What is the going rate to charge for computer services?

jadziad

I also hate Microsoft or CompTIA certificates - you can acquire them by memorising information & regurgitating it during the exam. They don't test for common sense at all - I know about 5+ helpdesk technicians with these certs, and I wouldn't let them anywhere near the PCs of friends or family. Even if someone has the most difficult or expensive Cisco or MS certs, they can still be inexperienced and dangerous.

I'd be happy to remotely clean one PC per evening for £45, but there's the possibility of getting clients who won't pay because "the virus came back!", or direct/indirect data loss during the fixing process, or breaking programs the client needed, or users failing to back up their data before (the backup task itself could take many hours), or a PC becoming bricked after a failed malware removal exercise or driver update etc, possibly leaving the PC in a worse state than they initially reported.

paddyrg

Hammyman wrote: »

A 2 year old can put together a computer nowadays. You could train a monkey to do it.

If the concept of an electron trapped in an infinite potential well means nothing, then maybe that monkey knows how to assemble lego-like pre-made parts rather than understand how complex computers are inside!

It's like saying computer programming is easy with wysiwyg tools, yet not having written machine code programs using only pen, paper, mov, push, pop, accumulators, registers targetted at a specific processor architecture. Or never having to debug a memory leak in a device driver.

When you get into it, they are VERY complicated.

getmore4less

Think about the basic rates you can get as an employee

£10ph ~ £20k py.


If you have business overheads, covering your own expenses, holidays etc. it won't go far.

The problem with most PC issues is they take time but most don't need much hands on time with the right toolkit

So for in house you need to add value while investigating, check the router, advise on anti virus, firewall, backup, offer services etc and think about your GTY.

For people that don't know what they are doing paying £XX getting a machine set up with the correct tools from someone that knows what they are doing with a GTY is worth it.

What is £XX with a GTY.

Any one prepared to provide one?


In business computers and IT are important and worth paying for( service contracts).

In the home many people want to treat it like a consumer product, breaks throw out

go down your local tip and see the machines getting thrown out

Some problems are not so obvious

How many people got problems with the google fermat doodle?

it broke google on one of my PC's and I have at least one other reference

scheming_gypsy

but you don't need to get into it.

you don't have to understand how all the circuit board goes together, or the concept of electrons etc to work in IT.

you're just trying to over complicate something that doesn't need it. Although it sounds like you might have a degree in computer science which is pointless in the support world

patman99

At a guess, I would say that the shop charging £10 p/h uses the same methods as me and has at least 2 systems undergoing virus checking at the same time. All you do is boot the computer using a pendrive or CD, run the A/V program then walk away and come back later.

Takes 5 minutes to get going, then you just leave to complete. When complete, run the next set of programs, walk away, come back ocasionally to check progress etc.

Can easily complete an A/V scan, malware scan, root-kit scan, registry clean-up, defrag the HDD and do a driver and O/S check/Update for only about 50 minutes actual work, then charge the customer £25 and tell them it took 4 hours.

paddyrg

SG and Hammy, understand please my comments about computer complexity relate to the concept of some bloke with a USB key part of the thread. I agree, most tier-1 guys need nothing remarkable skills-wise, but at least having a conceptual understanding of how operating systems work is valuable if you are trying to get all the malware off of a machine. Rather, some bloke may be able to follow instructions and use tools supplied by other people, and pay be able to click boxes in order effectively 85% of the time, but following checklists and progress bars is what you typically get from people who will housecall to help people with computer problems. No analytical skills, no debugging or problem solving. Technicians, not engineers.

No, I didn't do a CS degree, but grew up as computers were also growing up (and stayed in IT at quite a senior level until I got bored). You're right, tier-1 support stuff like this, or even lego system assembly doesn't rely on knowing anything about what goes on for the majority of the time, but what do you do if you find a stubborn rootkit from an incorrect file hash for a filesystem protected file, for instance? Running the same tools over and over won't cure that, and in fact most home visit fixie people will never even get so far as to notice that.

