Comments on: Make Your Job Easier With a Tech Station For Your Test PC

By: iisjman07

iisjman07 — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 20:28:51 +0000

I might just try and make my own, could be interesting….

By: jim

jim — Sun, 31 Jan 2010 01:34:02 +0000

Great article

It appears the PcCaseGear link is no longer valid.

I was unable to find any Australian suppliers on Staticice

Looks like they are not available @ PCCasegear URL any more

By: Bryan

Bryan — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 18:51:53 +0000

Waste of money. You can easily do most hardware testing with just a GNU/Linux CD. Testing the CPU isn’t going to work that easily since people have different CPUs. You’d need quite a few of these to do anything live. I’m not hauling around a various types of laptops and desktops just to test the CPU. When these issues happen it is generally not worth fixing anyway- and you can easily give a customer a price on the fix letting them know the situation (it is either a CPU or motherboard issue) and it is pricey to fix. If they want to continue with the fix (maybe they spent allot of money on the system/or it is new/or it has important data/configuration/etc) you’ll have to order a part and schedule another appointment. If they need it asap check around for parts.

I usually just calculate the cost of the motherboard/CPU and charge them to replace both in terms of parts-followed by a single installation charge.

I have a $40 basic service charge (I cover customers up to 45-60 minuets away) and various other charges depending on what needs to be done. If it was a CPU/Motherboard it would be $40 basic service charge, $40 diagnostic charge, and $129.99 installation charge, plus cost of parts at retail. The parts I’d then order as cheap as possible online. This way I’d make $50 or so probably off the CPU/motherboard. If the motherboard cost me $40 and the CPU $10. Is $350 worth it? Likely it isn’t. When that happens you charge them for the diagnostic and basic service charge. $80. Then you can sell them other services when they need to transfer data. That would be $40 basic service charge and $30-$50 for a data transfer, ($30-$100) anti-virus software, software installations ($30), etc. Sometimes you can sell them printers and other devices as well since Vista/MS Windows 7 aren’t 100% compatible with most printers. I also often sell people on GNU/Linux. Specifically Ubuntu. Ubuntu works allot better for most people-although it is often better to sell them a whole computer than installing it on hardware that wasn’t designed for it.

My suggestion for penguin computer is ThinkPenguin. They sell systems designed for GNU/Linux-unlike everybody else. I’ve had problems with Dell, System76, and LinuxCertified. Dell sucks with GNU/Linux and they sell you systems that don’t work or have chipsets with non-free drivers that ensure that things like suspend to ram don’t work. System76 & Dell don’t offer the level of support most end-users need on GNU/Linux. ThinkPenguin offers an toll-free support number (which is actually good for you as a repair tech cause you then only get computer repair issues and don’t waste time on the phone with customers who aren’t paying you). They also include remote technical support (even through firewalls/routers), support utilities to help users navigate the web (avoid non-friendly GNU/Linux content, not that most users encounter it… but just in case), and branding (important cause they provide quality systems that users are happy with vs the competitors which don’t and if you recommend the competitors you’ll get blamed for their bad support) etc. ThinkPenguin also out-sources repair work with their warranties so you won’t loose out either if you contact them and let them know you are recommending their computers in your area. Compare that to Dell and others which have their own tech support teams. I’ve sold two systems here in the last week or two which is awesome cause I know I’ll be getting any future work as a result plus the added services (data transfers,etc) that I sold personally.

By: Dorothy

Dorothy — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 17:25:17 +0000

Thanks Bryce,
I need one of these. This is awesome!

By: Mark

Mark — Mon, 23 Feb 2009 12:02:41 +0000

Does anybody know of any UK sellers with these in stock? I’ve looked at ordering direct from the official site but with shipping charges it works out at about £90

By: MikeBusby

MikeBusby — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 23:01:16 +0000

I built something similar for bulk testing componets while at TAFE In Townsville Qld back in 2000. It just consisted of a motherboard tray from an old Pentium III based desktop with standoffs for the motherboard and a seperate 5.25 and 3.5 inch tray pop riverted into position to take optical drives and hard drives. Every component could be removed quite quickly and allowed for easy bulk testing of components. This is a step better than the one I built and will order one today for work.

By: Casey

Casey — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 14:49:46 +0000

About how big is it? The pictures are a bit deceiving.

By: Leslie's Professional Office Solutions

Leslie's Professional Office Solutions — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 20:17:57 +0000

I purchased one about a year ago, and like you all I love the ease of access and use. Saves fishing around a tight case.

By: Computer Networking

Computer Networking — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 20:10:37 +0000

I have one and I love it. I’ll never go back to having a standard PC as my test setup. NEVER!

By: Tampa Computer Repair

Tampa Computer Repair — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 20:00:45 +0000

Bryce,

You ever think about putting a bunch of techs together so we can pull some bulk discounts?