teckgeeks, what are you charging?

lee2 · 10-22-2008, 18:04

lets say if you work in someones computer:
price just to look at it? hourly? fixed price? plus parts?
get rid of spyware? viruses?
reinstall os?
just wondering if i'm charging correctly.
thanks.

Cody Jarrett · 10-22-2008, 18:22

Quote:

Originally Posted by lee2

lets say if you work in someones computer:
price just to look at it? hourly? fixed price? plus parts?
get rid of spyware? viruses?
reinstall os?
just wondering if i'm charging correctly.
thanks.

Depends on where you live. In NY our guys get $75 for the first hour and $45 for each hour after for in-home service. Discounts for cash.

reddog6259 · 10-22-2008, 18:45

I try to charge buy the job and not by the hour. OS re-install $75-$125 depending on if I need to locate drivers (Clones) ,age of computer, need office suite, anti-virus, etc.

IndyGunFreak · 10-22-2008, 18:46

Since I really only do it for family and friends.. Generally I do it for just parts. I built 3 computers for a local church (they apparently got my name from a member). They needed to upgrade all their computers because of some fancy printer/copier/scanner, etc they were getting, and all their Windows 3.x computers would not run it.

Anyways, I built the PC's for parts only, set them all up w/ Win XP, and when they wanted internet access about 4 days later, went out and setup a wired network for them. About a week later he comes by my house and drops off a card of appreciation for me, and in it, was a $50 gift certificate to a local range (While chatting w/ him at his house, I'd noticed some nice shotguns that he had, and we had a lengthy discussion about guns).

Now granted, he'd have spent WAY more than $50 w/ a real IT guy, but it was the thought that counts... I really wasn't expecting anything in return and had made that clear to him from the beginning.

wtopace · 10-22-2008, 19:20

I normally charge the cost of parts for friends and family. If someone offers to reload a fresh Operating System without a pre-existing disk for $75, I might be a bit weary of whether it was a legal license or not. You can get a rough estimate of the cost by searching for the requested operating system on newegg.com.

As for drivers, 99% are included with Microsoft operating systems from Windows XP and Vista.

Check your copy of Windows to ensure it is legal:
http://www.microsoft.com/genuine/def...displaylang=en
Click "Validate Windows" on the right hand side of the screen.

DragonRider · 10-22-2008, 19:22

When I did it. I generally charged 200.00, with that they got me backing up their data, reinstalling software from THEIR copies, educating them on what to do(15 mins or so on how to use the firewall, and what websites they shouldnt go to), tell them to buy an external harddrive, set them up with a mirror backup software package such as syncback.

As a teacher in the computer department, I got plenty of business from the parents of my students.

After they had backups, I said they should be able to recover in the future and most were then willing to do it.

Kids would laugh at the beginning of the year explaining the importance of backups till I visited them one weekend and said why didnt you talk to your parents to backup your music....(part of the talk was holding up an external hard drive at work that had a mirror of my mp3's, Hardwear cost 120, Data cost, 20,000$ if I had to redownload the songs from Itunes. Most got the idea of why it was worthwhile.)

HTH

John B

betyourlife · 10-22-2008, 19:35

I usually don't charge anything because I do it for family and friends.

Big Al 24 · 10-22-2008, 22:21

Quote:

Originally Posted by betyourlife

I usually don't charge anything because I do it for family and friends.

Same here.

rhikdavis · 10-27-2008, 07:54

Quote:

Originally Posted by DragonRider

When I did it. I generally charged 200.00, with that they got me backing up their data, reinstalling software from THEIR copies, educating them on what to do(15 mins or so on how to use the firewall, and what websites they shouldnt go to), tell them to buy an external harddrive, set them up with a mirror backup software package such as syncback.

As a teacher in the computer department, I got plenty of business from the parents of my students.

After they had backups, I said they should be able to recover in the future and most were then willing to do it.

Kids would laugh at the beginning of the year explaining the importance of backups till I visited them one weekend and said why didnt you talk to your parents to backup your music....(part of the talk was holding up an external hard drive at work that had a mirror of my mp3's, Hardwear cost 120, Data cost, 20,000$ if I had to redownload the songs from Itunes. Most got the idea of why it was worthwhile.)

HTH

John B

Damn, is there $20k of music worth listening to ?

DragonRider · 10-27-2008, 16:20

Quote:

Originally Posted by rhikdavis

Damn, is there $20k of music worth listening to ?

Well, 1st CD was 1989 for me.....

Now I have mine, my wifes and 3 kids worth of music stored on the server. That copy is just the copy I take to work to have on hand. Total Libary is 38,318 songs for a total of 191 Gigs of music, including live recordings and stuff.

Back to our regularly scheduled topic now.

John