I just read this thread by chance, if you PM your idea's to Sas or myself then I'll go about making the changes.

In terms of moderation I'm considering giving up my positive as admin (well, leaving the forums altogether) so some of you guys can moderate as you see fit.

Have we driven you off? If so I am sorry.

I normally for family / friends ask for / hint that “payment” in Beer & or a meal is appreciated. If I find that they take the Mick to much then they find that I am unavailable at the times they want for support ( the old washing my hair this evening – sorry cant come out and fix the PC again)

I spent the whole of Easter Friday once sorting out music files for boyfriend's business partner and boyfriend kicked off when I suggested £20 payment. It did take me all day fgs!

I would have moaned that it was considerably less than minimum wage rates. Cheapskates.

I fitted a hard drive in an iBook for a friend once. I was expecting her to pay me just the cost of the drive, but she added in some extra cash for my time as well. Not everyone is out to milk you for your skills.

I'll do computer repairs/builds for friends at cost price, but I charge for friends of friends. Friends usually give me something for my trouble anyway.

I had one guy who was a complete PITA, a walking BSOD, so I charged him a fair old chunk of cash for repeatedly fixing his rig. I don't mean PC World prices, but it was much more than I would normally charge anyone else; I just wanted to discourage him from coming back to me.

Problem was, he thought my prices were very reasonable and kept coming back!

I stopped doing it a long time ago. You never truly get paid for your time IMO. People see it as a hobby and nothing more. I'm pretty sure they wouldnt drop their car at the garage and pay pittance once the job was done.

I still look after family PCs for nothing but hardly touch anything else.

I'm far too much the other way, I find it difficult to take any kind of payment. Then again I'm not in massive demand

I'm seen as (and am) a geek/nerd, so I get asked all sorts. Only today it was, 'How do I get scratches off my phone's screen?'

'Dunno, I only know about disc scratches, give it a Google.'

I do get wound up having my time wasted setting up email accounts and ordering stuff for people etc when they could easily do it themselves. The problem is it's smaller stuff where you can't turn round and say 'I'm busy'

Take in a book of workers going postal. Or have it as your home page so when people come near that is what they see. They might think about asking you.

that doesnt work. Even when you have a scapel on your desk as well...

He does a lot of favours for us like lending us dosh when we're skint so it goes in roundabouts - an besides I got a ton of music for free that I didn't have (think he's a wannabe gay boy on the side but he insists all the gay clubbing music is someone else's - yeah yeah!)

That makes it not so bad.

Tina's family always help out with everything, so I help out with the computers.

The whole family worked on our house, knocking out walls, putting in joists, plasterboarding the whole ground floor, laying cork tiles in the bedrooms etc. So I wouldn't dream of charging them.