I Found A Computer Guy

By Debra Ross, Publisher, KidsOutAndAbout.com

Take:

• One mommy-of-preschoolers who is running a software consulting business from home
  
  
• Two girls, age 3 and 4, whose love of computers is just starting to bloom
  
  
• One working Windows 2000 desktop...and
  
  
• Two malfunctioning Windows '98 desktops currently serving as plant stands in said mommy's office...

...and what do you have?

A recipe for chaos. Especially if the mommy's best friend recently showed up with a new Little Mermaid II CD-ROM.

I really can't complain: These two computers crashed in early 2003 after 5 years of faithful service. Now, I know that 15 months is a long time for two blank screens to be taking up space on the office desks. But with two increasingly computer-literate kids, I knew that out there somewhere in the local Rochester area there must be a hardware genius who could restore these Dells to their previous glory. At least enough so that Madison could play Reader Rabbit.

You might think that as a software consultant, I'd be able and eager to muck around in there to figure it out myself...delete the obsolete "DLLs," conquer conflicting drivers, dust out the directories. Not so. I tried reinstalling Windows, which promptly further confused the older of the the systems. So I gave it up, realizing I needed an expert.

I needed A Guy.

Oh, sure, I had my guy. But my guy's expertise is mathematics, not PC Guts; David calls me when his Netscape email program suddenly won't start. I checked the prices at the Henrietta Comp USA. Yikes! A lot of money even just to reinstall Windows, which I'd done in a few minutes (albeit badly) myself. I was likely to run into the hundreds of dollars per system, when a new computer would only cost me $600. So I just couldn't justify the cost. I thought that there must be someone who could take care of what I needed for less than that. So I kept my eyes open. Of course, a Computer Guy can be a Computer Girl, as I well know. But no one with reasonable prices and an honest, hardworking attitude crossed my path. And so my computers sat, gathering dust.

Enter Shane Keyser.

For four years, Shane had been the manager of the Gateway store in Henrietta, which recently closed. So in February 2004, he started Keyser Computer Services in Farmington. I found out about him through my KidsOutAndAbout.com contacts (not the first time I've been glad I publish this web site!), and promptly hired him to fix my computers.

Shane not only figured out what the problem was with each of them, but he picked up the computers on a Friday and had them back to my home office on Monday morning! He cleaned up the hard drives, reinstalled operating system software, rescued all of the important data (including a bunch of photos from Madison's first year that I hadn't realized were stored on one of them!) and reorganized everything into a couple of easily accessible folders. He found some stuff of David's that hadn't been backed up anywhere else. And everything now works flawlessly.

The best part of Shane's service is that the cost of fixing these computers, including pickup and delivery, works out to only about $100 per system, when it would have cost me over $200 at CompUSA with everything he did. (Shane says that if KidsOutAndAbout.com readers want this type of cleanup before 9/30/04, he will do it for about $80 per system.) Now that's a price I can live with to avoid the constant quarreling in a very techie household. The girls get their "own" computers, and I get a new privilege to hold over their head when they start to misbehave at Wegmans. We all can work at the same time and it is quiet except for the little JumpStart rodeo theme on the phonics game. And my husband, far from being threatened by my new Guy, is as enthusiastic as all of us. In fact, he spontaneously composed a little rhyme about Shane at the dinner table the other night. (Apologies to Dr. Seuss, currently turning over in his grave.)

Who's the best computer guy sir?
Why sir, Keyser, no one wiser!

Services offered through Keyser Computer Services also include virus removal, business networking and services, general repairs, computer tutoring, upgrades, and kid-friendly internet content filtering. You can contact Shane through his web site at Keyser Computer Services (KeyserCS.com), by phone at 585-233-7086, or by email at info@KeyserCS.com.

©Debra Ross, 2004
All rights reserved.