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How should I start it? - is there anything "govermenty/taxes" involved?
Like....fire up Word, get a domain name, and start piling up ads?


(possibly starting with a partner, another of the very few computer techies at my school :) )
 
Don't go partners unless you incorporate, trust me, he may be a good guy now, but just wait.

You need a federal tax id, some states need a business license for some things, Wyoming doesn't :) and you'll need to get setup with unemployment, workers comp, sales tax, etc. Talk to the local state tax person in your town and they'll set you on the right track. Be sure to file monthly returns EVERY month, even if you don't make a cent, the government likes to fine you every chance they get.

Have fun :twisted:
 
How should I start it? - is there anything "govermenty/taxes" involved?
Like....fire up Word, get a domain name, and start piling up ads?


(possibly starting with a partner, another of the very few computer techies at my school :) )
Click to expand...

if you start by yourself and do a sole propiertorship, you don't need a Fenderal Tax ID, or the unmployment/workers comp stuff. However, you don't get the seperation of business/personal assets and liabilities either.

I would suggest at a minimum registering your trade name with the State you are in to avoid any future hassles/lawsuits.
 
Sure about the FT ID? I was told it's required when you start any business for irs purposes, you still have to pay state sales tax and FICA stuff (unless it's a service only business in which case you don't charge sales tax, but still pay FICA).

Plus, to become a reseller of various companies (hp, seagate, etc.) they request a FT ID, some will allow a social security number, but I ran into some that wouldn't.

If you don't get one, you have to account for your income on your taxes still, and if you make a lot without having a "job" you will get audited. Federal gov needs their Federal Income Tax regardless of type of income.

Check with a tax professional or state/federal business administrations. I know things vary by state a lot so I may have just gotten Wyoming info.
 
Roughly how much a month, and how much builds accomplished?

any other info would be gratefully received :)

(planning on doing networks and some web design with html, flash, java, and ASP too !)
 
Sure about the FT ID? I was told it's required when you start any business for irs purposes, you still have to pay state sales tax and FICA stuff (unless it's a service only business in which case you don't charge sales tax, but still pay FICA).

Plus, to become a reseller of various companies (hp, seagate, etc.) they request a FT ID, some will allow a social security number, but I ran into some that wouldn't.

If you don't get one, you have to account for your income on your taxes still, and if you make a lot without having a "job" you will get audited. Federal gov needs their Federal Income Tax regardless of type of income.

Check with a tax professional or state/federal business administrations. I know things vary by state a lot so I may have just gotten Wyoming info.
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Granted, I don't do sales tax, since I make my money on services, but at least from my experience, and talking to my lawyer, if you are the sole proprietor, your SSN IS your FT ID. You just have to include all of your profits/loss/property in a Schedule C when you file your federal taxes. If you file the Schedule C correctly, you don't have to worry about getting audited.

I am not as sure about reselling, as I don't generally do that, though I think it is fairly easy to get a FT ID instead of your SSN.

As for state, the laws do vary greatly by state, and I can only advise a little bit on PA and NJ laws.
 
Total sales over 3 years averaged 24,000 approximately per month, profit was around 15,000 for payroll pretax, had 1 partner and 1 employee, not bad income really.

Some months (summer) are slower, maybe 15k-19k, winter, which is the only other season in Wyoming, was always better, best month is december obviously. I averaged probably 35,000 those months.

Builds were very random, most work was simple service stuff, I'd say average of 10-15 machines a month. I had some larger government contracts that placed orders of 150-200 machines a couple times a year. We fixed around 100 machines a month I'd say. My town is 7k, but our neighbor town is around 15k and I got a lot of service from both. Plus we have the nations largest Indian reservation right next door, hence the government contracts :)
 
how old were you then?
which city?

so you made like 100K?!!! a year..


Did you have enough time to build 100 comps a month....3 people???
 
After setting out components for a machine in an orderly fashion, I can build a computer in under 8 minutes, and then 4 minutes to ghost an image to it. It's not that hard. I've built 20 in a couple of hours, the hardest part is having enough work benches to plug them all in and ghost them :) (It's easier to multicast an image over the network, pxe is your friend.)

I only made 3k a month average after taxes, our employee made a bit less, then we used some cash to reinvest as well as pay other bills that cropped up time to time.

