Soft Comp

Absolutely amazing service. No nonsense, no bullshit: just good diagnostics and repair, all done very quickly and at a very low price. They were not at all phased by my very old laptop, and were upfront with me about how much I should spend (or not spend) trying to get it fixed. Luckily, the low cost ($ 20!) solution they proposed worked, and a year later, my computer is still as good as ever.

My PC (circa 2008, still on Windows Vista — yikes!) stopped working the other night. It wouldn’t boot or send anything to screen — it just beeped. Suspecting a broken fan and a melted graphics card, I searched for a PC repair shop in midtown. The first shop I called was a local Apple-​only shop, and they referred me to Soft Comp, which is just across the street from the government building at St. Clair TTC station. I spoke first with the friendly owner Ed, and then with their top tech expert Wan, who recommended I come in any time between 10:30am and 6pm. The shop is easy to reach by TTC or car (limited free hourly parking on side streets and complimentary 90-​minute indoor parking at the nearby Sobeys with a $ 20 minimum purchase), but the signage is not the greatest. It is right next to a coffee shop and a sushi restaurant, in the basement of a small office building.
I got there at about 11:30am. Wan immediately opened up the PC to have a quick look and saw there were a few broken capacitors on the main board. Ouch. I explained that because I already have a new laptop, I didn’t want to spend much on this old PC and wanted data retrieval to be the priority. I had a few hundred GB of media on there that I hadn’t backed up, inconvenient but not crucial — scrapping it was always an option. Wan said he thought the hard drive was probably not damaged. He would need some time to dismantle everything carefully and assess what the best option was, and then give me a call. We didn’t discuss price specifically.
So I did my groceries and when I got home at 12:15pm, Wan had already called. He said because of the amount of data I had to retrieve, the best option was to enclose the hard drive and essentially turn the huge, heavy case into a pocket-​sized external hard drive. I could do all the data transfer myself rather than pay them several hours to do the transfers for me. The hardware would cost about $ 60, and he would charge me ½ hour of labour. The entire bill was $ 109, tax included — what a bargain! Wan took a few minutes to show me how to operate the device and which folders to check for media. They even took care of the recycling of the old case! As Wan predicted, the data transfer was tedious, but easy, and I retrieved every file I needed.
I am very, very impressed by Wan’s speed, expertise, and responsiveness. Both he and Ed exemplify a very high level of customer service and integrity… all at an extremely reasonable price. For anyone in the Leaside-​Rosedale area, Soft Comp is a no-​brainer for PC-​related work, but I’d strongly recommend them to anyone who lives or works along the Yonge subway line (given the proximity to St Clair station). Hopefully I will not need to go back in the near future, but it is very reassuring to know they are there for the next tech emergency. Thanks, Wan and Ed!

I’ve been using these guys for close to 10 years and they’ve saved my butt on more than one occasion — from rescuing hard drives to recycling old computers. They’re my first call when I need something fixed, replaced or looked at. Highly recommended.