[geeks] PC Repair shop fun...

[Lionel Peterson]

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.

Lionel