You'll Love Our Systems

Pic of Rick Rick Smith has a passion for hardware. If you want a custom-built computer to perform exotic tasks, be sure to talk to him. He'll help you configure a system that will do everything you need, but not over-pay for specifications you don't need or can't utilize effectively.

We also have more prosaic systems for everyday use. If you are looking for a ready-made system, we recommend ACER desktops and laptops. We have had almost no service problems with ACER products. Rick and Toby both use their ACER laptops daily. Toby took his to China (kind of ironic if you think about it).

Rick and Toby have set up their own computers as demonstrations of modified computers, with lights, glowing wires, pictures, characters and assorted insanity. See Pictures on the Custom Page. Both are running Vista.

"Was that IDE or SATA cable you wanted Michael?"

Repairs

VCC repairs all brands of PC's, not just our own. We are especially careful of your data. Our shop rates are posted on our home page and are about the lowest in the county. And Rick, Toby and Michael have a combined more than 30 years of experience repairing computers.

Warranty Warning

In an environment where everyone is trying to attain the lowest advertised price, keep a sharp eye on the warranty before you buy.

In particular, be very careful with purchases of computer systems under $500. The price is good, frequently the brand name is excellent, but the warranty terms (if you read them) will keep you awake at night. In order to keep the costs of new systems down, most of the major manufacturers now are selling systems with one year or less warranties and if you bring the computer in for repairs, the store you purchased it from will send it to the service center -- frequently in Asia. Read the fine print. How long are they allowed to keep your computer for warranty repairs? If it is 6 weeks or so, you can be pretty certain that the way they offer such attractive prices is that all warranty work is performed outside the US where labor rates are much cheaper. But for this to be a good purchase for you, you have to be willing to do without a computer for periods of 4-6 weeks. Is it worth it to you to spend a bit more to have a company that strives for one-day turnaround?

We have had several customers who had problems with name-brand computers still under warranty who elected to pay us to repair their systems rather than wait for their free repair from abroad. Naturally, they were kicking themselves because the systems ended up costing them more than if they'd purchased them from us to begin with.

We also had a customer who purchased a laptop from a major vendor with a reputation for excellent service. The laptop came with Microsoft Office XP. The customer needed some additional Office features not included with the default install, so he added them. At the end of the install, Windows told him to reboot -- but the computer never came back up. A call to support brought this chilling response: "Sorry, we don't warranty software. Not even software we bundled with the computer."

Naturally, you can buy systems with excellent warranties from these companies, but the price can be as much as double. Support costs money and in an environment where low price is the only thing most people look at, support is rapidly being abandoned as unaffordable. The problem is, can you afford to do without support?

VCC may charge a bit more for their computers, but we are here, we speak decent English, we listen to your problems and we'll try to keep your systems running.

Restore Disk Alert

Most of the cheaper computers these days do not come with either a Windows disk or restore disk. When you first start them up, they ask you to prepare several writable CD's or (more often) DVD's and make your own restore disks. Most people don't do it and therefore have no means of restoring their computers if the hard drive fails. Even if you do have a restore disk, all you can do is restore the computer to its original state -- wiping out all your data and installed programs in the process. If you have a real Windows disk you can perform a repair in the event of problems. It doesn't solve all problems, but is usually worth a try. At VCC our custom computers come with real Windows disks (imagine that!).

Incidentally, what tells you that you have a legitimate Windows system isn't the Windows disk. It's the Certificate of Authenticity (COA), which is the little sticker on the side or back of your computer with the bar code and the 25 character (5 groups of 5 characters each) code. If your hard drive dies and we have to reinstall Windows for you, we can easily provide you with a Windows disk in the event you lose yours, but there is nothing we can do if you lost the 25 character COA.

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