The suburb the strip runs through
Beaufort Street is the spine of Mount Lawley, and it sets the tone. Cafes, small studios, shopfronts, restaurants — a lot of independent operations with one or two people in them. Behind the strip the suburb turns residential quickly: older character houses, plenty of them well kept, with flats and infill filling in the gaps.
So we get two quite different conversations here, and they want different machines.
The sole trader and the small studio
The person running a business off one computer has a particular problem: if that machine stops, so does the business. Invoices, bookings, the accounting, the client work, all of it on a single laptop that goes home at night.
What that person actually needs is not a fast machine. It is a dependable one with somebody behind it. Every machine we sell has been opened, tested and warranted for 90 days, and if something hardware-related goes wrong you ring a workshop rather than argue with a listing.
It is also worth having a second, cheaper machine sitting in a drawer if the business genuinely cannot stop. Refurbished makes that affordable in a way that new hardware does not.
Creative work and the limits of refurbished
Mount Lawley has more people doing design, photography and editing than most suburbs on our patch, and this is where we say the unpopular thing.
Refurbished handles photo editing, document and layout work, audio and light video perfectly well, particularly with plenty of memory in it.
Heavy video editing, large 3D work and current-generation machine learning are a different matter. A three-year-old business laptop was never built for those, and no amount of memory changes it. If that is your work, we will tell you refurbished is the wrong tool rather than sell you something that will frustrate you for two years.
Most people asking are not in that category. But some are, and they deserve a straight answer.
The household side
The residential half of Mount Lawley wants something simpler. A machine for homework, banking, photos and streaming. A second computer so two people are not fighting over one. A replacement for something that has become unbearably slow.
On that last one — if the machine is only a few years old, it has probably run out of storage speed or memory rather than reached the end of its life. An SSD and more memory usually fix it for far less than a replacement, and everything stays where it is. SSD and memory upgrades
What we do to a machine
Opened, cleaned out, checked over on the bench. Worn or failing parts replaced. The drive wiped properly and the operating system installed fresh. An SSD fitted where the storage is slow or small, memory increased where it is tight.
Then tested as a complete machine, not a list of parts, and out with 90 days warranty. The same 90 days covers hardware repairs and any part we fit. What the warranty covers
Where the machines come from
Corporate fleets, mostly. The offices a few minutes south replace their computers every few years, and business hardware is specified to last and built to be serviced. That is why a three-year-old office laptop is a better buy than a three-year-old cheap consumer one at the same price.
Stock, price and timing
Nothing is listed on this site, because the bench changes weekly. Ring us and we will tell you what is in and what suits.
Firm quote within 24 hours, nothing started until you agree it, and most jobs finished in two to three days.
Trading in the old machine
Bring it in and it comes off the price of the new one. Working or not — a dead battery or a cracked screen does not make a laptop worthless, because the rest of it is usually fine.
If there is anything on it you still need, say so before you hand it over. Every drive is wiped properly. Device trade-in
Getting it to you
We are in Bayswater, a few minutes up the road. There is no showroom in Mount Lawley.
A laptop is easy. If you are after a desktop, ring us and we will work out the sensible way to get it there.
Monday to Friday, 10am to 4pm.