I want to be fair, but not jip myself ;p

[Kailea]

Figured I would put it here since it has to do with computers


Up till now I have been doing a few side jobs for older people and people that dont have alot of cash to work with, so I have been a bit lax on how much I charge.

My dentist office has offered me the job of upgrading 6 computers they need and I am having a hard time deciding what to charge them..... I want to be fair, but I dont want to screw myself lol.

I will have to install 6 HDDs 6 sticks of RAM, and install windows and a few bits of software for all 6.

any tips?

EDIT: ok dyslexia kicked in I guess ;p

[cidbahamut]

Re: I want to be fair, but not jip myself ;p

Really depends on how much of a pain in the ass the whole operation ends up being and how friendly you are with your dentist. Are you doing this as a favor or as a job?

[Mhurron]

Re: I want to be fair, but not jip myself ;p

Hourly charge. Exactly how much per hour is more related to your knowledge level and the going cost of other service providers in the area.

FYI, the word you were looking for is fair.

[Icemage]

Re: I want to be fair, but not jip myself ;p

You want to be a taxi cab payment? I don't get it.


Icemage

[Balfree]

Re: I want to be fair, but not jip myself ;p

charge by the hour.

how much though? if you want to make it cheap for them just check how much it would be per hour on a local store that they would instead turn to or some such, then subtract some or just go with that.

[TheGrandMom]

Re: I want to be fair, but not jip myself ;p

Figured I would put it here since it has to do with computers


Up till now I have been doing a few side jobs for older people and people that dont have alot of cash to work with, so I have been abit lax on how much I charge.

My dentist office has offered me the job of upgrading 6 computers they need and I am having a hard time deciding what to charge them..... I want to be fare, but I dont want to screw myself lol.

I will have to install 6 HDDs 6 sticks of RAM, and install windows and a few bits of software for all 6.

any tips?

My son and I called around to local shops (not chains) and asked hourly rates. We averaged them and took a % off for anything I do since I am not educated in that area. My son charges a % less for family and friends for his work but charges full price for local businesses because he has the degrees and certifications to back it up.

[Kailea]

Re: I want to be fair, but not jip myself ;p

ah nice, thanks for the tips. I will do that then. in my area all I have to worry about are two locals called ECP and Computer Shack, and Bestbuy (lol)

[ShepardG]

Re: I want to be fair, but not jip myself ;p

Curious to see what you ended up going with K, if you don't mind sharing.

[Balfree]

Re: I want to be fair, but not jip myself ;p

personally i keep clear of such jobs when i'm not sure of it, sometimes things are broken beyond repair or close and then you might end up getting blamed because you were the last guy to mess with it

[Kailea]

Re: I want to be fair, but not jip myself ;p

well I went to look at it today, and all 6 systems are the same build, which makes it easy, each one needs a stick of 1gb PC2100 ram and one 160gb IDE HDD, that will have then come out on the cheap end. She also wanted me to look into just replacing all 6. They all have P4 2.0ghz in them for god sake......

I called my local place ECP...and my god... to install windows they charge $125, installing ram is 35 and backing up software is 49 ( I wont have to do this, everything is backed up daily on a main server.) I have not called best buy yet though.

[Aeni]

Re: I want to be fair, but not jip myself ;p

well I went to look at it today, and all 6 systems are the same build, which makes it easy, each one needs a stick of 1gb PC2100 ram and one 160gb IDE HDD, that will have then come out on the cheap end. She also wanted me to look into just replacing all 6. They all have P4 2.0ghz in them for god sake......

You realize that a P4 is all you need for most things, right? Not sure how they are setup, but if it's something like Office 2007 with 10 licenses and it's running off the server, then the client doesn't need to be extra powerful. For a business setting like the one you described, you primarily will work with spreadsheets, some accounting program, Outlook, etc. Not sure what OS they're running but XP is just fine. They don't need a discrete graphics card either so that should keep the budget down for any future upgrades.

The point is, economy is still shaky and you won't know what will happen to your town in a few weeks. If business all of a sudden turns for the worst, then your dentist is going to feel the hurt with expensive machines sitting in her office doing nothing more than crunch invoices.

[Kailea]

Re: I want to be fair, but not jip myself ;p

each of the 6 computers are there for running a data base for patients and organizing and viewing X-rays. There CPU is "fine" but she was complaining about the systems running really slow, but I mainly chalked that up to only having 256mb of RAM trying to run that program and XP pro, along with the GPU running of the same said RAM. The only reason I am even looking into rebuilding all 6 from scratch is because she asked me to ;p she wanted an "option 2"

[Aeni]

Re: I want to be fair, but not jip myself ;p

he only reason I am even looking into rebuilding all 6 from scratch is because she asked me to ;p she wanted an "option 2"

Well that's fair if she's willing to pony up the money for it. Not exactly sure what kinds of programs they are running on their machine but maybe you can go look into getting either benchmarks for it or I guess good old Google to find out what other users say is minimum for running these things smoothly.

[Kailea]

Re: I want to be fair, but not jip myself ;p

Well that's fair if she's willing to pony up the money for it. Not exactly sure what kinds of programs they are running on their machine but maybe you can go look into getting either benchmarks for it or I guess good old Google to find out what other users say is minimum for running these things smoothly.

oh I already have that, the main program (and the one that is mainly used) only requires at max, a P4 2.0 So I know just updateing the RAM and HDD will be fine. But I do what I am asked of ;p I know she will choose ther fisrt option though, as the second option will cost about 3-4x more lol


EDIT: uummm could a passing mod please correct my spelling on "fare" lol....its really bugging me.

[Aeni]

Re: I want to be fair, but not jip myself ;p

EDIT: uummm could a passing mod please correct my spelling on "fare" lol....its really bugging me.

The thread title has the correct spelling but when you keep replying to people who already replied and have the old spelling, it'll keep propagating itself. I decided to manually fix it in this post and if people reply to this one, hopefully it'll stop propagating the incorrect version.