A new name, a new site, and the same person showing up

If you have landed here, you probably want to know two things: who I am, and whether I can help with whatever is going wrong. Let me answer both plainly.

I am Matt Thompson. IronWood Computer Services is my own practice — computer repair, on-site troubleshooting, and one-to-one instruction for households and small offices around Portland. There is no call center and no rotating cast of technicians. You get one person who remembers your setup and your history.

I am Apple certified — ACMT for Macs, ACiT for iPhones and iPads — and I work on Windows machines too. Most weeks that means a mix: a MacBook that will not hold a charge, a desktop that has slowed to a crawl, a printer that has decided to stop existing, an inbox that will not stop asking for a password nobody remembers setting.

The part that actually matters

Plenty of people can swap a hard drive. Fewer will sit with you afterward and make sure you understand what happened and why.

That is the part of this work I care most about. A lot of my clients came to me because somewhere else made them feel foolish for asking a question — talked past them, used words that explained nothing, or fixed the thing without ever saying what the thing was. I am deliberate about not doing that.

If you would rather I just fix it and go, that is fine too. But the offer stands, and it does not cost extra.

How the work usually goes

You call or email and describe what is happening — in whatever words you have. "It makes a noise" is a perfectly good starting point. I will ask a few questions, tell you honestly whether it sounds like something worth fixing, and give you a straight estimate before I start.

Then I come to you. Most repairs and nearly all setup and instruction work happen in your home or office, at your desk, with your actual printer and your actual network. Some hardware work is better on the bench, and I will say so if that is the case.

I serve Portland and the surrounding towns — Beaverton, Hillsboro, Tigard, Gresham, Milwaukie, Lake Oswego, and across the river in Vancouver. If you are just outside that, ask anyway.

Why a website, and why now

IronWood is a new name for work I have been doing for years. The name changed; the person showing up did not.

A website felt like the honest way to say what I do and who I do it for, so that anyone deciding whether to call has something to read first. This blog will be the practical half of that: the things worth knowing about the machines you already own. Which upgrades are worth the money and which are not. What a scam call actually sounds like. Why the thing that has been slow for two years is slow. Nothing you need a technical background to follow.

Getting hold of me

Call (503) 567-5975 or email support@ironwood.help. If I am under a desk or elbow-deep in a laptop I will not pick up, but I will get back to you the same day.

If it is urgent and it involves a machine that holds something you cannot afford to lose — photos, records, the only copy of anything — say so when you get in touch. That moves you up the list.