Michael Solomon (MS-MVP Windows Shell/User) said:
Just be sure you know the shop or check with others. I have my systems
built by a small shop and I'm pleased with them but there are also a lot of
fly by night operators who may not be there when you need them.
True, but it's the same with any small business. Get your car repaired at a
local mechanic or the dealership? You'd better check it out a little before
you get work done. As far as not being there when you need them, there have
been plenty of computer-related companies that have vanished overnight, as
well.
Most of my business growth is due to referrals, so that must mean something
This is by no means is meant to be critical, you just need to do a little
more checking.
Shopping around is a good idea. I didn't mean to imply the the OP should run
to the nearest shop and plunk down cash without asking questions. With small
shops there are going to be a lot of options for customization, so it will
take some research.
We've run into whole bunches of folks on these boards who
ended up with pirated copies of XP and bogus CD keys. Watch the ads and be
sure they've been around for awhile. There's a periodical called "Computer
User." They have local editions for all over the country and many local
shops advertise in it,
www.computeruser.com has a link to where it is
available. It's free or you can subscribe to it for a price.
While advertising is a good way to find someone, it doesn't say much about
how good or bad the business is, nor does it tell you how long they've been
in business (unless, of course, that's part of the ad). It just means
they're paying for an ad. And there's enough misleading advertising out
there. And I've seen ads that offer blatently illegal software, as well.
Best bet is to ask other people about their experiences at local shops, and
talk to the people there.
One other thing to consider, a lot of small shops do an excellent job of
building the system but unfortunately, many have employees whose native
language is something other than English and it can make it difficult when
seeking tech support.
Huh? There are about a half-dozen small computer shops in my town, and in
general, the person you're most likely to talk to is the owner, who is also
a tech. And the techs do double-duty answering questions to retail
customers. And ansering the phone. Maybe you have a different definition of
a "small shop" than I do, but the type I'm thinking of wouldn't survive if
the techs didn't speak the native language of the surrounding population.
You can certainly run into that with a major
manufacturer but when you run into it with a shop, there's almost no place
else to go.
And if you run into a dead end with Dell or Gateway, what's your recourse?
With a small shop, you can generally look the owner in the eye and
negotiate. A small shop, if they're any good, is going to want to make the
customer happy because word-of-mouth is important, and one angry customer
spreading the word can actually have noticable effects. So even if the
customer is "wrong" many times a local shop will bend over backward to make
them happy, just so they don't get a bad reputation. If angry customers had
that sort of effect on the big OEMs, then HP would be handing out CDs with
their computers.
Of course, there are lousy small computer shops, and there have been a few
in this town. Oddly enough, they didn't last very long. And people who knew
computers knew which shops were legit and which weren't.
