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Plumber, Electrician... Digitician?
Alien54 writes "This article from the Sunday Boston Globe describes the rise of a new type of tradesman called, for lack of a better term, a digitician, a label describing the burgeoning army of overqualified, unemployed, or free-spirited computer technicians being deployed to front porches around the country."
Around this time a century ago, cars (or horseless carriages) were still rather unusual devices which few understood. They were unreliable, and people were still getting used to the idea of owning them. Eventually, their sprung up an occupation around maintaining these devices, and now we have many trained mechanics. That's what computer repair people are becoming.
The Judge family paid nearly $300 to fix an $800 computer.
Holy crap. Does that seem ridiculous to me solely because I know computers? Perhaps it's not that different from the mechanic that wanted to charge me $100 to replace a stripped wheel stud (which I later did myself for the cost of the $3 stud and an hour).
Interested in open source engine management for your Subaru?
I wouldn't say that it's ridiculous.
People don't understand computers. To many, either AOL works, or it doesn't. And, these people don't want to understand computers.
Just like all people are capable of changing their own oil (or in your case, a wheel stud), it doesn't mean it's something that they want to learn how to do.
However, just like with vehicles, there is always going to be price gougers (and those who do shoddy fixes to more extensive problems). In the realm of computers, with so few people understanding the depths of their operating systems, price gouging is even easier, as how man people really know what, "Kernel32.dll has performed an illegal operation (Insert long string of hex here)," means, or even how to find a solution.
With vehicles, at least most individuals have a basic understanding (IE, they know that when a mechanic tell them the timing belt needs to be replaced but he's pointing to the rear differential that something is up.)
Finally. It's about time that people started to realize that electronics are complicated things and that it takes competent people to fix them. People don't do their own wiring or own plumbing, (well, most people) and they shouldn't. I think that the reason that electronics haven't passed into the realm of "let the professionals handle it" is because with electrical wiring, you can get shocked and die and with plumbing you can get covered with sewage or scalding water. Personally, I am glad that this I-can-do-it-myself mindset is starting to fade. Although, I do think that $125/hour is a bit much.
Help I'm a rock.
Before you reply that everyone is uber-stupid, you are wrong.
Linux will give computer repair folks as much work as ever. Maybe the viruses and security issues won't be as bad (although we don't know that! Linux is less than 5% of the consumer desktops on the market...) but all the other stuff (customization, hardware installs, even dog hair removal) will be with us as long as PCs exist in their current form. You try having your mom recompile a kernel.
In fact, it's the Linux spirit that created these jobs in the first place- the hardware can be fixed and configured by the end user, or whoever he chooses for that job. The Microsoft computer appliance of the future will do all it can to be a tamper-sealed box that has to be shipped away to bumfuck for three weeks to be repaired- it's more profitable.
What we call folk wisdom is often no more than a kind of expedient stupidity.-Edward Abbey
Consider this: training, amount of time, and tools. Think of how ugly it is to uninstall a nasty worm virus; think of the effort it takes to salvage files from a flaky/dying hard drive, plus rebuilding the machine. Think of the cost of all the diagnostic software/tools you might have, even if its just some Norton Utilities, a MS Technet subscription, and an AV program.
If a lawyer or a plumber or an exterminator can charge $50-100/hour, a computer technician should be allowed to do the same.
Technician skills are expensive. My company now maintains images of your hard drive. If you have a problem that can't be resolved within 30 minutes of trouble shooting, they take your laptop away, re-image a new laptop, and give it to you the next morning. Its not worth the recovery effort. Bad ofr people with desktop support skills (used to be LAN admins who did that stuff). Now a force of >100 LAN admins across the Greater Toronto Area is less than 20 individuals.
John Maynard Keynes: "When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do?"
I don't know what it's like in the US, but here in the UK, the cost of new PCs is making PC "repairs" uneconomic if the repairer wants to charge rates similar to those of plumbers and the like (to put some numbers on that, a typical rate for a plumber is 60GBP per hour, and a new PC costs from 300GBP, with monitor and preloaded copy of whatever the latest flavour of Windows is; how much work do you reckon can do in under 5 hours?)
Of course, this does discount the stupid and the penny-wise-pound-foolish, whom are probably the best cash cows out there for any business.
--
If they had chosen to replace rather than repair, they would be out more then just $800 dollars for the new computer. Since the Judge family needs outside assistance to fix a computer, they would most likely needs outside help to reinstall all their original applications, transfer all their important files to the new machine (without also copying the viruses), etc. $300 to repair -vs- ($800 + $300) to replace? I think they made the right choice.
