Sittingbourne Computer Shop History

Computers Plus

In 2003 I moved to Sittingbourne and started working at a well-established computer shop called ‘Computers Plus’. The shop was located on the corner of Roman Square and the High Street, opposite what was then Woolworths (now Poundland).

Being on the High Street in Sittingbourne and conveniently located near Sainsbury’s car park was ideal in terms of location. There was a time (before I worked there) when Computers Plus was the only computer shop in Sittingbourne!

In that era, the internet was expanding exponentially and I had some experience with web design so I set about creating a website for the computer shop, when I had time in between computer repair jobs. I really enjoyed my time working in the shop, helping customers, doing repairs and website stuff and to top it off, my colleagues were very likable people who I got along well with.

‘Mail In’ Laptop Repairs

We were a bit intimidated by laptops back then. They cost the earth so we were very careful not to venture too far into things we didn’t know much about. When it came to laptop hardware, we’d do RAM upgrades, hard drive replacements, and laptop screen replacements and that was about it. (Things like broken hinges and casings were almost unheard of in those days when the average laptop was built like a tank.)

If a customer brought in a laptop that for instance, wouldn’t power on (after checking that it wasn’t something simple like a charger issue), we would mail it to a specialist laptop repair centre in Kent. A lot of the time they were able to repair it if it was a power issue on the motherboard etc. This process took about a week and we made about £20 on each of those jobs after accounting for paying the laptop repair centre and the postage charges back and forth. Not great but it was nice that we were able to offer a full range of computer repair services by outsourcing the stuff we couldn’t handle ourselves.

Ever Cheaper Computers

In 2007, like many other shops, Computers Plus was beginning to struggle. Computers and peripherals were becoming so cheap and more people were buying new ones instead of getting them repaired. Even our sales of laptops and our custom built computers were dropping. Trade prices on components were starting to become inconsequential unless you were buying huge quantities. It got so bad, the retail price for a laptop at Tesco was £10.00 cheaper than we could buy it from our distributors!

Along came the big financial crash of 2007-2008; Computers Plus was closed forever and I found myself working night shifts, stacking shelves at a Sittingbourne supermarket to make ends meet. At the time I was burning both ends, coming home at 6.30am, surviving on 4 hours of sleep a day, while I tried to start my own business from home. I had made business cards for myself and I took over the already established computersplus.co.uk domain name, running it alongside the newly purchased justinspired.co.uk domain.

I was constantly on the lookout for old customers of ours; handing out business cards and letting them know that I was still doing computer repair. I approached quite a few shops asking if I could leave flyers – basically trying to promote the business as much as I could on practically zero budget. The lack of sleep and over-work took its toll on my health which went on for the better part of two years before I was able to finally switch ‘full-time’ to the new computer repair business.

JustInspired Computer Services

I named the company ‘JustInspired’ after my son Justin. I focused everything I could on JustInspired until it almost became an obsession. I wanted to be able to offer a wider range of repairs than the average computer shop, without farming the work out to someone else.

I’ve always had an interest in electrical and electronics repair so I got myself some dead laptops and began finding out as much information as I could about their motherboards.

I paid for a ‘course’ in Laptop Repair which was basically a PDF book, stuffed full of someone’s notes and photos. Still it came in handy.

The desire to learn more continued. I started following Louis Rossmann (MacBook repairs) and Sorin Electronics on YouTube and eventually more and more repair channels started popping up and appearing on my feed. I devoured everything I could find about board repair.

I tried soldering SMD components, failing again and again until I finally got somewhat proficient at micro-soldering rework. I started following advocates of the Right To Repair movement as devices started becoming increasingly ‘repair unfriendly’ and learned new repair techniques as manufacturers continued to use everything within their means to block 3rd party (or any) repairs.

More Than Computer Repair

Fast forward a few years and now JustInspired is pretty well known for providing some of the best laptop repair in Sittingbourne. We’re able to fix more laptop and desktop motherboards than ever before. We’re constantly upgrading our diagnostic and repair tools and implementing new techniques as they become available. We now have ‘proper’ microsoldering equipment including a good microscope, hot air station, soldering station and more.

We also get asked to do soldering jobs or repair circuit boards from cars and vans, alarm systems, Bluetooth speakers, power supplies and all sorts of electronics. We’re always happy to take a look at any of these and let you know if we can help.

We’ve now started uploading repairs and tips videos to YouTube to share knowledge as a way to give back to the repair community and help people who want to fix their stuff as well as promoting our services.

Thanks for reading this little bit of JustInspired history. Happy computing!

Sincerely,
Julian

P.S. We also stock a range of laptop chargers and other bits you might need for your laptop.