Computer Repair Franchises Buying An Existing Business

Writen by Joshua Feinberg

Existing computer repair franchises are typically available immediately and are a good option for professionals looking to start a new business in the computer industry. Before deciding to buy a completely new franchise or an existing computer repair franchise, as a prospective business owner you must learn about all the issues involved in buying existing franchises so you don't risk being surprised by the unexpected down the line.

Advantages of Existing Computer Repair Franchises

Computer repair franchises already in existence already have an established performance history. Because of this, you don't have to spend precious time evaluating business potential and can focus on looking at actual earnings. The franchises you want to buy will have a good reputation in their communities and already have loyal clients.

When you buy existing computer repair franchises, you also don't have to worry about finding a location, negotiating a lease or stocking your store with equipment. Similarly, there is no need to hire new employees because the business already has a well-trained staff. With many elements already in place, buying an existing franchise will help you start business much more quickly.

Disadvantages of Existing Computer Repair Franchises

You should investigate an existing franchise before you buy it. Why is the franchisee leaving? If it is for reasons other than retirement, a career change or other issues of that nature, the franchise might not be worth the investment. Perhaps the location isn't making money anymore. Regardless, thorough investigation is necessary.

As a prospective owner, you need to look through all renewals. Sometimes your purchase will only be good for the remaining time on the agreement while other franchises offer new renewals. Also look at lease renewals to make sure they will be renegotiable when your time is up.

Considering advantages and disadvantages of purchasing existing computer repair franchises will help you make the right decision about whether to buy them. They can be good investments if they are profitable and have a good reputation.

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Joshua Feinberg helps small business computer consulting firms get more steady, high-paying clients. Learn how you can too. Sign-up now for your free access to a one-hour audio training program on Small Business Computer Consulting Tips.

Computer Training Learning Basic

Writen by Michael Russell

I was one of thousands of people, back in the 1980s, who thought that computing was some sort of black art. It just seemed so clever that one could enter letters or numbers, which were then manipulated by some sort of unseen thought process.

I found the whole idea fascinating and I wished that I had attended the sort of school progressive enough to teach computer programming, although I thought that it would take a much superior brain than mine, to make a computer do those amazing things.

At that time, I had a friend who was something of a whiz with computers, to the extent that he could decipher huge dumps of paper covered with nothing but ones and zeros, and he persuaded me that it wasn't too late to learn and that the whole process was really very logical and simple.

As a result of my friend's faith in my abilities, I signed up for an evening class in BASIC programming. BASIC is an acronym for Beginner's All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code, which is a high level programming language. In other words, it uses English words to formulate its commands as well as strings and mathematical expressions, rather than binary machine code, as used in low-level languages.

With some trepidation, I set off to my first class. I expected to be surrounded by either very technical or very academic types, but it wasn't so. The class was a cross-section of about twenty people, men and women, young and not so young, mainly of the non-technical variety.

The lecturer made it all seem so simple. After all, the most important thing that BASIC requires is logic. IF, THEN, ELSE may sound complicated but it's just as it sounds: if a certain thing happens, then do one thing, but if not, do something else. For example:

IF A = B

THEN A = 0

ELSE B = 0

ENDIF

Having discovered that BASIC wasn't rocket science, I never looked back. In fact, I became so engrossed in my end of course project that I nearly forgot to do normal things like eating and sleeping.

Michael Russell Your Independent guide to Computer Training

An Overview Of Computer Networks

Writen by Michael Russell

My second degree, or should I say my second go through inside the education system was in networking. I'm a certified Novell and Microsoft engineer, not that I'm all that excited about the fact. Networking is actually pretty mindless work once you learn it. It's pretty much do it by the numbers based on what the customer wants. After you hook everything up the software installation is pretty straight forward. My 16 year old daughter could do it or as GEICO would say, a caveman could do it.

In this article I'm just going to cover the basics of what a network is and the types of networks. I'll go into more detail in later articles.

A network is simply a means for computers to speak to each other, or communicate with each other. With a network, computers can receive emails from each other, send files to each other, instant message each other and a variety of other things. This is something that we take for granted today but there was a time when networks were not so sophisticated and not all that efficient either.

There are basically two types of networks.

The simplest network is a LAN or Local Area Network. This is where all the computers in the network are located in one place such as an office building. Within this type of network you have 2 ways to connect.

The simplest way is peer to peer. This is where 2 or more computers are hooked up directly to each other. In other words if you have 5 computers you would have computer 1 hooked into computer 2 which would be hooked into computer 3 and so on. In this type of connection each computer is dependent on the other. So if computer 3 would go down then computers 1 and 2 would not be able to communicate or exchange information with computers 4 and 5 and visa versa. That is the main problem with a peer to peer network. Also in peer to peer networks the write process between computers leads to data corruption problems. This is not something they teach you in school but something you learn from experience.

The more common type of LAN connection is client server. This is where all the computers in the network are connected to each other via a central computer. This kind of connection does require more work in set up but is more efficient, carries data better and if one computer goes down the others aren't affected. However, should the server go down then all the computers on the network would be affected as far as their ability to get information from the other computers and the server itself. They, however, would still be able to do work locally on their own such as with a word processing program, unless the word processing program was located on the server. Then it would not be available. Usually, however, most applications are installed on each computer. What is most commonly lost when a server goes down is the ability to retrieve data that is common to everyone in the network, say an in house database of all employees.

The second type of network is a WAN or wide area network. This is where several LAN networks or even single computers are connected to a much larger network. A perfect example of a WAN is the Internet. This is where users from all over the world can interact with each other through email, chat rooms and instant messaging. WANs are enormous to say the least and are very intricate in their design, requiring hubs from all over the world to stay connected. One hub goes down and it can affect connections for millions of people though there are protocols instituted to reroute connections if a hub does go down.

The above is a very simplified overview of computer networks. In future articles I'll go into detail on the hardware and software required to set up these networks and some of the finer points. Stay tuned.

Michael Russell Your Independent guide to Networking