend that amount of money when it will not get you any more work? It would be cheaper to either take a real class or get a book on it and then take a real test that will get you something. This training and certs are a waste of good money.
September 25th, 2007 at 2:10 pm
The training is to promote the included Entities or better yet; make consumers think about or direct them to buy Windows Products. Also, because some how the entities involved have paid a cut to OF(On Force) and HP to toss in the partners lingo.
That’s, beside the bounty hunter’s fee being collected from Credit collector and Agencies by OF for widely openly posting Technicians private information/Names online for them to trace. Do your thinking and Math!
October 9th, 2007 at 1:38 pm
Okay, so I’m a little bit of a fun-loving practical joker. Sometimes ONFORCE needs colorful, fun-loving guys with an eye toward drastically improving revenue in order to succeed in this business. Look at what this line of topics has descended into. Chaos and disorder. The guy down here at the bottom is basically accusing ONFORCE of being the BORG. Heh-heh
December 25th, 2007 at 7:43 pm
free online training in windows vista
Nice points…