What Northbridge actually asks for
Northbridge sits immediately north of the railway from the city, and it has a character of its own — the William Street and James Street strips, the cultural centre with the museum, the art gallery and the state library on it, and a dense mix of terraces, flats and share housing behind all of that.
Two kinds of enquiry come out of it.
The first is the small venue or shopfront. A cafe, a bar, a barber, a takeaway. One machine behind the counter that handles orders, rosters, invoices and the accounting, and nobody on staff whose job it is to fix it when it stops. What these places want is not the fastest machine — it is a machine that will not surprise them, that is cheap enough to replace if it is dropped, and that someone will answer the phone about.
The second is residential, and it skews young and rented. Students, people sharing, people who have moved here for a year. A laptop is the only computer in the house, it lives on a kitchen table, and it gets carried everywhere. That is a laptop question, and often a budget one.
Why a business laptop suits both
The machines we refurbish mostly come out of corporate fleets, and that background is the reason they work here.
A laptop built for an office desk was specified to last several years and designed so parts could be swapped rather than the whole thing binned. It usually has a better keyboard, a stronger hinge and a tougher case than a cheap consumer laptop of the same price. Three years into its life it is still a solid machine.
For a shopfront that means something that will survive a counter. For a share house it means something that will survive being carried up Lake Street in a backpack. Same hardware, two different reasons for liking it.
What we do before it goes out
Every machine is opened, cleaned out and checked over on the bench. Worn or failing parts get replaced. The drive is wiped properly and the operating system goes on fresh.
If the storage is small or still a spinning hard drive, it gets an SSD, because that is the difference between a machine that feels old and one that does not. If the memory is tight for the job, it gets more.
Then it is tested as a whole machine and goes out with 90 days warranty. What the warranty covers
Timing, price and stock
There is no price list on this site, because what is on the bench changes weekly and any list would be wrong within days. Ring us, tell us what the machine is for, and we will tell you what is in and what it costs.
You will have that as a firm quote within 24 hours, and nothing starts until you have agreed it. Most jobs are finished in two to three days.
If you are fitting out more than one desk
Northbridge has a lot of small operations with two or three people in them. If you need several machines rather than one, matching units are worth more than fast ones — same model across the desks means one set of spares and one thing to learn.
We quote that side of it the same way, and there are no lock-in contracts if you want us looking after the gear afterwards. Refurbished business computers
Trading in the old one
If there is a machine being replaced, it does not have to go in a cupboard. Bring it in and it counts toward the new one. Working or not — a laptop with a dead battery or a cracked screen still has value, because the rest of it is usually fine.
Tell us before you hand it over if there is anything on it you still need. Device trade-in
Before you buy anything
If the machine you already have is only a few years old and the complaint is that it has got slow, replacing it may be the expensive answer. An SSD and more memory often fixes it for a fraction of the cost, and we will tell you so rather than sell you something you do not need. SSD and memory upgrades
Getting it to you
We are in Bayswater, up the road. There is no showroom in Northbridge — the machines live with the bench.
Most people here are on foot or on a train, and a laptop travels fine that way. If you are looking at a desktop, ring us first and we will sort out the practical side rather than leave you carrying a tower down William Street.
Open Monday to Friday, 10am to 4pm.