To cut a long story short i was thinking of setting up a business like this on a part time basis to see how it goes (evenings / weekends etc). It all stems from the fact that i found out how much places like pc world etc charge for basic maintenence or reformats etc.

I've seen a few "older" people get ripped off as they know as little about computers as they do about cars but charging folks £40 - £50 for a simple reformat is a bit scandelous imo.

I was wondering if anyone has any experience with a business like this and weather it appears easier than it actually is. I'm not a PC expert / know it all, but i'm pretty handy with them after learning to fix my own over the years and build them etc.

I was thinking of a simple mobile service and eventually covering most / all of what i've pasted below. So if anyone has any advice, ideas or wants to tell me to catch a grip then go ahead

· “Tune Ups” General health check and computer equipment cleaned and serviced where appropriate.
· Upgrades
· Virus help / removal
· Spyware / Adware removal
· File / Document retrieval
· System restores
· Setting up parental controls / permissions
· Advice on purchasing computer equipment
· Set up of home PC’s ranging to home offices etc
· Custom Build PC’s to users spec / budget
· Simple home networking help
· Tutorials: From basic PC familiarisation /skills to Internet access, email & word-processing. With reading material / reference documents supplied.
· Online account set-ups from home shopping / Secure Internet Banking / E-bay / Paypal etc
· Reconditioned PC’s for sale, all broadband ready with optional anti-virus / firewall protection etc

 

Ive actually been pondering the same question to myself, having built my own pc aswell.
I will keep an eye on this thread

 

worst part is stroppy or uneducated customers expecting you to rectify any problems after you have looked at it either there and then or f.o.c. someone i know did it for a while but just got bored of getting idiots who tried it on all the time. but i like the idea mate .. not nice hearing about companies who rip people off though, one local place used to just format the hard drives as a solution to every problem and charged way over the odds for doing it..

 

I've often thought about doing this, but remember, you will need to be competant with fault finding systems as well as building them

And i would charge £20 upwards for a backup and restoration of a windows operating system for any of my regular customers.

 

its a real pain in the arse, you end up dealing with people who do not have a Windows CD or valid key, they do not want to pay for a new CD yet they want to borrow yours.
You install a graphic card and get a call a few days later saying the computer is running slow and it was OK until you touched it.
You teach someone how to use an application and you suddenly become their personal tutor and are randomly phoned regarding how to do things.

Most of the systems you come into contact with are old and slow, they usually have antivirus applications with subscriptions which have expired...

You spend as much time going back to do things to shut people up and stop them calling you

 

This is how I see the money for a backup and restoration of a windows operating system if being done on a mobile basis

Assume your travelling for 20 minutes to this customer, if you take into consideration costs associated with running a vehicle (fuel, tax, insurance, tyres, servicing) and the travelling time back home of 20 minutes you must expect to obtain at least an hours money unless your time is free ( £10 )
You arrive at the door to do the backup and the customer states that they can not afford to lose pictures of the holiday, music on the hard drive or the emails, but the system does not boot at all... So you take 10 minutes either removing the hard disk to setup as a slave drive in a working Windows based PC or you run a Linux live CD and read the drive in that manner... however finding all this information takes 10 minutes and you have to write it to something... are you going to provide free CDR's and DVDR's - the amount of time and knowledge to recover the data, burn it to disk, scan it for viruses must be worth ( £10 )
You then set out to format the system only to find that they have no Windows CD...what do you do charge them for a new one, or lend them yours and be called back later when they go to windows update and find out that the 'version of windows they have is not genuine'
But for a moment lets assume they buy a new Windows disk, do you think they have the driver disk that came with the printer, scanner, the Microsoft Office disk that was borrowed from the office, all the applications they had installed and want back!!

Installing Windows from scratch and playing hunt the drivers, hunt the applications and then installing them and setting up all the hardware such as scanners, printers, digital cameras, webcam etc, reconfiguring email must take an hour if all goes well ( £10 )

You will always end up doing more than you expected but this is typical of the person you will encounter... you have simply spent two hours for £30 and if you are a legitimate business by the time you have paid tax etc you have very little... if the customer has a problem and you need to return to them you practically end up with nothing for your time.

its a mugs game imho

 

the more i look at it the more i'm beginning to think the above post might be nail on head

i'm really trying to find something to do for a few extra £££ and nothing seems to be jumping out, maybe with the summer coming up some grass cutting may be on the cards

 

At least that cant have the makings for a "mugs game", you cut the grass and get paid, no strings

 

I will never do a complete windows xp installation on a customers site, I always bring them home with me. I cannot justify charging a customer for 3 hours purely because they have 56k dial up when I have a 10 meg connection at home, and believe me, I have done before.

I bring the system / laptop home, back everything up onto my laptop via the network, then go into device manager to see about graphics / sound / lan drivers etc, then reinstall. If the case / laptop has an xp key on it, all gravey