Computer wholesaler - recommendations?

[The Natural Philosopher]

I haven't been in that tescos for ..probably 12 years and it was shit even then.

Far easier to drop in a Newmarket Waitrose for a far better experience o the way home.

[Tim Watts]

There are a whole raft of side services that people get stuck with...

Just at Dave The Medway Handyman actually gets paid to assemble flat pack furniture for people too busy/lazy/useless to do it themselves, so thus you could also find similar work in the electronics field.

There's printer setup, VoIP phones, HiFi assembly, as others have said dekludging broken software (ie Windows), perhaps particular training tasks like how to download photos from their camera and upload to Google Picasa, Flickr, Facebook and order prints (eg photobox.co.uk) or print locally.

The possibilities are endless but only you would be able to decide what's likely to have a market where you are. Maybe offer everything and see what sticks?

You could recommend laptops (I like Lenovo and you can order those to spec - but would the average punter be able to make sensible choices about RAM, disk etc without wasting their money??) or whole systems...

People might want to know how they can backup stuff (like a little 100 quid NAS box in the corner automatically backing up their precious photos).

One thing: never undercharge...

And as someone else alluded to, there are small businesses that often get in a twist and are so completely clueless that anyone with some nous could make apoitive contribition.

And if you wnat a bit of advertising, you could get some magnetic signs made up for your car and leave it parked in the supermarket car park (I think Dave did something similar - at least with a van).

Have a rescue CDROM and USB key handy (see my blog on how to make a pretty nice Debian boot stick/CD:

look at one of the many rescue-cds that are out there. The linux ones can be very useful - they can mount (V)FAT and NTFS filesystems to rescue data, there are tools to reset passwords and you will also want all the main manufacturers' hard disk test utilities (free) (eg Hitachi, Seagate, Western Digital, Samsumg) so you can check failing disks - also memtest86 (free) is the best RAM diagnostic available for dealing with PCs with "weird" problems. Some of the rescue CD images come with fairly upto date versions of those.

A swiss army knife USB+CD is invaluable.

I recommend this toolkit (I use it at work):

has most bits you're likely to need.

Having a USB hard disk too is handy in case you need to back up the data before attempting a difficult repair.

Some velcro on a roll is also handy for tidying cables. Small thing but can mark you out as a real pro and get more ord of mouth :)

Cheers,

Tim

[Tim Watts]

Might be full of dust. My 6 year old HP got like that. A good blow out with decent air-in-a-can (most are weedy and crap - but there are a couple that will blow your eyes out) sorted it.

[Dave Liquorice]

A very big +1 for contacting your local Business Link. There are far to many wrinkles, gotchas and linked implications (do X, implies Y, Y then means Z is needed etc) when starting up a business. As the OP is on benefits a weeks "Starting Up in Business" course may well be paid for by the DWP.

It's a long time ago since I went freelance but the Business Link course I did was well worth it. The one I did covered the basics of different structures, legal stuff, record keeping, accounting, VAT, checking/finding a market, marketing and so on with normally several different approaches/options under each of those broad headings.

As to mortgage company probably not the place is still your primary residence. I wouldn't dedicate a room to business use though, the council could well start wanting business rates for that part of the house. So the room you use will still have some domestic use, so it would still have a (useable!) guest bed in it etc...

Insurance of other peoples kit under your control may be interesting. The cost might not be economic and the insurance co will want to know a lot of information before they offer cover, value, physical security and so on.

[Tim Streater]

That is quite true of course and at that Tesco there's always a chance of a nice niff from the under-dimensioned sewage farm the other side of the A14.

[tim....]

So how do you get these people to ring you rather than just buy the PCW offering?

No the tools are software.

You have mentioned them, they don't come for free. Do you have them?

tim

[geoff]

In message , Fred writes

You've got a university full of students just down the road

There must be some sort of original service you could provide

>

[geoff]

Or to follow up on that, just think of all those (mainly old) people who can't set up their DVD players, need someone to show them (again) how to send an email with an attachment, set the central heating programmer to go on and off when they want it to - you get the idea

As long as you have wheels - there are plenty of people who can't hack the technology needed for modern life

[Bill]

In message , BluntChisel writes

I had a small computer-related limited company business. We mentioned it on the house insurance. It didn't make much difference and didn't come down much when I retired. We had to have public liability insurance. This started to double in cost year on year. That and illness+age were factors in the retirement. You have to keep all the business insurance docs by law for some ludicrous (80-100 years?) time If you keep paperwork for tax etc., it's a nightmare after you retire. I still shred on a regular basis.

I know of an ex-university computer lecturer who tried setting up a consultancy and local computer maintenance organisation. He gave up.

