Computer repair in Portland, Oregon

Portland is where most of my work happens, and the housing stock here creates a fairly specific set of problems.

A lot of the city is old. Bungalows and four-squares built long before anyone thought about where a router would go, with lath-and-plaster walls that are genuinely hostile to wifi. The single most common call I get in inner Portland is not a broken computer at all — it is a house where the internet works fine in one room and falls over in the next. That is usually a placement and hardware problem, not a service problem, and it is fixable in an afternoon without switching providers.

The other pattern here is long-lived machines. Portland households tend to keep computers well past the point where a shop would tell you to replace them, which I think is broadly the right instinct. A machine from 2016 with a spinning hard drive is often two hours of work away from being genuinely pleasant to use again. I will tell you honestly when that is true and when you are throwing money at something that has run its course.

Parking is the one practical wrinkle. In the denser inner neighborhoods, let me know if there is anything I should know about getting to your door — permit zones, a driveway I should use, a buzzer that does not work. It saves us both time.