Lindsay Weinrieb sat in her Castle Court apartment yesterday, trapped without Internet access and helpless to stop the shadowy software destroying her computer. Time Warner would take a week to even look at the problem, and a visit to Computing and Media Services meant a long walk through a torrential downpour.

So she called Adam Weingarten, a computer nerd with a business plan. He just quit his job at CMS. He uses a Mac and wears a goatee. He works as a philosophy teaching assistant on the side.

Lately he’s been papering the student neighborhoods with fliers promoting his new computer support service, CuseTech. He hopes the company, which is independent from the university, will tap the market of off-campus students who are overwhelmed with computer problems but can’t wait days or weeks for service.

‘People can’t survive without their computers,’ Weingarten said, armed with a black leather notebook and on his way to a house call. ‘They can’t survive with it being held hostage.’

Weingarten and his team of four student technicians visit their clients at home and walk them through the restoration of their computers, which means a CuseTech customer avoids the hassle of transporting the machine and being stuck offline while it’s gone. The same technician oversees the whole process, which Weingarten says usually takes an hour or, ‘worst-case scenario,’ three hours.

He has gone to great lengths to ‘do this right,’ from hiring lawyers and accountants to incorporating his business and filing for trademarks. But he hopes the true distinction between CuseTech and its competitors – services at CMS, Best Buy and CompUSA – is its personality.

‘You’re just another box going through there,’ Weingarten said of the other options. In his tech-support vision, everyone has a nerd by his or her side.

Since CuseTech opened for business a week ago, that vision has slowly become a reality. Weingarten said he’s been booking one or two appointments a day since he returned to campus, and the traffic will grow with increased student awareness.

Weinrieb, whose appointment lasted about two hours, called the service ’10 times more convenient than CMS.’ She called yesterday morning, and by the afternoon her system was up and running. And she even got a 10-percent discount because Weingarten had to spend extra time on the phone wrangling with Time Warner while he was there.

‘I told him I was going to tell my sorority about it,’ said Weinrieb, a senior inclusive education major. That word of mouth is what introduced her to the service, and, if things go well for CuseTech, it will be a nonstop source of free advertising.

Back on campus, Weingarten’s former employer is thrilled that he’s offering students a new alternative for their computer repairs.

‘We do not consider this our turf,’ said Deborah Nosky, the CMS manager of IT communications and professional development, of the potential overlap between CMS support and CuseTech’s service. She said she welcomes the new competitor and recognizes that, for many students, CuseTech may be a more convenient and cost-effective option than CMS.

CuseTech charges $45 an hour for a house call, and its convenience and speedy response time make it unique in the area. CMS offers three services for a $25 flat fee to wipe and restore a computer, but it outsources more complicated procedures to another company, which charges the same as CuseTech, without the house calls.

Weingarten, a senior computer science and philosophy major, says he’s not sure where he’ll take his fledgling business when he graduates in May. Maybe he’ll pass it on to another student, maybe he’ll sell it off. Maybe he’ll find a bigger and better job.

‘You can be the best nerd in the world,’ he said. But math and science can fry your brain, he added, and without some personality, ‘you’re going to be outsourced.’

If you crash…E-mail: adamw@cusetech.comPhone: 315-521-6240Address: 100 Stadium Place Suite 2Web site: www.cusetech.com

Published on August 30, 2004 at 12:00 pm