Good for you. This is the best way to go. Its not like I have to pay for my favors. My friends already owe me favors as I am the first one to help people. Its a totally differently situation when I need a favor for myself, and another thing when I call on a government official to help someone I do not know personally. This is when they they send me their aunt to my clinic for free care.
I often spend hours fixing friends' pcs while they are sleeping or drinking beers outside. I often get the short end of the deal when helping someone. I just got a call from a friend of a friend to help him out on his voip telephone system. This is exactly what i do not want to do. I help them set it up, then they have trouble later and then they call me day and night to give them tech-support. remember, I do this for free in the first place and then I have to spend more days fixing and maintaining their system for free again. tell me, would any one of you do this for me? No, you are too busy. I can't think of anyone except rocky and maybe another couple of people who would spend days fixing my pc for free. No way a stranger would even look my way if I needed help. I was in atlanta and fixed 3 laptops. tough cases: 1 : crushed LCD and wifi issues. I reinstalled windows and driver and replaced LCD. the whole thing took me 2 days as I had trouble getting the right drivers to work with the hardware. the wrong driver froze my windows and had to do a total reinstall. I know, it sounds easy but it didn't happen so easily. I got it to work.
The other laptop also had LCD issues (hardware). needed to change the LCD inverter and flexible connector. thanks god I had exactly the same broken laptop for parts. the 3rd one had to have power DC jack replaced on the mother board. For that, you need to take apart everything and take out the motherboard. not for anyone to handle a task like this. de-solder the old jack and put in the new one. Thanks god for e bay.
I did all this for free and spent 3 days on the whole project. You think anyone of you guys would have sacrificed you vacation on repairing other people's pcs for free? I doubt that very much. This is why I have good friends and this is why they help me when I need help. I know I will not win any real friends if all I have to offer is free beers.
By the way, after repairing 2 laptops for one person, this kid offered me a iphone (free). I will get it soon from him. remember, this gift was promised to me after he saw me spend so much time on his laptops and asking nothing in return. You get what you put out. this is how the laws of nature work.
I will enjoy my 3g iphone soon.
AZB