Frequently Asked Questions about Chips

Are you a Computer Store?

We're just east of New I-85 on NC 62 (Exit 113 on the interstate). If you are coming from the south, turn right at the top of the ramp, if you are coming from the north, turn left. Go two tenths of a mile and at the bottom of a small hill you will see the lake on your right. Just follow Woods' Lake Trail by the side of the lake.

Same as the lake, We are open sunup (Usually 6:30 AM) to sundown, Monday through Saturday, Noon till Sundown on Sundays.

Do you repair computers?

Not really.  I once worked for a retailer.  It was back in the days when nobody knew very much about computers.  Every day, I would see small business people walk in the door (a copy of consumer reports under one arm, a copy of PC world under the other) and they were ready to automate their office!  What most salesmen saw was a big neon sign on the customer's forehead that said "sucker"!  Unfortunately the client usually walked out the door with a lot of stuff he didn't need and the salesman got a bonus. 
It occured to me that I was working for the wrong people.  I was paid to sell computers.  And what these customers really needed was someone who knew computers well enough to keep them out of trouble as inexpensively as possible. They needed someone who was working for them and not the computer company. 
No Business can afoard lost time.  I started Chips to help my clients keep going at the lowest possible cost because most of my clients are small businesses and every penny counts.  Mostly I find bargans for my clients who don't have the time or the knowledge to find them for themselves.  I know which merchants treat their customers with the respect they deserve and which ones forget your name the minute you walk out the door (I help people avoid the later).  And when something does go wrong, I can get them back up and running quickly.     
We can, but often we send the work out to specialists who can do it faster and cheaper.  Again, the idea is to keep our clients up and running while saving them money.  There's nothing more useless to any business than a piece of equipment that won't work.
If you're not a computer store, how come you sell all that gear?

As I said before, our job is to consult.  When a customer needs a computer, we go into the marketplace and find the best deal we can find.  Through consultation, a client tells us what his or her needs are, we evaluate their present computer system and reccomend the best way to deal with it.  When the equipment must be replaced or updated with newer components we will tell you what is needed and the most cost effective way to do it.  Our job is to point in the right direction.
 
By the way, because a piece of equipment needs to be replaced, that doesn't mean that their equipment isn't good, it just means it isn't capable of doing what the customer needs it to do.  Computers that are obsolete for one purpose can make wonderful computers for another purpose like word processors, children's computers or internet computers for families that don't require the blazing speed an archetect needs to design a building for example. 

Occsaionally we take in equipment on consignment from the client  Other times we take some of it in in exchange for our services thinking we will have a use for it later on.  We usually end up giving those to some of the children who visit our lake.  It's a win,  win situation really.  kids who can use them get computers, and we get back some badly needed space.    

This page last modified on Thursday, May 14, 2009