Learn how to repair your own computer

A few years ago my father came into my room and gave me a laptop, saying it's from a woman at his workplace who asked me to repair it if I had the time. I looked at it, saw what was wrong, started deleting a few things, used some software to clean her computer, installed a better antivirus and made sure her windows was in a good state.

After that, when I gave my father the laptop he asked me how much that woman should give me for the "service". I didn't want to ask for anything, but my father said I should, so I just asked for around $10. I didn't do a lot to be honest, and I didn't feel like I should've received more for that.

However, the next day when my father came home and brought me the money, I asked him what the woman at his workplace said about the price, and from what he said, she was pretty happy, because if she would've brought her laptop to a specialized shop who repairs computers, they would've asked for more than $40 for what I did.

That's when I realized that there are a lot of people out there who don't want to learn how to repair their computer and because of that they spend a lot of money giving it to people who maybe spend 10 minutes cleaning it and not doing anything else. Even if they install a new Windows, that's not worth over $40.

The main reason is that these days it's pretty easy to repair a computer, and you should learn how to do it for free. If there's something that doesn't work as well as it should, you can just search for the problem on Google and there has to be someone out there who found a solution. Plus, if you want a new Windows, you can just install it yourself.

The days when Windows XP was the main operating system people used, one that required some knowledge about computers to actually install it are gone. These days all you have to do to install a new Windows is press "next" a few times, learn how partitions work from YouTube and install the drivers your computer needs, something you can easily do using a software that will automatically detect the name of the drivers you need.

Repairing your own computer became such an easy task that it's silly to just give someone $40 to do something almost everyone out there can do. I'm not saying every shop will ask for that much just to clean your computer or maybe install a new Windows, but there are a lot of people who do that, and it's not fair.

With a little bit of time invested and with the right knowledge you'll be able to take care of whatever is wrong with your computer in just a few minutes, for free. It's time people start learning how to repair the tools they use more and more every single day, instead of having to pay a lot of money to get them fixed in stores that won't do anything you can't on your own.