After retirement, I did and still do some helping small businesses. The actual computing work was mostly OK, with occasional help from friendly internet newsgroup answers to questions. The problem with both main ones was the shambles left by "professional" and not cheap installers. Mains distribution tangled up with network switches and cables in piles of dust under the desks. With one I made a bit of a fuss and suggested they get someone in to sort it out. I think I've mentioned it here before. After some months I was called back to a problem, and they had gone to the local computer shop, who had supplied a nice enclosed steel cabinet on the floor and installed a shiny new wireless router inside the earthed steel cabinet. The owner's wireless laptop wasn't getting much signal.

It ought to be possible to make a good living from computer advice and assistance, but I think it could take a lot of patience. I once spent an afternoon with a friend who had gone through a bunch of ISP's, and used a different email password for each of them. We tried the name of each of his cats in turn. I forget whether it was "Puddles" or "Fluffy" that finally worked. He had gone to the library and emailed the ISP to say that his email wasn't working. The ISP replied by email to his email address. After I got the email working, their email came through and confirmed the cat's name...

Moral: charge by the hour. Hope it works out.

[Fred]

Advertising I suppose - leaflet drops and the like.

The only ones I've used have been free - Avira or AVG antivirus, Malwarebytes AntiMalware and lots of very useful removal tools for all sorts of nasties available from

and also from

[whisky-dave]

from what I hear most people don;t ;-)

[whisky-dave]

How much could a 'repairer' charge for this sort of job, how long would it take.. I'm not sure as I only work with macs, I do use a PC but that;'s because I'm going to do something really bad in my next life ;-). If a 6 year old laptop is having problems how much would someone be willing to pay for a repair, when you can get a much better/faster laptop for around =A3300 and do that every copuple of years.

maybe consulting would be a good idea specialing in backups of photos and music perhasp security too. I'm not sure saying you can do everything is a such agood idea it would put me off.

[Fred]

Now that's a whole new ball game. I've never been self-employed before but have often helped out friends and family and been rewarded with a few beers, but how on earth do you work out what you can charge when it's actually your job? I suppose some research into what other firms in the area are charging is the starting point.

I'm fairly confident in my ability to do the job but a businessman I am definitely not, and never wanted to be either.

Once again Tim, lots of good info so thanks again mate

[whisky-dave]

I work in a univ. full of students and a lot of them know quite a bit about this sort of thing and are usually far more up with technology than the staff. But if you're lucky maybe they all do history or art and will need a lot of help. One of the most repaired items I see are studetn repairing laptop PSUs, well the connectors breaking is the most common, but therre's little that can be done far better to buy a new PSU for around =A320 or less.

One of the biggest jobs here every year is electrical testing that is PAT testing equipement there seems to be money in that, but it's a boring job. At least fixing PCs can be intersting or even fun.

[djc]

Yes. I once had someone quote for a kitchen refit. I had a long list of various features I had seen elsewhere and asked 'could you do that'. And the more often he said 'Yes we can do that' the less confidence I had.

On computer maintenance in general. There are some people who will be very appreciative when you fix quite trivial problems. And other who will just think you incompetent if you need to spend hours diagnosing a problem. So what a job is worth to you, to the customer, and as a nominal hourly rate can be very different.

[tim....]

Unfortunately, one of the things that they don't know, that IS highly prized by employees is that: "working extra unpaid overtime today will bring a career reward later" is a big lie and that no further reward will be forthcoming.

[tim....]

Isn't that too late. They are in PCW, buying their new computer, which they know that they don't know how to put together and PCW offer them this service for 50 quid. How can you (anyone) possibly advertise a competing service at point of sale?

I am 99% certain that my shonky performance is because of registry clutter.

But I've yet to find a cleaner for free (I'll be very happy if someone can prove me wrong). I did download one that as a trial would fix the first 5 errors for free, but as it found in excess of 1000 errors I thought that was pointless.

tim

[tim....]

I would say that, given the overheads of travel etc the lowest that you can charge for 1 or 2 hours work is 20ph

I would also guess (BICBW) that the most a domestic household will pay for a trivial computer fix is 40 or 50 pounds.

tim

[tim....]

To follow up:

Peeking through, what I presume is the gap that the air flows through, I can see no obvious sign of any dust.

As other comments have implied that laptop repairs are possible by a capable DIYer, I gave it a try.

I removed every screw that I could see, but it still didn't come apart, so I am no further forward with knowing how to do this myself (and I certainly wouldn't try it with someone else's)

tim

[Fred]

Have a look for the service manual for your laptop Tim. You may find it here:

if not, just have a general google around for it. I found the service manual for my own Acer Aspire 5535 and it really does detail the location of every screw, stripdown routine and all you'll need.