Opening New Computer Shop!

[Steevo]

Congrats on your venture. Most of your revenue will come from servicing businesses. Focus on that and keeping your overhead low. You can also make some money as an off-site backup solution. Polish up on your networking skills.

Keep us posted. Exciting stuff.

I second the offsite backup option, perhaps a monthly backup service program for local businesses, come in after hours and copy pasta the backups to an external drive that you then put in an offline RAID 5 storage system, locked down and password protected.

If you were really into it you could encourage them to VPN into a static IP you lease and run a copy batch into a FTP site that you then just move to the server on an incremental daily basis. $100 a month for a service like that for 20 clients would cover the system, a good firewall, ISP costs and everything in a month, then your chance at building and redeploying a replacement machine with profit on that as well.

 

[neatfeatguy]

I second the offsite backup option, perhaps a monthly backup service program for local businesses, come in after hours and copy pasta the backups to an external drive that you then put in an offline RAID 5 storage system, locked down and password protected.

If you were really into it you could encourage them to VPN into a static IP you lease and run a copy batch into a FTP site that you then just move to the server on an incremental daily basis. $100 a month for a service like that for 20 clients would cover the system, a good firewall, ISP costs and everything in a month, then your chance at building and redeploying a replacement machine with profit on that as well.

I tried getting the last place I worked at to offer this for their customers - they have about 3 thousand customers that run servers for their backoffice and roughly 85% of them have no data backup. If their server tanks, they can lose years and years of data. The 15% or so have a central server at their main office that backs up data, so some of them are golden.

You'd be surprised how many people don't think about these things when they're running their business. They think they have it all on a computer and they're safe.....but no backup whatsoever can kill them. It would be a good service to offer if it's something you can get started.

 

[Ikaruga]

Congrats and good luck!

 

[Easy Rhino]

Any pics of the insides?

 

[brandonwh64]

Bruce great job on the new business adventure! Can I give you some advise? You might want to look into a expansion plan of servicing small businesses with "Service contracts" which include PC installations/repair as well as business IT layouts for businesses that are starting or looking to upgrade equipment. Another service you could do is small business networking where your business would be contracted in to install and configure their whole network topology. This would bring in more business than just the average person needing a virus removed.

 

[Ahhzz]

I second Brandon's take for an additional reason. My company has picked up several small jobs from companies for which we do their plant/business work. They're not a lot of income, an hour or two here or there, but they're ALWAYS on time with their money, and most come to pickup with cash/check in hand. and, a couple have led to additional company prospects as people leave one business for another, and say "Hey, we had these great guys handle our business, maybe we should get them in here!" Good luck!!

 

[xBruce88x]

skimmed through and will do a more thorough read later, but i can post some pics of the insides, they're pretty neat systems. I had to go out and buy a mini hdmi to hdmi adaptor though and pick up a couple msata to sata adaptors. drive duplicator helps a lot too! Pics!

spent most of the day getting parts and such, got about 6 systems done though! that duplicator does its job in about 15min with those SSDs

Thanks for all the suggestions guys, the backup service seems like a great idea. I'll have to wait until I can invest in a cheap yet reliable high capacity low power usage setup. Still having some issues with Comcast from time to time though. Has dropped connection at very poor times, like when I go to process a card payment.

One little update, I don't do checks anymore.

Another thing, I've noticed that some small shops like mine seem to be doing shady things. First off, one such shop literally crammed a full height 3.5in HDD into a much slimmer floppy port, putting so much pressure on the drive it pressed down onto the read write heads, killing the drive.

I've also noticed quite a few pirated systems, most recently an HP with 6GB memory and an Athlon Quad core, yet it was only running a 32bit version of Windows 7 Pro, instead of the x64 version of Home Premium

Oh also a heads up on Trojan.Poweliks. If your normal system processes are running at high memory and cpu usage, you may have this baddie, it's actually a registry entry. I've got a tool that will eliminate it.

Will post more later....

BTW anyone know what I can do with 3 commodore 64s and a 128?

 

[Easy Rhino]

BTW anyone know what I can do with 3 commodore 64s and a 128?

ebay

 

[TheFinalFrontEar]

@xBRUCE88 how much do the above systems retail at?

