How much to charge?

Callan

How much to charge?

How much should I charge for reinstalling windows 98SE, office, installing updates/fixes, anti virus, firewall etc on a PC?

Thanks

irlrobins

Who for? A business? Family? Friend?

Callan

A taxi driver.

irlrobins

Ha ha! Ah could make some joke about letting the meter run or something..

Anyway 100e min. I'd think.

petes

Charge by the hour. Do you know him? Is he a friend or someone referred you to him?

_Kaiser_

I normally charge €75 for a "basic" reload and updates and more if installing new hardware or if additional work is required - gotta think of the repeat business

Callan

petes wrote:

Charge by the hour. Do you know him? Is he a friend or someone referred you to him?

I don't know him, I just got talking to him, he said his PC was in bits and asked me to have a look. It was riddled with viruses and spyware. So I deciede to just do a fresh install.

Another thing, do fujitsu put passwords on the BIOS. I had to remove the battery to clear the CMOS as someone had put a password on.

Is it worth installing this http://exuberant.ms11.net/98sesp.html aswell.

Thanks

The Troll

Callan wrote:

I don't know him, I just got talking to him, he said his PC was in bits and asked me to have a look. It was riddled with viruses and spyware. So I deciede to just do a fresh install.

Another thing, do fujitsu put passwords on the BIOS. I had to remove the battery to clear the CMOS as someone had put a password on.

Is it worth installing this http://exuberant.ms11.net/98sesp.html aswell.

Thanks

In this case i'd charge €100.

Don't see why you need a clean reinstall of the OS though, unless you're formatting the hard drive as well.

RainyDay

Callan wrote:

How much to charge?

How much should I charge for reinstalling windows 98SE, office, installing updates/fixes, anti virus, firewall etc on a PC?

Thanks

Who's providing the software - You or him?

petes

Would probably charge €100 for this job also. Maybe a wee bit less. As Kaiser200 said. Have to think of repeat business. Did you not scan and remove virii and spypare before resorting to fresh install?

irlrobins

If its as riddled with crap as you say it is, by far the best solution is to wipe clean and reinstall. You'll def see an improvement in performance.

I don't think the link you provided is necessary to install. Just get all the updates from microsoft.com and install a good anti virus like AVG and Spybot Search and Destroy and you'll be fine.

Callan

The Troll wrote:

In this case i'd charge €100.

Don't see why you need a clean reinstall of the OS though, unless you're formatting the hard drive as well.

I ran AVG on it and it detected 30+ viruses (including one on the boot sector, which it couldn't remove). I have formatted the drive. I also backed up most of the data onto my machine before formatting (don't want him whinning that I deleted something).

I am going to install AVG and Kerio on the PC when I have installed windows.
Is there anything I should do.

Orion

don't forget Ad-aware and/or Spybot.

I'd charge a minimum of €100 for this. Probably more as you're doing more than the OS.

_Kaiser_

Callan wrote:

I also backed up most of the data onto my machine before formatting (don't want him whinning that I deleted something).

Do what I do.. make it clear from the start that you take no responsibility for any personal data (that's my years in IBM kicking in for ya ) because after all, you have no idea where THEY may have saved THEIR files and/or tell them to move all their files to one big folder called BACKUP on the C drive and you'll save that.

If they then lose stuff they can't say they weren't warned!

popey21

Jesus get real, any old windows 98 machine would not even be worth €100.
What you did would easily take an hour. €50 is a fair price

irlrobins

Its nothing to do with how much the machine is worth. It is to do with how much Callan's time and effort is worth. I'd charge the same whether is was a new machine or an old machine. Its still going to take me the same amount of time and effort.

And its prob more than an hours work taking into account backing up and restoring data.

aaf

I'd say €30/hr and tell him that at most it will be €120. If he were to get a professional to look at it, they would charge anywhere in the region of €50-€100+/hr and they probably wouldn't do as good a job as you and then they'd probably stick some subscription antivirus on it and charge for the firewall!! So don't feel guilty about charging that much.

Asok

I'd say keep it low for this guy....taxi drivers talk,they talk alot. It could lead to alot more business coming your way.

angelofdeath

yep i'd agree with 50 quid, it's not a big job, won't be too stressful
and you'll prolly get more business out of it

_Kaiser_

irlrobins wrote:

Its nothing to do with how much the machine is worth. It is to do with how much Callan's time and effort is worth. I'd charge the same whether is was a new machine or an old machine. Its still going to take me the same amount of time and effort.

And its prob more than an hours work taking into account backing up and restoring data.

In fact with an older system and opsys its usually MORE work I've found as generally they dont have the original drivers CDs and that means I have to go hunting online for old 98-compatible drivers. 2000/XP has a much better chance of picking the stuff up natively

gline

id say roughly 75-100 but make sure u spend time on it and u might get some more business out of it

Mr. Presentable

My thoughts.

Normally for a friend I'd do this for nothing. A friend of a friend gets charged 284.00, and a stranger 75.00 +.

My philosophy on this is simple.

A friend is a friend and won't take the piss.

A FoaF, however, will take the piss and should be discouraged.

A stranger is business. You want repeats.

Oh, and they must supply their OS CDs and licences.