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
the trick is to keep the cost under half the cost of a new machine. In most cases, this will be a couple of hours of work, depending on your rates.
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
It's not that the trend is dying down, it's just that the first generation of those kids are growing up. They're in college learning that the knowledge they got when they were 12 can be used to rule the world.
Heck, I was breaking stuff with vi when I was 8, world domination can't be too far away now.
-They don't apply Windows patches, and their machine gets owned.
-They don't install anti-virus/security software, and if their computer comes with it, they let it expire when the "free trial" period is up, and their machine gets owned.
-They blindly double-click on everything that finds its way into their e-mail inbox, and their machine gets owned.
The general public's level of computer literacy has remained constant despite all attempts to educate them, even in the aftermath of all the highly-publicized worms and viruses in the last few years. It's a losing battle trying to change that. The only thing that can be done is to make software as secure as possible and have it update itself. When you rely on the intelligence of the users to keep their machines secure, you're setting yourself up for failure.
The computer is nothing special -- just another thing. You have plumbers and electicians, etc. Computer service is really just another semi-skilled trade that anyone could do if they wanted to invest a little time to learn, but they prefer to use their time in other pursuits.
I often pick up painting jobs for a few extra bucks (and because I like doing some manual labor from time to time). I don't think it's any different than doing basic computer service.
Isn't a goal of the computer field to have pooters so easy to use that anyone can do it? If I was feeling grumpy I would happily argue that most trades which the typical geek might describe as "lowly" or "pathetic" are actually more challenging than 90% of computer related tasks performed by conceited pricks in the IT field. And the most conceited of the bunch never touch the 10% of work which required any degree of intelligence, but they are simply insecure fems who think that somehow working on a computer makes them better than others.
I wouldn't get my hopes up about that one. If you noticed in the article, one of the companies does a lot of the PC work remotely. I would guess that they're using either gotomypc.com's services or the remote desktop feature in WinXP. In my experience, 90% of problems can be handled this way. My guess is that the remaining 10%, mainly hardware issues, will become even less and less frequent as hardware become more disposable and modular.
Plumbers can't SSH into your pipes and install a new toliet (yet).
Entrepreneur : (noun), French for "unemployed"
... the term is "hacker". A guy who makes computers do what they ought to do, whatever the circumstances.
Consciousness is an illusion caused by an excess of self consciousness.
I should charge more for checking all those damn boxes by hand in Ad-Aware 6.
;)
You know you can right-click on one of the items and go to "Select All"
Being a computer consultant now, and a mechanic for several years while I was in high school, I certainly can appreciate some similarities between the two professions. While $100 for a stud may be unreasonable in some cases, in others it's well justified. When the gave you an estimate they did so with knowldge of how other whel studs have went. Many times it will involve using an oxygen/acetylene torch. So now you have a great deal of time involved, pulling the car in, hoisting the car, getting the torches, etc. Plus, shops have a great deal of overhead to cover (insurance for starters). Also, what is generally ignored is the amount of responsibility placed on auto technicians, the are held responsible for the saftey of not only those occupying the vehicles the work on, but every thing they may wreck into if something fails on the car (that's why strict records are kept, especially those relating to state saftey inspections).
That is already occurring in some areas that are overpopulated with 'techies'... everyone fighting over a smaller piece of the pie.
When we do our job well, the users hardly ever see us anyway.. ' what do those guys do other then hide in the computer room '. Only us project managers get any real 'face time' with the users...
Another problem is that as prices drop ( unlike the automotive industry ) hardware becomes disposable, thus reducing the amount of 'support' the world will need.. Decreasing the respect: ' we can just get a new one, anyone can do that '
And don't forget those late night mail order course commercials, THAT doesn't help our respect level either...
---- Booth was a patriot ----
I'd always figured that by now, pretty much everyone has a friend or a friend of a friend that can fix a computer. But, even for people who don't, there are way too many people that can fix computers to make a living doing this sort of thing. The most i've seen anyone be able to do is get a little extra money on the side.
It's not like plumbing/electrical where you need a licence to do it. Anyone willing to claim that they know what they're doing can go ahead and do it, whether or not they actually do know what they're doing.
"Holy crap. Does that seem ridiculous to me solely because I know computers?"
