About Us

Jason's computer Story

I've lived in the Great Lakes area my whole life - over 50 years and counting - and I've spent 44 of them fascinated by computers, 26 of those running a full-time local business built entirely on word of mouth and results.

It started in 1982, when my older brother borrowed a TRS-80 from his Maths teacher (Mr Francis) for the September school holidays. That was it - I was hooked. That Christmas my brother got a Dick Smith "Wizard" console with a BASIC add-on, and I watched him type in pages of code from magazines to build simple programs. By Year 7 (1983), I was telling my teacher I'd finished my Maths work early just so I could sneak onto the school's two Micro-Bee computers with my mates.

Our family got it's first home computer, an Amstrad 086, in 1985. My older brother went off to study Computer Science at university, once he started working in the IT industry we inherited old 386s and 486s. There was no one in town back then who could actually fix computers - they only sold them - so necessity taught me to solve my own Windows 95 and 98 problems. In 1993 I started travelling to Sydney to use my brother's work internet connection, and I could see exactly where the internet was headed while most people were still asking what the point of it was. A few of us used to sneak into Newcastle University in '94 for free internet access, because paying for it at home simply wasn't affordable yet. I finally got my own dial-up connection in late 1996.

By the late '90s, self-taught with no formal training or qualifications, I was heading round to friends' places after work to fix their computers for free. In 1998 I built my first PC of my own - a Celeron 400 on an Asus P2B board, 16MB of RAM and a 4.3GB hard drive, upgraded piece by piece over the next few years with second-hand parts off eBay. I'd also been building primitive websites for a few years by then.

By 2000, I'd registered the business name, bought the domain, and started charging for what I'd been doing for free. The original idea behind "Great Lakes Online" was a local web portal - community forums, business listings, photo sharing - years before Facebook existed. In 2001, a mate in North Queensland and I even tried taking the concept international with a business called Isyourtown, selling local "portal" sub-domains to other towns. We picked up attention from major internet magazines and had genuine potential - just not the capital to compete once bigger players ran with the same idea on a much bigger scale.

Still here, still doing it properly

What did stick was the reputation for building solid, honest computers - competing with the big retail chains on price, but never on quality. I learned early that cutting corners on parts just means more returns and less trust, so I've never done it. I still don't. Only high quality parts from tried and true manufactures go into my machines.

Since 2000, I've built hundreds and hundreds of custom computers and fixed thousands more. I've also made it something of a personal mission to fight back against overseas phone scams - working with banks on customers' behalf to recover funds they were told they'd never see again, with more than $400,000 returned to local people as a result.

Forty-four years of hands-on computer experience. Twenty-six years in business, full time, right here in the Great Lakes area. I've watched plenty of other computer businesses come and go - I'm still here, still doing it properly, honestly and still putting in more effort for my customers than anyone else around.