But, in terms of me overcomplicating things, I think the 'computers are easy' comments oversimplify them. You can only say that without qualification if you do not understand them. Which is why I went further to explain.

heretolearn_2

For general IT support work, while I appreciate this is a very skilled area (or should be), the problem is that a huge number of people now have those skills so pure competition and availability has driven the fees/salaries right down. 20 years, or even 10 years, ago you were something special if you could do this well. These days, not.

At our firm we use a freelance IT bod to do all our support, sorting out problems we can't deal with ourselves/don't have time for, a bit of IT maintenance, setting up new employees on systems, running daily backup. For this we are charged £40 per month and this covers everything he can do remotely (which is most things). If he has to come in to our office it's £150 per day pro rata'd down to £75 half day as a minimum charge, so we tend to save a few things up for him a couple of times a year. This is what he does full-time, for a number of companies.

Hammyman

paddyrg wrote: »

If the concept of an electron trapped in an infinite potential well means nothing, then maybe that monkey knows how to assemble lego-like pre-made parts rather than understand how complex computers are inside!

It's like saying computer programming is easy with wysiwyg tools, yet not having written machine code programs using only pen, paper, mov, push, pop, accumulators, registers targetted at a specific processor architecture. Or never having to debug a memory leak in a device driver.

When you get into it, they are VERY complicated.

At component level they are more complicated but even then, not incredibly so for an electronics engineer. Hell at aged 13 I was repairing ZX81s when people killed them. But for building and repairing* a modern PC, any trained monkey can do it as it is a modular design. I can put together a full tower from a pile of boxes in 5 to 10 minutes and it'll start first time every time. A friend of mine who is academically challenged to the point of being in remedial classes in school and is a truck driver makes a nice side living building and repairing computers and laptops.

Building computers is not hard and those who claim it is have either never tried it or if they're in the industry, have a vested interest in trying to convince Joe Public it is.

*by repairing I mean swapping out graphics cards, hard drives, RAM and not to component level.

Hammyman

paddyrg wrote: »

But, in terms of me overcomplicating things, I think the 'computers are easy' comments oversimplify them. You can only say that without qualification if you do not understand them. Which is why I went further to explain.

Disagree. I've talked people through memory upgrades on the phone - you don't need to be a genius to undo a cover on the bottom of a laptop and put a stick of RAM in a slot. Lots of people on this forum have been talked through cleaning laptop cooling heatsinks and replacing broken LCD panels.

Your modern computer can be completely built and disassembled with nothing more than a philips screwdriver. It is impossible to put something in the wrong place and get it the wrong way round. When you install Windows, all you need to do is put in the serial number and a user name. When Windows has installed, especially in the case of Windows 7, most hardware is now recognised and the drivers installed or if not, all you do is stick in the CD that came with your shiny graphics card and let it autorun.

It is a far cry from the days when I started building computers where you had to know what a DMA,IRQ setting and Memory address was, know what was already allocated in the system, set the appropriate jumpers on the card and then when you'd done all that, manually edit the config.sys and autoexec.bat files by hand to load the drivers and ensure the OS allocated the right settings. I even remember all the faffing about needed to format a MFM or RLL HDD which had its own ISA controller card and get that recognised as a boot device by the BIOS. Hell, I even remember having to do all that lot to install a CDROM drive. That is when building PCs was complicated and it was possible to put things in the wrong way round but with the advent of Windows 9x, PCI Plug'n'Play and putting pegs in slots so you can't put the wrong thing in without the aid of a hammer, all of that has been taken away.

scheming_gypsy

Hammyman wrote: »

Your modern computer can be completely built and disassembled with nothing more than a philips screwdriver. .

and some pliers because the !!!!!!! has tightened the monitor screws to within an inch of their plastic coated live as though it WILL fall out if there's the tiniest bit of movement within the earths core.