In message <QaRci.57$H61.41@newsfe4-win.ntli.net>, Robert Moir
<robspamtrap@gmail.com> writes


I think Robert understates this. There's no "probably" about it -- you
WILL get the blame. A good friend of mine once asked me to "sort out"
his machine. It contained hundreds of precious family photos and also a
family history program that I knew nothing about. He had spent years
researching his family tree, and wanted me to do some backups before
upgrading the machine. Needless to say, I wouldn't touch it. Imagine
what would have happened if I had made the smallest mistake.

To the OP: if you really want to pursue this activity, you should:

a. Never do it for friends.

b. Have the customer sign a declaration that s/he accepts that *all*
programs, documents, spreadsheets, photographs, family trees etc etc may
be irretrievably lost.

c. Have the customer produce all program CDs, license keys etc before
work commences. If you can't physically put your hands on these things,
you can't rebuild the system if the worst happens.

--
Ian

"ian" <ian@nospam.net> wrote in message news:fD8oiDBLrNdGFw4A@nospam.net...
That's a phrase none of my friends would expect to see used to describe
something I said... But you might have a point.

I had definately forgot this last point. Yes, that's absolutely essential.

"Licence key? What's that??" :-)

Hi,

Basically you will eventually discover something called "Professional
Liability Insurance" which costs an absolute fortune and has more holes and
exclusions in the terms than a piece of swiss cheese.

You really should have it but unless you already have a small fortune
available to pay for it then you would really need something along the lines
of a properly worded wavier should the unexpected happen.

Really good backups are a must when doing any work on a PC which contains
valuable or irreplaceable information.

I refuse to work on PC's where the OS is clearly not correctly licenced and
tell the owner to refer all support questions to the person who supplied the
unlicenced OS to them. I have caught several "professional" PC OEM's and
suppliers in my area who have/are supplying such PC's to unsuspecting
customers and reported them to Microsoft for their trouble.

Depending on your area then you need to concider the demographics and
potential customer base and how quickly you can get from one job to another.
In a rural area traveling is easier but folks are more thinly spread. In a
town or city there are more people but traveling is time consuming.

It should be possible to make a business out of local PC support (because I
am doing it).

Why not investigate something like NerdsOnSite
(http://www.iwanttobeanerd.com/) to see if this might be relevent to what
you want to do.

Kind Regards

Simon