[geeks] PC Repair shop fun...

[Nadine Miller]

Lionel Peterson wrote:
> On Mon, Feb 25, 2008 at  9:18 AM, Bill Bradford wrote:
> 
>> On Sun, Feb 24, 2008 at 10:31:02PM -0600, Lionel Peterson wrote:
>>> I thought (briefly) about opening a PC repair shop after CompUSA left 
>>> the local market, but I couldn't in good conscience charge tose kinds 
>>> of prices, but you have to to pay the rent (I guess).
>>
>> And people who don't want to have to "mess with that techy stuff" *will*
>> pay those kinds of prices - because they don't know any better.
> 
> Doesn't make it right, but I agree folks will pay those prices (like 
> $130 to install the OS? WinXP, OS X, heck, even Solaris and Ubuntu 
> installs take about 15-20 minutes of "attention", up to 2 hours of 
> electricity/clock time). I thought I'd need to charge $65-75/hour to 
> make a go of it, and I just couldn't see it *unless* I could be certain 
> of getting enough systems to keep a constant supply of systems on-hand 
> to work on.
> 
> Rent for a store front is about $2/square foot per month (plus 
> utilities), so I'd need about $2,000/month just to pay the 
> rent/utilities, or, put another way, I'd have to be *certain* of about 
> 40 systems a month (at $50/system), every month just to keep the store 
> open. Add in the requisite inventory of quickly-depreciating spare 
> parts, and it just didn't make sense. And don't even think about selling 
> PCs - there is no margin on those at all, AFAIK.

You're better off skipping the storefront and going to people's houses, 
from what I can tell.  Offer them a free 20 min diagnostic over the 
phone, and get bulk pricing on virus/malware/firewall software that's 
not clunky (e.g. skip Symantec or McAffee and go for something like 
NOD32) and you'll have an easier time of it.

Put up fliers at your local stores and/or walk the local small business 
offices offering your expert services.

Many people have niggling problems that they don't think to call anyone 
over, but if you show up on their doorstep offering your expertise, you 
can make some quick cash.

There's decent money to be made training PC users who are switching to 
Macs as well.

Heck, there's probably cash to be made cleaning off the "freebies" that 
come with name brand computers that end up slowing everything down.  I 
installed a lighter-weight virus scanner to replace the kludgy Symantec 
"360" and junked HP's wireless configuration tool (which polled the 
wireless network every two minutes, even though the frigging thing was 
already connected) on my brother's laptop, and it went from feeling like 
an ancient P90 to the relatively zippy Celeron that it is.

=Nadine=