I think it seems ridiculous to you because it's assumed that one scenario would mean it'd be cheaper to buy a new pc than to fix this one. To be honest, I'm not sure why that benchmark came into being. The truth of the matter is that you need somebody's time, and that's going to cost. On the flip side, you lose $800 if the machine doesn't work. Well gee.
" (which I later did myself for the cost of the $3 stud and an hour). "
Well now we're wandering into a different topic now. You can always find cheaper elsewhere. You don't have a shop to maintain nor a line of customers ready to hand you money to fix their problems. So yeah, an hour of your time is going to be under $100 I imagine. On the flip side, though, it's fortunate you already had the tools you needed to get it done. Now I really don't know anything about a 'stripped wheel stud', but if it was the type of thing where you had to buy a new tool, then your rate wouldn't have been so cheap.
I understand what you mean, but I don't find it all that ridiculous. If you can't do something yourself then you're going to have to pay for one's expertise.
"Derp de derp."
I had the unfortunate experience of graduating from college in 2001, when the bubble had burst and the economy was beginning to tank... just three months before 9/11. I thought I was going to get a job as a networking engineer or system admin, as that's what I was doing all though college in work-study programs.... Haha. How wrong I was!
In the subsequent three years, I've been teaching myself how to maintain a consulting business. This 'digitician' position merely gives a silly title to an age-old occupation: that of the consultant. Closely related to the position of 'consultant', is that of the 'general consultant', the 'contractor', and the 'general contractor'.
Although, I do think that $125/hour is a bit much.
Ah... a couple of questions. Have you ever owned your own company? Have you ever incorporated yourself? Have you ever worked as a consultant? Have you ever worked as a contractor?
$125/hr is a typical fee for a consultant or contractor. It gets really crazy when they charge $300/hr or $500/hr. You can definately find people who will charge $5,000 per day to run corporate training workshops ($625/day).
There is a tendency for people to de-value themselves and not consider how much they are worth. It also leads to economic depression and recession when communities thing that all of their jobs are being outsourced and that their efforts, skills, and knowledge aren't not valuable. Remember, value is completely dependent upon the purchaser's perception... A glass of water in the desert could easily be sold for $1,000 / glass, if the buyer was dehydrated. Similarly, computer geeks need to know how to create percieved value of their skills.
Just because you're a 133t h4ck0r, can program in C/C++, you admin your own Cisco router, built a linux/apache/mysql/php/nuke database-enabled content-management web-server, and everything in your house is wireless doesn't mean that anybody necessarily cares. There is not a clear perception of the value of those skills.
Making sure that there is a backup of the wife's or husband's personal files in the case of an accident, when there's never been a backup made at all? Value: $300.
Preventing a divorce because the spouse doesn't find the evidence of an affair? Value: $2,000
Preventing the kids from getting involved in cybersex chatrooms before the age of 13: Value: $2000
The point is... don't undervalue yourself or the rest of the community. You hurt other computer geeks when you say that $125/hr is a bit much. Value is in the perception of the buyer.
Also, consider inflation. I guarantee you that in the next ten years, doctors and lawyers will be billing $500 per hour, and I hope that the average computer geek will be able to charge $250/hr for consulting rates by then.
"Paying $300 to fix an $800 PC" would be a bad investment. However:
* spending $300 to recover $1000 of drop-dead important data has no relation to the value of the PC its on.
* spending $300 to get a group of digital animators back online and working is worth it when you are otherwise paying them to sit around.
People don't pay me what I'm worth, they pay me what THEY are worth. Paying me $150/hr for expert help often makes far more sense than stopping what they are doing (and proficient at) to stall with problems that they might even make worse with trial and error.
For the same reason, I take my motorcycle to a mechanic to fix rather than do it myself, because my time is worth more than paying him to do it for me. Same with growing the wheat I eat, the cotton for the clothes I wear and the trees that my bed was made from. It's called an economy.
Broad brush simpleton columnists like to coin words, but not only is ditita..whatever a STUPID word that conveys no meaning, but it is not useful or necessary. We already have words: technician, assistant, specialist.
The problem with equating a 'trade' such as plumbing and electrical work with tech management is that it's far easier to teach anyone how to wire or plumb than to teach troubleshooting. It's much closer to being a mechanic. Plumbers often do things according to a plan. Only when the shit is two feet deep and rising is plumbing similar to crisis management in IT.
