Computer Restoration · San Francisco · Peninsula · Oakland
Most computers people give up on are not broken. They are full, hot, and running an operating system that outgrew them. Restoration is the work of taking a tired but working machine and making it good again, usually for a fraction of what a replacement costs.
$150/hr onsite, plus travel. Parts billed separately at cost. The first 15-minute consultation is free.
The work
Not every machine gets all of this. The point of the consultation is working out which of these your computer actually needs, and which would be money wasted.
The single biggest change you can make to an older computer. A machine that takes three minutes to boot will usually boot in under thirty seconds afterward, on the same hardware.
Most slowness people blame on the processor is the machine running out of RAM and swapping to disk. Adding memory often fixes what looks like a dying computer.
Years of dust and dried-out thermal paste make a computer throttle itself to a crawl and run loud. Cleaning, repasting, and fixing fans restores the speed it shipped with.
A laptop tethered to the wall is a desktop. A new battery is usually cheap next to a new laptop, and it makes the machine portable again.
Years of accumulated software, startup items, and half-removed programs slow a machine more than age does. A clean install with your files carried across fixes a lot.
When Windows has abandoned the hardware, Fedora will often run happily on it. This is how a machine "too old for Windows 11" gets several more useful years.
The economics
AI datacenter demand has driven consumer memory and storage prices up sharply. That cuts both ways, and it's worth being straight about it.
Yes, this means the RAM and SSD in a restoration cost more than they did two years ago. It also means a new computer costs more, because a new computer is full of the same parts, bought at the same prices, with a manufacturer's margin on top.
The machine already on your desk was built when memory was cheap. That hardware is worth more today than it was a year ago, which is the whole argument for keeping it. A targeted upgrade buys years for a fraction of a replacement, and you skip moving everything to a new machine.
Restoration is not always right. If the board is failing, the parts are proprietary and priced absurdly, the machine cannot take enough memory to do what you need, or the cost of parts approaches a decent replacement, you will be told that plainly. A free consultation that ends in "don't spend money on this" is a good outcome.
Book a free 15-minute callHow it works
Nobody should buy components before knowing what's actually wrong. The order matters.
What machine it is, how old, what it's doing, and what you need it to do. Often enough to say whether restoration is worth pursuing at all.
Finding out whether it's storage, memory, heat, software, or genuinely failing hardware. Billed hourly, and it's usually the first hour.
What it needs, what the parts cost at today's prices, what the labor runs, and what a comparable new machine would cost. Then you decide.
Parts fitted, system installed, files and settings carried over, and the machine handed back working. Nothing is wiped without a copy made first.
| Work | Typical time | Example labor cost |
|---|---|---|
| Diagnosis, what's actually wrong | ~1 hr | $150 |
| SSD swap with data migration | 1–2 hrs | $150 to $300 |
| Memory upgrade | ~1 hr | $150 |
| Dust-out, repaste, fan service | 1–2 hrs | $150 to $300 |
| Laptop battery replacement | ~1 hr | $150 |
| Clean OS install, files carried over | 2–3 hrs | $300 to $450 |
| Linux revival on an unsupported machine | 1–2 hrs | $150 to $300 |
| Full restoration (several of the above) | Project bid | Quoted after diagnosis |
Multiple jobs on one machine are bid as a project rather than billed straight down the clock, because they overlap. Ask for a number after the diagnosis.
Fifteen minutes, no charge, and an honest answer about whether to restore it or let it go.
415.916.2599Text or call · San Francisco, the Peninsula & Oakland onsite · Remote worldwide