Should I get some PC/Apple Certifications?

March 20, 2006 7:55 AM

or, How To Make The Public Beleive You Are Competent With High-Priced Electronics.

I am a recently accepted law student at a university, and will be moving soon. My wife will be working some sort of full time job while I'm attending classes, and while that and student loans will be sufficent, I've never attended school not employed in some fashion or another since I was 16.

I will, of course, have to put school first - but, an idea I had was to open a small computer repair shop out of my residence.

A little background on me: Hard core computer nerd, starting from about age 8 to now (25). Have been messing with the hardware sides of things since about 17, and have built multiple PC's for friends and family, not including myself. I have worked as phone support for Dell, and currently a large banking institution. I also have worked as a network assistant for the state of Kentucky, over 500+ users and 10 buildings in our section. I became bored with PC's last summer, and purchased my first Mac. I now own two, with another on the way. I run three Debian machines on my own home network (albeit with much frustration). I've replaced many things on desktops and laptops (Mac/PC), can solder, and have a moderate understanding of general electronics.

Not to toot my own horn (or list my resume), but I know my stuff.

Obviously, I'm looking for a way to get that all on a buisness card, without having to say all that. I figure that the easiest way to get someone who doesn't understand this stuff to trust you is to show certifications. During a search, I've found this thread on A+, but it only served to confirm what I always have known - geeks want to know what you've done, not who says you've done it. Nobody's said anything on what laypeople want.

I'm mainly thinking about just picking up my A+ for PC's (I don't need no stinking MCSE), but for Apple I'm thinking about sucking it up and getting the Apple Certified Portable/Desktop Technician (both individually) to beef up my cred.

In all actuallity, if I thought I could do decently at it (note: about 15/hrs a week), I'd specialize in Mac's entirely and give up on Windows. I don't know if I have enough trust in market share, though.

So, I want to know - anyone else do this? How do you get the public to trust you with their laptop/desktop and, further more, is it worth the cost and time to get these certifications, most importantly the Apple ones?

posted by plaidrabbit to computers & internet (10 comments total)

Ah, crap. Sorry I screwed up the headline, and thanks for reading this first time question. Looks good like this, but looks like crap on the FP. My bad.
posted by plaidrabbit at 7:57 AM on March 20, 2006

I've always heard (from people who do this for a living), that word of mouth more or less makes or breaks you. The certifications certainly won't hurt - but I would think getting patched into your initial client base would be more critical.

I'm thinking of tasteful fliers in the lobbies of multi-tennant office buildings, community bulletin boards, craigslist... have something that may stand out for other tech repair folks (offer a discount for senior citizens, schoolteachers, etc), and try to do right by your customers. For bonus points - find out what |Best Buy \ CompUSA \ Local Shop| prices their services at - and find a way to offer some common services cheaper.

For the card itself, I would go this route:
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Machinecraig Computer Repair
PC * Apple * Desktop * Laptop * Hardware * Software
We fix computer problems - no job too small!
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Good luck to you!
posted by machinecraig at 8:17 AM on March 20, 2006

A few points which don't directly answer your major question but address some of your implied ones:

1. Don't specialize in Macs, you want the biggest possible pool of customers. Do both, if you want--but don't turn away customers unless you have to (if you get lucky and get swamped). If you've got the Mac skills, no need to specialize in just PC's either.

2. PC "repair" is becoming a pointless endeavour IMO. The hardware's just getting cheaper and cheaper. Now, in-home tech support? That's a whole 'nother ball game.

3. I personally don't think there's much of a market for "Bring your machine to me and I'll fix it", but "Give me a call and I'll come and figure out what's wrong with your machine for X/hr" is a business model that could definitely work.

With the modern proliferation of spyware and ever-nastier worms and the like, it's becoming easier to have a computer that's just brought to its knees with all sorts of crud. Bring a small lunchbox PC (or laptop) loaded with scanning software, etc., and go to town. That is a major category of support calls for home/SOHO users.

