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comment on my business plan

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kalos:
hello!

I have a fairly large target group of people who:

* they don't know much about PCs
* they have computers and their computers are necessary to them to do their job consisting of simple tasks
* they have outdated OS, crappy hardware
can you suggest me please what services or products I can offer to them?
their need is to make their PC more responsive, etc, and their demands are very low (basic web browsing and MS Office)

I was thinking of installing to their PC a Windows version that will be extremely light, in order to significantly show them that the lags and reezings are gone
Or install a script or program that will help towards that direction

Or maybe you have other suggestions? Sell them hardware? How? Anything else?

Thanks!

Renegade:
Fix up their computers for free, and install zombie software that lets you use their computer whenever you want for any purpose, e.g. posting & tweeting, emails, cryptocurrency mining, distributed computing, etc.

On second thought, that's a bad idea.

I got nothing that I'd actually consider doing there or think that would be worthwhile.

The big problem as I can see it is that it will be very hard to reach that audience. You're more likely to get more business by starting a blog for beginner computer problems, do some YouTube videos, build all that up, then offer classes or do the speaking circuit trying to get corporate education gigs, etc. Dunno. If they have crappy hardware, they probably have crappy budgets. That's going to make things rough.

kalos:
no, I can easily reach this audience and offer my services/products

I also know they have money, but they wouldn't spend it to buy a new computer, because they don't know about computers and they don't use them apart from browsing 1-2 websites and writting/editing an MS Office file

they would easily give me 50 bucks to make their PC more responsive or easier to use (they are that ignorant about PCs) - given that I show them that it's trully more responsive - but they wouldn't give 1,000 bucks to buy a new one, it's an overkill

it's like with their car, they would buy a chip to decrease fuel consumption for 50 bucks but they wouldn't buy a new car with improved fuel consumption, it's an overkill as they do very few miles per annum

I could sell them RAM, if RAM trully improved their PC, but we all know it won't much, at least noticeable

I was thinking of installing a stripped down version of their Windows or something, would that have more impact?

Or anything else?

MilesAhead:
If they really just power up and play with zero maintenance then for $50 you could probably use Portable CCleaner to clear off old temp files, then one of the free defraggers that doesn't take 10 hours to run, such as Auslogics Free Defrag.

Messing with the OS seems like too much work.  Also they would probably get this weird urge to play solitaire for the first time and it wouldn't be there, thus generating a service call.  :)

Only you know your friends.  But when I was an auto mechanic I noticed any time I touched some friend's car they wanted to make me responsible for it for life.  My older brother was also a mechanic before he became a software developer.  I got this tip from him.  If a friend asked for help fixing his car I told him I would stand there and offer advice.  But the decision to do it and the doing of it is up to him.  If he decided to take the advice and attempt the repair, it's on him.  Worked very well.  Of course I didn;t make any money.  But I didn't lose any friends either.  :)

I guess the moral is with well known software it's less risky to tune up a system than to open the box.  Unless of course you are a hardware technician and are confident you can unbreak anything that gets "broken" while the box is open.  :)

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