Not ridiculous at all. I do this digitician thing for a living and have often been paid many times the value of the computer itself for installing, fixing, tuning, tweaking, networking, etc. My clients need their computers for their work, and it's worth it for them to spend $1000 to get a $500 computer fixed up, set up with the software they need and exactly how they want it, so that they can go ahead and use the computer to as an essential part of their businesses - which earn them hundreds of thousands. Or even to earn $50,000 - it's still worth it. The point is they need the machine, they need it to work properly, they need honest explanations, they need tutoring, they need handholding, they need pep talks, they need sympathetic kvetching. Not crazy at all. From my point of view, it can be a very exhausting job, lots of time spent deep-thinking and gift-of-gabbing at the same time, it can really wipe you out by the end of the day. And folks, I'm only charging $70 per hour - Canadian! If you ask me that's not bad for the combination of mechanic, therapist and business consultant that I am. Anyway, my clients prove my worth as a consultant by continuing to call me - and often calling me in to do the job right after they've succumbed to the temptation to let their "whiz kid nephew" or some $15/hour charlatan at their machines.
Yeah, because at least I learned a lot about VLSI chip construction when I was twelve. I had also full understanding of mathematics supporting such subjects as control theory, information theory, cryptography and computer vision.
I might consider it excessive because I know how to fix my own shit. However, what if I didn't know hot to fix my shit, didn't have time (or inclination) to learn, but did have a lot of disposable income?
$300 sounds pretty damn cheap.
To use the oft-stated car analogy:
I know how to change the oil in my car. Doing so would cost about $10-12 in materials (filter, oil), but it would also require going to Autozone/Walmart/wherever and picking out the oil, the filter, standing in a line, waiting to get checked out, coming home, finding time to actually do the oil change, then changing the oil, and then *responsibly* disposing of the waste oil (it's against the law to just dump it in the sewers). So, in the end, I may have saved $10 on the raw material cost, but I had to spend about 2-3 hours in related time to get it done. My time bills for $20/hour according to my last paycheck stub. The cost of an oil change is about $20. You do the math there. And lets not forget the cost of the TOOLS involved (special filter wrench, socket set), stuff I do not have handy.
I don't charge an exhorbitant amount for my services to fix some friends PC's (if I charge at all, but then again, I don't fix all my friend's PC's as a matter of principle). One of my friends, however, insists on buying me "all-you-can-eat" sushi buffet (about $30 all said and done), so I don't mind it at all.
YMMV.
If you were me, you'd be good lookin'. - six string samurai
Yes, but there comes a point when you get such a large volume of calls from your less technical friends and family that it is no longer "doing someone a favor" and moves into the realm of "fulltime tech support". Then yes, you need to start charging ...in the case of friends and family, this usually isn't in the form of money. More along the lines of free food & beer or some other form of bartering.
Yes, it would be downright wrong to hand your mother a printed bill, but if you're going to be spending the better part of your weekend helping a friend set up a home network, it starts to factor into the realm of opportunity cost.
ce n'est pas un Sig.
I've been into computers since I was 8. I bought my first car when I was 18. I used to be one of those people that took it somewhere anytime something went wrong. Then when I was 19, I met someone who worked on vehicles for a living. He showed me that I was being taken to the cleaners when I pay Midas $400 for new brakes. When I was 24, I bought my second vehicle. Maybe 6 months later, the front passenger side rotor was shot. I went to Monroe for an estimate, $692 for two new rotors, braks pads, shoes, calipers, pistons, and lines. I talked to my friend, he showed me that my calipers, lines, and the pistons for the rear brakes were fine. So I bought new rotors and pads, did the repair myself for ~$60.
4 years later, I've gone through a fair number of pads and shoes since, but the calipers are still fine and the lines are good.
I've known "computer professionals" who operate on the same kind of principle. They feel like they should make as much money as possible whenever someone comes into the shop by misrepresenting what needs to be done, or even outright lying. Some of them are quite successful because of this, but others fail miserably.
You can't hold those people that you depend upon to make your living in contempt. You can't treat people like their morons. (even if some of them really are)
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
Pro sports are really just forms of entertainment, so the same processes are at work there as in cinema, rock music, opera, whatever. People only want to pay to see the very best. In a given performance category, there will be a few highly-paid superstars that everyone lines up to see (star athletes, big movie stars, world-class opera singers), a larger pool of well-paid highly-competent support personnel (ordinary players on major-league teams, actors who play minor characters or star in no-name films, regular singers in big opera companies), many lower-caliber people struggling to get by and hoping for their big break, and those who get cut out (such as college football players who don't attract the interest of a pro team).
