It is one of my chief joys as the publisher of Athens Now to both be and have raving fan customers, and Mays Computer Company,a family owned and operated computer sales and service store is a place to which I love to send people for all their computer needs. The Mays family had their entire store wiped out by the March 2012 tornado, and even our Athens Now news rack got crushed!! They had loved their former location, (at the corner of East Limestone and Nick Davis Road,) they loved their landlord, and had no desire to move. The storm, however, had other plans, and as is often the case, the storm truly had a silver lining.
Just “down the road a piece,” at the corner of East Limestone and Capshaw Road, a Chevron had been rebuilt with larger shop space on the north side of the station, and it turned out to be a perfect place for the Mays’ new digs. During the time that they were closed and all the insurance claims were being processed, they were able to get great new stock, including gaming systems, Macs of all types, tablets, G Books, Mac Book Pros, I Macs, and every imaginable Microsoft product.
Another blessing from the tornado was the opportunity for continuing education. All the adult children of the Mays family now work at
the store, and everyone is constantly in some kind of continuing computer education training program, including Microsoft, Intuit, and others. Steve Mays said, “We wanted to get back in business to help our customers,” and they have gotten their wish. The new store is beautiful, spacious, has much more display space, and it certainly helps that it is adjacent to a Chevron store that often gets 500 customers a day.
What put Mays Computer Company on the map for me, and what is still their “bread and butter” is fixing computers. I have found myself in a true computer crisis on more than one occasion, (something that can be a nightmare in the newspaper business)
and these guys have come to my rescue with speed and thorough professionalism. If you bring your infected computer into the shop in the morning, they’ll have it fixed by close of business. If your computer needs parts, most often it will be ready the next day. The fee for computer repair and reprogramming is 100 dollars, and no one beats their service and quick turnaround time.
When the April 2011 twisters hit, many people lost their computers and found them outdoors somewhere mashed, smashed and wet. As amazing as it sounds, they were able to do data recovery service for some mighty damaged units, and helped people get their data, files, and pictures back. Certainly that went a long way toward helping people get their lives back as well. An even more touching example of the effect of their data recovery service was when a soldier was home recently from Afghanistan on leave, and his child erased over 963 documents, videos, pictures and files, some of which were crucial to his role as a warfighter. They were able to get all of it back, and both the child and the soldier are now out of the doghouse!
They will set up networking and business systems on site with purchase, however, are not able at present to be on call as mobile “IT guys.” You have to bring your sick unit to the Mays “ER.” The hope is, however, that eventually they’ll be able to have a fleet of mobile “technoids” that will be able to come to your residence or place of business to get your “cyber-ship” righted again. Another niche they want to fill is that of gaming, and it is becoming a significant part of their business. They have the large gaming screens, the high end video and sound cards, and can set things up so that three gamers can play at a time. They have LCD screens from 17” to 28” in the store. They also repair PlayStation and X Box units when needed.
If your current system is just fine and does not need to be repaired or replaced, there are a number of things you can do to make it hum along even better. You can update your hard drive, increase your RAM storage space, get better sound cards, upgrade your operating system, or increase the quality of your videos by upgrading your video card. They also take trade ins if you are needing a new computer. I have said more than once that the Mays have made me a happy computer camper, and highly recommend them to anyone in North Alabama who is in need of a computer, service or both.
By Ali Elizabeth Turner
