Helping less technologically savvy friends

Well, as I work for a company in a capacity of IT support/planning/troubleshooting/design/implementation/web-design/training/networking and so on, I get a lot of questions thrown at me regarding computers and related equipment. I love technology, and I love to help friends and coworkers. Two things that make me cringe, and not want to get involved anymore are ungrateful people who do not appreciate the work I do. It goes like this: I spend 3-5-8-12 hours working on someone's machine, cleaning up 300+ spyware programs, 25+ viruses, setting up appropriate defense and prevention mechanisms, along with backup procedures, and I explain it all, hoping that I will not have to do the same thing again in a month or so. A week later I get a call that something is not working and it started after I worked on the computer!!! WHAT? It worked fine when I left. Different scenarios: people go back and disable anti-virus, uninstall backup apps, etc., basically undoing all that hard work. Mind you, I ask nothing in return other than "Thanks" and knowing there is another happy computer user. Now, I am the enemy who broke their PC that was fine until I worked on it. One person who I have setup triple backup procedure in place as she is a writer, never took my advice not to save her docs to get this - floppy discs instead of the hard drive which was being backed up. Of course, I was blamed for the hardware failure of the floppy disk.

Don't get me wrong, it can be very rewarding, as there are people that I educated, and worked on their machines, they listened, and are very happy with the results. Some even buy me a lunch or dinner, which is a nice gesture. Obviously, financially speaking a $10 lunch is very low pay indeed for day's worth of work, but that is not why I do it. I simply enjoy fixing PC, and helping friends.

I think I need to start charging in order to be taken seriously. It seems that when something is free to you, it is automatically perceived as worth nothing. In turn, as it costs you nothing to get the freebie service done again, so why worry about things?

The other pet peeve of mine is when people ask for advice on what computer/camera/printer whatever to purchase. As any good analyst would do, I first determine what the intended use is for the new PC. Based on that, I recommend a solution. Most commonly this turns out to be the entry level PC, and I go as far as to tell them to get the cheapest thing there is (within the minimum specifications) as I don't really see any difference from vendor to vendor. The support from big guys (Dell, Compaq, Gateway generally sucks), and all the hardware comes from same suppliers, so differentiators are simply not there as far as I am concerned. After spending several hours working on this and researching the best deals out there for the PC that would work for them, down to configuring the PC for them and sending them a link to simply click BUY button, they often walk in one of the superstores (BestBuy, CircuitCity, Staples, or whatever) and buy the overpowered, overpriced machine with the extended warranty, that a pimply-faced high-school clerk making $7.25/hr recommended because they have a special on the particular package that day.

Well, I've rambled long enough...but you get the picture. This is basically thankless position that I routinely put myself into. Still, I can't help myself, I am hooked on technology.