What makes the economics of this possible is the huge "multiplication factor" possible with entertainment. A top opera diva can make $10K for a single performance, but if 2,000 people pay to see it, that's $5 per person. Many people would consider it worth the extra $5 for the added pleasure of seeing a top-notch performance rather than merely a better-than-average one. So that diva represents a huge boost in "productivity" (ability to sell tickets) for the opera company.
This kind of economics is not so apparent in most engineering fields, except in a few cases where the knowledge is highly specialized and known by only a few people.
The Judge family paid nearly $300 to fix an $800 computer.
I just paid $430 to have a plumber replace two toilets. $180 for the two new toilets, $200 labor cost(!) and $50 to dispose of the old toilets.
Somehow I wasn't shocked.
That's all great and everything, but the skills of an "old school technician" you mention just aren't that relevant in working with modern PCs. How much soldering and wire-wrap are going to be done at someone's home, fixing their PC?
I've done a lot of work building and repairing computers, and I don't recall ever seeing anything wire-wrapped. And few parts have single transistors - the only one I can think of is the power supply.
Soldering's an important skill, but even that doesn't get used much. I've soldered several wires for connecting fans and such. I once even diagnosed a power supply and re-soldered the caps that were loose.
But all-in-all, the economics of todays computers just don't call much for wire-wraping, designing with transistors, and troubleshooting to the component level on a circuit board.
At $30 an hour, and a huge task load, how much time should I spend trying to diagnose and repair a $15 network card? Once I determine it's that card, I can check to make sure it has a clean slot and traces and reseat it. If it still doesn't work, I toss it and put in another one. Doing any more than that is a waste of time and money.
While I don't call myself a "technician", I've accepted the title of "computer technician" when it was given to me. And frankly, it doesn't matter much what they call me. Either I can do the job or I can't. If I can't, and I cannot arrange to get it done, they'll get someone else, and call me "unemployed".
Err, no, actually a TRUE "Old School Technician" knows how to chip flint.
Why do you think they invented the term "Field Replaceable Unit"? Anybody who solders a motherboard today (other than a gamer) is an idiot when the thing costs $100 and his time costs $100.
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
"shouldn't there be license granted by the state or other civic government for in-home techs? I say ABSOLUTELY!"
Think 'licensed mechanic'...You've never been ripped off at the garage right?....riiiiight?
All licenses do is give $$ to middle-men(govt) and raise prices. Let the market do the work and let the prices stay low...or do you want to pay MORE taxes for some reason?!?!
One place I worked required a department to budget to buy their own computers. But, they were also required to put in their budget 2 1/2 times the purchase price. This was to cover the costs of maintenance for the life of the system. That money is what paid part of the tech support budget.
It helped keep departments aware of the true cost of the machines they wanted to buy.
I started my own "digitician" business (in the boston area no less), and I went through your original thought too. After a lot of thinking "Im charging too much" or "This is something I would do for free" I realized that my 13~ years (from age of 5) of making computers work, is worth twice what I charge, easily.
I make people not have to deal with the same issues that plague other "normal" people. No more email viruses, no more crashing, no more spyware, porn pop ups, etc. I don't often get repeat customers, I get referrals. People who have been using computers for years (mostly Doctors, Lawyers, other professional high income people) tell me after I've been to their house and "fixed" their computers how nice it is to not have to deal with all the shit they did before.
I have come to understand that these people who are not at all stupid, in fact are mostly exceptionally bright, do not want to deal with the crap aol/ms/etc let happen. No one is there to tell them what software to use that lets them do what they want easily. No one is there to explain to them how to deal with spam, or that they can have easily setup encrypted emails. No one is there to make their computer work, or know how to deal with dell tech support so that they can get an RMA.
That $300 is worth a lot more than an $800 computer. That $300 can be freedom to use a expensive tool to do what you want, not what bonzi buddy wants. That $300 dollars lets someone who makes 50-500 dollars a day be able to get more work done on their computer more easily without distractions or thinking they screwed up.
I've gotten a few jobs that pay anywhere from 100-700 dollars. And each of those jobs netted me another job by word of mouth. Imagine paying 1500 dollars to dell and because of massive software flaws and expected understanding of years of how computers work and are used ends up being nigh useless because of hackers who install irc file servers to abuse your bandwidth, or make your computer reset every 3 minutes.
At first I thought It was my duty to help anyone with their computers that I knew. Then I found out what paying my own bills was like, and how this is how the real world works. Knowledge based jobs beat the hell out of labour based.
