“I’m sorry, I don’t work on personal PC’s. It’s nothing personal, I promise”.

Have you ever heard these words come from the lips of your company’s in house IT guy? Have you ever asked and been rebuffed? Well don’t fret. Rest assured dear user, it really isn’t personal. A lot of us computer guys just don’t work on personal PC’s.

“But why not?” you ask. A computer is a computer right? If it’s broke you can certainly fix it and maybe make a little money on the side. It shouldn’t take you long, you’re an expert.

As tempting as tax free money on the side sounds, it usually just isn’t worth the hassle. That’s right, I said it. It’s a hassle for us to work on personal PC’s. The laundry list of why it is a hassle is long, but I will try to just touch on the most significant aspects of it.

First off you have to realize that people that work in a corporate or government IT dept are used to dealing with standardized hardware and software configurations and being in total control over the goings on of their network. We know the hardware and software inside and out. We are in control of the inventory, we know what types of printers we have, and know what the most common problems are that occur with our standardized hardware and software. We like to be in control. When you bring us your personal PC from home, we don’t know what kind of software you have installed, where it came from, or what kind of hardware you may have connected to it that may or may not be causing your issues.

Secondly, we don’t like to have to “overlook” stuff you may have on your computer that may or may not be “legal”. Is that copy of Office 2007 you have installed on your PC properly licensed? Did you pay for the thousands of mp3’s you have in your “My Music” folder? It honestly bothers us to work on somebody’s computer and see software like Limewire or the likes of it, because we then know you are illegally downloading music. Honestly we want no part of that. We don’t want to know because many of us possess professional technical certifications from Microsoft and others, and with those designations come ethical responsibilities and the like. These companies are our bread and butter if you will, and we don’t like to see them ripped off. Plus when you get sued by the RIAA, we don’t want to be called on to testify against you.

Thirdly, we honestly can’t charge you what our time is actually worth. When you bring in your PC loaded down with viruses and trojans, we could literally have to spend hours cleaning it up, and even then we may not be able to successfully clean it. Nasty infections are generally very difficult to get rid of and usually require that the operating system be reinstalled from scratch, which just adds time to our task.

Fourthly, (is that even a word?) we don’t enjoy working on computers as much as you might think. You know those guys you see on TV that are always messing with computers and talking about the latest whiz bang graphics card that renders a bajillion polygons per second? Guess what. We’re not them. We are IT professionals. We are usually highly specialized in our fields and concentrate on one area of expertise. We usually don’t know about the latest graphics card unless one of our AutoCAD users is getting a new machine and it requires a high end graphics processing unit. To us computers are just a job, a way to make a living. When we go home at night, we want to spend time with our families, chilling in front of the tube and eating dinner. We don’t want to spend all evening trying to figure out why your ipod won’t talk to your computer.