 

[Sasqui]

Very cool, I like the name on the sign "Reboot" you keeping it?

I think doing mobile device repair is a solid idea. Everybody has smartphones and tablets, and almost all of them need a a screen replacement done here or then since people love to drop their stuff. I've done quite a few for friends and family, and if I charged for it, it would have been nice

That was one of my first thoughts!

 

[xBruce88x]

Estimated retail for each system is about $800 USD, so i've got about $20k worth of computers sitting here. Not including w/e they paid for Office and other proprietary software, so easily $40k.

Yea I'm keeping the name, whole reason I spent soo much to buy the place instead of just moving in after they cleared out lol

edit: ima try to get a pic of the cpu side of the units' board if i get one that cooperates better. don't wanna break one!

edit 2: got it! working on uploading pics, will post in another... post

 

[xBruce88x]

Here's the pics of the CPU side of the NUC. The cooler reminds me of my old 8600GT from PNY

and the case... you can see the WiFi and Bluetooth antennae, though none of these came with such cards, which would normally be installed in the slot under the SSD

got the fan off...

and here's the fan...

Here's with the heatsink off... Cooler Master maybe?

and a close-up of the cpu...

The unit was a tight fit in the case, had to pull outwards on the edges while hovering it over a soft rubber-type mat. It finally gently fell onto the mat. Was a tight fit getting it back in too

 

[ne6togadno]

@xBruce88x
i have question to you.
when those white walls of the shop will get twin frost. winforce. directcu, water loops and other pc porn painting.
as it is now it looks like just another shop for nails, hammers and bricks.

 

[xBruce88x]

i had a "Game of Pwns" poster up at one point, I think it was EVGA.

 

[Tallencor]

Nice to see things are going well. Good on you. Really digging the as per job pics and such. Nice to see stuff I would otherwise not think to look into.

 

[kikicoco1334]

best of luck dude! that's pretty cool!

 

[xBruce88x]

Last update on the shop.... for now.

Well it was fun while it lasted, but unfortunately i've had to close up shop. Between some questionable local politics and other shady dealings, not to mention getting shafted by a certain communications company... i've had to close up shop. Not to fear though, I intend on re-opening the shop at a later time at a better location. I've since moved to Colorado. Working on getting back on my feet and such. At least i have the experience and know what things to do better for next time.

 

[ne6togadno]

sad to hear things didnt run well but you are still willing to try again and having an xp is always plus. i hope you will heve better luck and partners next time.

 

[qubit]

That's a shame. It sounds like you had a viable business, but it was brought done by dirty tricks from others. I'm sure you'll succeed next time though.

 

[HammerON]

Thanks for the update. Will be looking forward to your next business venture

 

[Ikaruga]

Last update on the shop.... for now.

Well it was fun while it lasted, but unfortunately i've had to close up shop. Between some questionable local politics and other shady dealings, not to mention getting shafted by a certain communications company... i've had to close up shop. Not to fear though, I intend on re-opening the shop at a later time at a better location. I've since moved to Colorado. Working on getting back on my feet and such. At least i have the experience and know what things to do better for next time.

Good luck with your next try, I'm sure you will do much better being more experienced.

 

[jboydgolfer]

Last update on the shop.... for now.

Well it was fun while it lasted, but unfortunately i've had to close up shop. Between some questionable local politics and other shady dealings, not to mention getting shafted by a certain communications company... i've had to close up shop. Not to fear though, I intend on re-opening the shop at a later time at a better location. I've since moved to Colorado. Working on getting back on my feet and such. At least i have the experience and know what things to do better for next time.

Good Luck. Sorry to hear about Your Business.

 

[Gokufighther]

this is in GA? i was born there, they dont have much stuff there for pc's, mainly just the crappy best buy and the crappy tech places at the mall

 

[stinger608]

I've since moved to Colorado

What area in Colorado Bruce?

 

[Mussels]

I did this for a while myself with an internet cafe/PC repair store.

That area of work is flooded with 'computer guys' who don't know jack shit but are happy to do the job $10 cheaper than the people who actually know, and it drags down the reputation of the few people who actually have a clue.

around here its just sales now, no one does repairs at all anymore.