More thoughts:

In my area, the people I know that do this sort of work had plenty of demand for it. It can be tiring, driving everywhere. I don't think you need certifications for trust, though they help--referrals are going to be much better. Don't discount your services for anyone; it cheapens your worth in their eyes (at least, not below "the going rate"; feel free to discount your price *down* to the going rate if you prefer for marketing reasons). This class of users is typically the most difficult to get to pay you.

I'd have a set of "best practices" that I'd check for on any service call, for free: Anti-virus? Firewall? Accounts/permissions?

Don't go overboard recommending, say, Google when they're used to MSN. They're quite probably not going to change.

If you weren't going to move, I'd say that you could potentially set up an inexpensive subscription service where you'd VPN in and check backup logs, server logs, AV logs, etc. You could still do this, remotely, but you'd probably prefer to focus on school. :)
posted by RikiTikiTavi at 8:18 AM on March 20, 2006

Laypeople want someone that their friends vouch for. They don't know (and don't want to have to know) the difference between all the various qualifications. Apple certification sounds nice and credible, but probably expensive, right?

I'd say you could entirely skip qualifications and work on being quick, friendly, and leaving people feeling more rather than less intelligent about computers. Then, in a campus setting, you're going to be swimming in all the work you can handle.
posted by godawful at 8:18 AM on March 20, 2006

Your headline makes me think of a "on the next Rocky & Bullwinkle."

Good times.

I think you'd do well to just exude confidence. The layperson doesn't know what an A+ Certification is, but it'll be nice for them to be able to say "oh, well, he's certified. that's nice, I suppose." In reality, if you're able to explain to them clearly and precisely what you're able to do for them, in just the right blend of tech meet layperson speak, you'll impress them just fine.

I think that you should advertise a simple "computer speedup" or some such. For $50, you'll either take someone's computer (or visit them on site, if you're willing to), optimize their page file settings, defragment their drives, scan for and remove adware/spyware, run all Windows Updates, do a full virus scan, clean out their startup folder and their msconfig to get rid of all the crap system-tray programs that hog resources, and, for the price of whatever memory they require, pop in some extra RAM.

You can price out "installing a video card" or "reinstalling" Windows appropriately, but I'm thinking that even something as simple as "flyer on the mailbox" would work well for a quick speed up process. Give yourself a decent sounding name, explain your credentials on the flyer ("Over 10 years experience," "trustworthy," blah, blah) and maybe set up a really quick and basic web site to point them to to get more information.

Why would you even consider working on Macs? The market share is absolutely dismal, they're not nearly as susceptible to spyware or any of the basic malices that XP/98/Windows-based machines run into, and Apple usually has decent repair and warranty services or their Genius Bar or what have you. For adding expansion cards or memory, sure, but you're going to kill your demographic if you try to go Mac-only.

I also think you should focus on decent customer relationships with this. Do a follow up (perhaps with the email/gmail account you helped them establish?) with your clients a week later and make sure everything is in check. Explain to them that you installed some free software that should help keep things clean and running faster. Push Firefox on them, but don't force it on them. Talk to them about phishing and nigeria scams. And seriously, about phishing. And then mention that you'd love to offer them another checkup in a few months if they bring you another client.

Stay smart, don't talk down to them, but let them know that you know what you're doing. Credentials *are* nice, especially for getting started, and though there's a huge ethical dilmena with just claiming you have your A+ cert, it's almost worth it to just lie about it. (I'm mostly kidding. Mostly.)

Meanwhile, regarding certification—A+ is rather complex. And though you're a fantastic nerd, they like for you to know things like the pinouts on your VGA cables and basic DOS commands and exactly how the corona wire in your laser printer works. Meaning you won't be able to just dive into a test and expect to pass, even though you're up their in tech-skills. Some of that stuff is ridiculously arcane and completely inapplicable. I would say it's only remotely worth it from a mantle-piece standpoint, and to give some notion of credibility to you, but that you're probably able to foster that impression with a smart rewording of your experience as you listed it above.

