Celebrating four years of computer service in Nipawin

By By Matthew Liebenberg

Gord and Yvonne Bulger, the owners of Nipawin Computer Solutions, are celebrating four years of making life easier for their clients and they are looking forward to helping out people with their computer needs for many years to come.

"We're very grateful for people's support and hope they keep supporting us because we're definitely here to give them whatever help we can," Yvonne said.

Both are qualified technicians with CompTIA A+ certification. They moved to Codette in May 2007 after operating an in-home service computer store in Nanaimo, B.C. for five years.

"We actually started off in our house in Codette for the first couple of months," Gord recalled.

They relocated their business to Nipawin in July 2007, where they rented a place next to Subway. In August 2008 they moved to their own building at their present location in downtown Nipawin (346 1st Avenue East), from where they have been steadily expanding their services.

But in accordance with their company motto, the main focus of their business is still on "fixing and building computers."

Their mission is to provide professional and competitively priced support for local businesses and home computer users. They have over 20 years experience with Microsoft products. In addition to implementing many operating systems, they have assisted customers in understanding their new systems and software.

"The bulk of it is computer sales and service," Gord explained. "We do all types of repairs, cleanup and virus removal. The repair and cleanup side is a huge part of our business."

They also have a wide selection of new computers and laptops, including custom build systems. "We buy all the components and we assemble and build them right here," he said. "Our warranty is better I think than anybody out there."

The most common complaint from customers is that their computer is slow. In addition to cleaning up a computer and removing viruses, they can also add more memory.

"Maybe it's full of spyware or netware and things running in the background that they don't know and that's what is slowing it down," he said.

A common misconception they still encounter is that photos and data will be lost during a cleanup of errors and bugs on a computer.

"We would never ever reload a machine without a customer knowing the reason why," Yvonne emphasized. "It's a last resort. The misconception is that when they bring it in for a cleanup it means we take all their stuff off and we never do it. Format and reload is one of our least done things here. We repair but we'll never deliberately lose somebody's data. We're very careful when it comes to people's data."

If they need to do a reload, one of their services is to save the data and to place it back on the computer. They also receive regular phone calls from customers about the lack of sound on their computers. But often it is simply a case of not correctly installing the different cables or putting the sound on mute.

Gord said rogue antivirus software has become a big problem. It usually appears as a bogus warning about a virus problem that tries to trick people into purchasing a fake antivirus program.

"It shows you all this viruses and stuff on your machine, which isn't even on your machine," he explained. "It's just a script running and then you follow it to the end and of course they want you to buy the program. And if you buy it all it does is it turns the script off and you think you've done well."

Their business also stocks a wide variety of computer accessories, games, digital storage media as well as printer ink, toner and fax machine cartridges. If they do not have ink or toner in supply for a certain machine, they would be happy to order it and then make sure to keep it in stock. Items will usually be available 24 hours from order.

Due to demand they have expanded the range of computer related stationery in the store that ranges from labels to colour, graphics paper and birthday card paper. They try to specialize in things people will not find at the other stores in town.

A big change happened a year ago when they decided to employ someone to help them out. Dave Unger has been working with them since May 2010.

"Firstly we needed help because we were too busy," Yvonne said. "Secondly we decided that we needed somebody young that is into other technologies, gaming and stuff like that. Dave is very into the gaming or the iPod stuff, the Xbox, everything audio or video."

Since arriving in Nipawin they have been impressed with the support they have received from others businesses in town. They agreed shopping local does not mean paying more.

"We don't have sales here because a sale says you overpriced it to begin with," Yvonne said. "We always price what we think is fair. In a small town you always pay a little bit more freight but you also have to be competitive. We try and keep it as city priced as close as we can."

In addition to the benefit of being available locally to help clients with their computer problems, they emphasize the importance of service.

"Service is the one big thing for most people," Gord said. "That's why a lot of people will buy a computer from us because they know if they got a problem they can pick up the phone and we don't charge for that kind of stuff … because what we don't fix or don't sell to you we don't charge for."