What will you do when your studio computer goes DOWN?
It’s not a matter of “if” it goes down, it WILL, when you least expect it. I replaced my Mac G4 and Pro Tools 001 over 2 years ago and moved up to a loaded Mac Pro and Pro Tools 003. It has worked great…UNTIL yesterday afternoon without warning.
My screens became frozen, and an error message came up on my right monitor saying, “Error – Please reset your computer by pressing your Power Button for a few seconds to restart your computer.” It was also written in Spanish, French and Japanese. So, I did as instructed and nothing. The screen lite up with some strange squiggly lines on the monitor, the Apple logo appeared, and the little timer swirl began to tick underneath the logo. Then a black curtain came down and the error message appeared. I tried unplugging the Mac and waiting, then rebooting. Everything. Same results.
So, a call to my IT guy was made. He dropped what he was doing and came to my rescue. After going over what I had done and trying several switches this with that and blow out the dust bunnies – off I went to the Mac Store. The were very polite and helpful, but suggested I go to an independent Mac repair shop a few miles away.
They expedited the diagnostics the next morning, found out it WAS the video card and ordered a replacement to be overnighted to them and installed the next day. Hopefully, all will go well, and I’ll be back up by mid-afternoon tomorrow.
Here’s the rub…if you don’t have a standby plan ready to be put into effect – you are hosed with all the clients that need you NOW. So as a precautionary Plan B, I’ll be putting together a laptop with all I need to keep my foot in my studio from slamming shut and putting me out of business. Now, I know I could have probably found a fellow VO talent who would help me in a pinch, but we as independent talents really need to be prepared for these potential outages.
So, what is your PLAN B?