Computer-repair shops fade
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The Computer Store on Bridge Street in Northampton, which closed recently, offered small repairs and upgrades. With advancing technology, it is cheaper to buy a new computer rather than to upgrade an old one.
KEVIN GUTTING photo |
By CORAL M. DAVENPORT, Staff Writer
Monday, February 26, 2001 -- It used to go like this: you spent about $2,000 on an up-to-the-minute personal computer. After a few years, it was no longer au courant, and you brought it to a computer shop for an upgrade that would run a few hundred dollars.
The boost would make the hardware compatible with the latest software, at least for a few more years. And, when you were finally ready to buy a new model, maybe you tried to see if you could give your old parts to the same shop, a place where techies labored over tables piled with cables, motherboards and monitor tubes.
But try to find such a place today.
"If you look around, there are fewer computer stores, but more computer support systems. The little old computer shop where you drop off your computer like a typewriter - that's history," said Mark Wineburg, president of YES computers in Northampton.
As technology advances accelerate and new machines become cheaper, the market for the old-fashioned computer repair shop keeps shrinking, people in the field say.
"You don't need a hardware-upgrade store anymore," said George B. Scheurer, who used to own such a store, The Computer Farm in Florence. The Computer Farm closed in 1998, and since then Scheurer has worked as an independent computer consultant. Now, instead of rooting around in the body of a computer, he helps businesses set up office networks.
More recent closings of similar small local computer repair and upgrade businesses include The Computer Store on Bridge Street and Deerfield Data.
"It certainly has changed in five years," said Victoria White, owner of EclecTechs in Northampton. While EclecTechs does offer some repair and upgrade services, that's just a small part of the business, which turns most of its profit from Web and database development and, like Scheurer, office networking jobs.
Industry workers cite a number of reasons for the change. The prime driver is the increasing acceleration of technology development, which means computers become obsolete more quickly. It means that hardware of even three years ago isn't even compatible with current equipment. It means that instead of using complicated, expensive processes to upgrade older computers, it is now cheaper to simply buy a new computer - sometimes at half the cost of the older one.
"It used to be cheaper to upgrade and add new parts. Now it's more inexpensive to buy a new computer than to upgrade. We see replacement rather than repair," White said.
And with the industry now changing faster and faster, upgrades often aren't even possible. Changes in system configurations and hookups mean new equipment isn't compatible with hardware from even just a few years ago. said Denise LeDuc, chief financial officer of Northampton's Uplinc Computers.
"Many features now just aren't upgradable," said Wineburg.
"In the industry as a whole, used computers are worth less and less, and are less and less used," he said.
He pointed out that in a market where a buyer can get new computers for under $1,000, they find it slower, at least as expensive and less efficient to get upgrades.
"They want it faster and cheaper," he said, adding that hardware repairs, which average four hours to two days at the fastest, are too slow for some customers.
Scheurer said that based on his experience at The Computer Farm, computer owners are now much more savvy about their machines than they used to be and much more comfortable with executing minor changes at home.
And if the changes are beyond home repair, computer owners can take it to a business that focuses on more sought-after services such as office networking and web, database and software development, and has a small repair and service section as well.
Such a business can help customers who may have what modern dealers would deem an archaic system o something four, five, even six years old.
But some business owners say that people who have old systems shouldn't get so caught up in the technology race that they overlook how their system meets their own needs.
"You can still use the older stuff if you just want word processing. If someone has something, and it's doing the job it needs to do, then they don't necessarily need to upgrade," said Ken Makarian, co-owner of Discount Data in Amherst.
But when you're finally ready to move on, there's really only one thing to do with your old computer. While you might once have been able to recycle the parts, today, "I hate to say it, but use it as a boat anchor," LeDuc joked.
"Disposable is not a bad word" to use when thinking of computers, Wineburg said.
"Right around '98, computers started getting obsolete much faster. We used to see 30 or 40 tons (of discarded computers per year). Now, we see about 250 tons per year," said Lorenzo Macaluso, the projects co-ordinator for waste management at the University of Massachusetts.
In fact, he said, UMass has been receiving so many privately discarded computers that they've recently had to close their waste facilities to the public.
Now, Macaluso joined computer workers in saying, when the time comes to do something with your old computer, don't call the computer shop--call your local dump or landfill.
© 2001 DAILY HAMPSHIRE GAZETTE. Used with permission.
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