I don't just fix computers, I retrain people into not being afraid of them. I teach them that anything they want to do should be easy, and show them how. I make their lives easier in a small way, it gives them more free time rather than spending hours not getting what they want to do done. And between highschool, rent, food, college applications, and my own life. I tend to think I am well worth what I charge.
Sleep is for the weak.
People don't pay me what I'm worth, they pay me what THEY are worth. Paying me $150/hr for expert help often makes far more sense than stopping what they are doing (and proficient at) to stall with problems that they might even make worse with trial and error.
Let's look at that again:
People don't pay me what I'm worth, they pay me what THEY are worth. Paying me $150/hr for expert help often makes far more sense than stopping what they are doing (and proficient at) to stall with problems that they might even make worse with trial and error.
And that's where the insight is. This is probably the most important point of the whole discussion so far. Sure, the client may be able to fix their own problem, but that would require figuring out how to do it, which may result in many many hours of downtime. Downtime is lost dollars. Get the $150/hr tech in to solve the problem before too much money is lost.
Believe it or not, we were raking it in. Of course, I was working 10-14 hours a day, pretty much 7 days a week. The taxes here are no sweat, doesn't cost much to incorporate, and I didn't need an accountant - my accounting was pretty simple.
1f u c4n r34d th1s u r34lly n33d t0 g37 l41d Capitalization really works: i helped my uncle jack off a horse
The barter system is often a good choice for remuneration for services, especially involving technical skills. Anyone read Bruce Sterling? In his short story "Bicycle Repairman", Lyle offers to fix a woman's bike, not for a dollar amount, but in exchange for buying him some tools he would like to have. Or maybe the person you're helping has some other technical skills that you lack, and can do something for you.
I'd say that there isn't a lot of difference in difficulties between teahing computer tech and trademan's tech to someone. Both skills require fairly similar aptitudes, and it's really quite remarkable how quickly my "tradesman" friends seem able to pick up on the inner workings of a computer, especially when I compare them to some friends in the legal and medical professions. Computers and the trades are both logical systems: for a given architecture there is a set of possible solutions that will function within the constraints of the architecture. A tech in any of those fields approaches a problem in much the same way: ascertain the architecture used (what type of computer, what type of building construction), collect data to discern the solution set originally used to perform the faulty function (how is the computer SUPPOSED to be networked or how was the house supposed to be plumbed to remove waste from the bathroom), and then using logic and reasonable expectations of performance, zero in on the failure. The main difference between a plumber and a computer tech is the language and the tools used. I've found it remakrably easy to teach a lot of my friends in the building trades how to perform most of the routine maintenance of their computers, and they seem to readily grasp the importance of maintenance on their computer's operating systems.
In a lot of places your house would have been worthless without an appropriately licensed professional's review of your work to certify it as meeting code. What are you going to do if there is an electrical fire or a gas leak which hurts or kills someone? Just because it isn't your fault doesn't mean you won't get sued and you don't have a legal leg to stand on.
Put the shoe on the other foot: suppose you moved into a house where the previous owner did all the "simple" repairs/improvements himself. Suppose that house burns to the ground and it is suspected the wiring done by the previous owner may have been the cause. What are you going to do?
Forgetting all of that, a friend recently paid $100 dollars for someone to tune his piano... (that was for one hour of work) .NET security hole"?
There are three things to consider in price:
1. How much "yuckiness" is in the job? i.e. you will gladly pay a plumber to crawl under your house with the spiders and and mud to fix a pipe that you could have fixed yourself. Many people don't want to hunt through the whole hard drive to remove that virus
2. The amount and severity of errors people have had in that area doing things themselves - like when you have replaced a sink and the adapter to the water pipe wasn't tight enough so it failed as the pressure in the pipes increased and you had to replace seven pieces of drywall in your basement and the computer the water leaked into -- the equivalent is installing a new browser and loosing your income tax information.
3. How scary it is to deal with the professional - and this is where we lose. The stereotyped (and sometimes real) response that a person is a looser for not knowing how to do computer maintenence, or run a program, etc... No one is going to pay for computer help if they are afraid that the person coming to their house will say that they are stupid idiots. When the plumber came to my house after I forgot to raise the flange when replacing the toilet after installing wood flooring he didn't say "you idiot - always raise the flange!". He just said "remember - always raise the flange if the flooring type is changed". And if you don't know what a flange is - then you have a small clue what the average person out there thinks when you say "have you applied the latest Microsoft security vulnerability patches for the