In the winter I sometimes hired my brother to help build machines, gave him about $12/hr for a couple hours a week, we also did community re-entry programs where we would get paid by the state to train a person to enter the workforce after a personal 'disaster'. They were cheap (nearly free) labor! We also trained (well I did) people for A+, so that was a decent chunk of change too.

I started when I was 20, my partner was 28.

I still have all my distributors, it's nice getting a $14 walmart usb cable for $1.20 :)
 
After setting out components for a machine in an orderly fashion, I can build a computer in under 8 minutes, and then 4 minutes to ghost an image to it. It's not that hard. I've built 20 in a couple of hours, the hardest part is having enough work benches to plug them all in and ghost them :) (It's easier to multicast an image over the network, pxe is your friend.)

I only made 3k a month average after taxes, our employee made a bit less, then we used some cash to reinvest as well as pay other bills that cropped up time to time.

In the winter I sometimes hired my brother to help build machines, gave him about $12/hr for a couple hours a week, we also did community re-entry programs where we would get paid by the state to train a person to enter the workforce after a personal 'disaster'. They were cheap (nearly free) labor! We also trained (well I did) people for A+, so that was a decent chunk of change too.

I started when I was 20, my partner was 28.

I still have all my distributors, it's nice getting a $14 walmart usb cable for $1.20 :)
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Which version of Ghost do you use? It seems to me that the more recent versions are slower than the older versions, along with requiring a seperate disk instead of allowing a bootable ghost image disk like they used to. But then, I have been away from that arena for a while...
 
Does that work with XP? I thought I tried it unsuccessfully once with XP, but it may have been an older version.

I have a copy of the current home use one and it SUCKS. Took about 45 minutes to image a PC.
 
Ghosting is the process of taking the entire contents or "image" of a HD, compressing it down to one file, and then expanding that file on another PC. It only takes about 20 minutes to make the image, and a few minutes to copy it to a PC. With corporate, you can also ghost over a network and send one image to several PCs at once.

We used to use it in the tech support dept. I worked in for new Gateway/Dell PCs, so that we could take a four hour setup per PC for say 10 PCs (we had a lot of CAD software to load), and do all 10 in about an hour. Saved tons of time for us. Its a great support tool too, especially when users aren't allowed to save files locally, anytime there is a problem, just re-image the PC and it is pristine and clean again.

It works great on PCs with the same or very similar hardware, and depending on the OS (XP is pretty forgiving), and whether you load the drivers on the image, can really cut down on build time.

Pardon me if my info is a little dated, the last corporate version of Ghost I used was either 6 or 7, so some things may have changed since then.
 
CMON GUYS - there's over 10,000 registered users - bound to be more replies :)
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No offense, but people aren't going to read and respond to threads that have so many pages. If you want to chit-chat, go to IM. I am interested in reading the age and info on members, but wading through so much noise gets old. Just my opinion.

I know, these long threads ultimately turn into spam-fests, but if you want to try to get as many people to respond, keep the benign banter out. Oh, look, and now I've contributed to the banter. :wink:
 
forgive me for being noobish, (kinda crazy studying for A+ these days.. :)
but, what's the point of ghosting? - is it so that each computer has the same programs and stuff...?
 
ROFLMAO :)
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Glad you got a laugh. :?: Guess this thread is now a general discussion thread for you, so:

I use ghosts to protect my current machine. You can use it to load several machines of the same hardware configuration also.

Good luck getting more people to respond to the original question, but I doubt I come back to read more. 😛
 
ROFLMAO :)
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I use ghosts to protect my current machine. You can use it to load several machines of the same hardware configuration also.




Hergie and Michael said that they did it on new machines. Whats' the point of that? XD
 
ROFLMAO :)
Click to expand...
I use ghosts to protect my current machine. You can use it to load several machines of the same hardware configuration also.




Hergie and Michael said that they did it on new machines. Whats' the point of that? XD

The point is it cuts your new build time (as far as loading software is concerned) way down. Like I said, when I was doing tech support and roll-outs, it would cut the rollout time for us from maybe 20-24 hours to 1-2 hours assuming 10 PCs.

BTW, Dell and most other OEM vendors do the same thing with their machines before they ship them out.
 
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