Stay simple, be friendly, make flyers, network a lot and keep things simple. People are *dying* to get their computers cleaned up and "decrapified" these days. Bad builds of IE 5.5/6 and ActiveX controls along with people who don't look before they leap as a rule have brought us machines full of absolute crap that's relatively easy to remove. But they don't know how to.

Vaya con dios, and have fun!
posted by disillusioned at 8:20 AM on March 20, 2006

Brilliant, guys, brilliant. Keep 'em coming...
posted by plaidrabbit at 8:27 AM on March 20, 2006

Certifications turn me off. To me they scream "I can cram an exam in hopes of job security".

On the other hand, reading your questions I went from thinking "uh oh, future law student with cert. thinks he knows PCs. Avoid! Avoid!" to "hmm, he really does have some good hardware experience, I bet I could trust him".

so highlight the concrete experience, emphasize that you've done the same things for Dell, and a bank and for the Commonwealth of Kentucky, and that you can do it for your clients.

That said, I'm not your target demographic, because I'll try to do it myself rather than hire somebody.
posted by orthogonality at 8:47 AM on March 20, 2006

Certifications: are only good for getting parts from manufacturers under warranty...If you also happen to work for an authorized service center or dealer. However you should make some connections with local dealers so that you can arrange warranty repairs for your customers.

Pricing: In my personal experience doing this exact thing I discovered that price is usually not a problem provided you know your stuff and deliver a timely solution. I charged X for the 1st hour, and about 2/3X for each additional hour.

Advertising: Believe it or not the local paper's handyman or services page is a good place to start. After a few successes word of mouth may be enough to keep you busy.
posted by Gungho at 8:51 AM on March 20, 2006

Having basically fallen into doing this by accident, I'll share with you what has worked.

I have a nice 80 year old neighbor lady and I often tend to her Windows dilemmas, just because I like to help. She's enamored by this. *She* suggested that I ought to do this on the side for other people and mentioned how all of her friends from church would get excited about having me help them. Well. A few weeks pass by and the emails and calls start trickling in as word spreads that her "golden boy/pretend-adopted grandson" is available.

I'm swamped with this stuff. The clients are good, ethical people who don't fool around with paying my more-than-reasonable fees. They see enormous value in having me demonstrate how to do things like change file names or get "signed up for that email thing." I often leave with a plate of baked goods and I get tons of e-greeting cards on my birthday.

I explain things to them in the most common sense fashion that I can, often using analogies and they seem to get it. When I encounter a problem that I can't handle, I let them know and refer them to a local, reputable computer repair shop. I now get a discount there because of all the business I send to them, and the clients really dig my honesty. Currently, I just cherry-pick little jobs that are close to home and can be easily scheduled. I bang them out one after the other, and at the end of the night, I have a tidy little sum of cash that I can blow on irrational, impulse purchases. Yay for me. If I wanted to/needed to, this could be turned into a 70+hr a week gig with plenty of business to spare.

I have no certifications or credentials of any kind, and I've never attended any type of computer classes. I'm just a dork who uses a computer a lot and I've winged my way through my own maintenance and repair over the years. Not one penny has been spent on marketing, and my "business card" is my email address scribbled on a hunk of scratch paper. This thing is totally viral with no effort on my part.

So to sum it up, I'm upfront, honest, reliable and I don't jerk anyone around. I make the big, scary computer problems go away. The referrals just keep coming.
posted by peewee at 9:41 AM on March 20, 2006

Hey, one more thing - I did this sort of thing during undergrad for awhile and made a lot of extra cash by setting my price below what the on-campus people did things for. Anyway:

If you're going to go to people's homes to do this sort of thing, look into getting bonded. I personally will not let any professional service-person into my home unless they are bonded (and insured). While it's not perfect most of the time a bonded worker isn't going to come back and steal your new television or computer or whatever, and it's nice to have the relative peace of mind. Problem with this is it's not cheap...
posted by sablazo at 5:03 PM on March 20, 2006