Serving Nevada County since 1997

In 1997, The Office Assistant was opened by Christine Dickinson as a secretarial service in South County, providing desktop publishing, word processing and other administrative services to individuals and small businesses. 

Information Technologies, networking and computer repair services were added when Brent Dickinson brought his skill set of 25+ years experience derived from employers such as Lucent Technologies (installer of AT&T field office systems) and R&B Communications in Grass Valley.

Areas of Expertise

Brent's skills include network & system installs & troubleshooting, virus repair, sytem reloads & hardware procurement on Windows, Android and Linux platforms for your home or office needs.

Brent's networking expanded over the years to include a variety of household technology from wireless alarm systems, smart home devices (thermostats, weather stations, audio devices), entertainment systems, keyless entry and more.

Christine has a lengthy career experience in the real estate field as well as advertising, recordkeeping, legal admin, organization and project management. She has a broad software knowledge to assist in many facets of small business operation.      

What We Do

Brent handles most computer hardware or networking-related services, hard drive data recovery, RAM installation and refurbished system orders. He keeps up-to-date on technology and new products, and even if he hasn't worked on a specific brand item you have, he can probably find out about it's idosyncracies and still help ID a fix or direction to get your system back on line.        

Christine is a software wizard and assists with program-based problems, data entry, data transfer, high-speed scanning, file organization, design work and other general admin services. She works daily with Microsoft Outlook, Word, Excel and PowerPoint; Quickbooks; Google Suite and Adobe Photoshop, DC, Illustrator and DreamWeaver.   Most software she has worked with for over 20 years, so is generally familiar with the various versions and can customize features into the software that may not be commonly known.   

We do have a loaners, if you are in a bind and we have your system in for repairs and you have no other computer. Depending on what type of internet provider you have, we may also have a loaner router or modem in case your internet devices have failed.  

We prefer to offer a budgetable solution that's efficient as well. If we can streamline a project to do it faster and charge you less, we'll do that.       

Why is The Office Assistant Different?

As with any small business, customer loyalty and satisfaction is key to recurring business and referrals. But as Brent says, if he does his job right, he won't hear back from his clients. Why?

If you have a solid understanding of the safeguards to keep in place on your computer system, you won't have recurring problems with malware, viruses or other electronic conflicts. We'd rather set you up with an affordable system that works flawlessly for the next three to five years, than sell something that is "custom designed" at a high price and has a lot of hiccups. Sure, hiccups mean more service calls, but in our book, success is not getting continued service calls. Success is having a customer happy with their affordable computer system who will contact us four years later and see if we can do it again, or hire us to find a laptop for their college-bound student.

Sure, you can visit a box store and buy a "top of the line" system for $1200. But most people overpay for technology they don't need. Or, by expecting a $1200+ bill, many customers delay replacing an old system and put the security of their data at risk. The average laptop we sell at cost to you runs around $300 to $400 (and you will know where it was purchased and see the retail price).

What We Don't Do

For starters, we won't sell you something you don't need, or something that costs $1200 when we know a $300 alternative exists and will work for your needs.

We don't copy software or sell you non-licensed software. That's illegal and unethical. If we can't get a valid Windows license key for a Windows system, it won't be provided to a client. We'll send the system back to the distributor and get a refund.

We don't build new computers or keep a stock of computers on hand to sell, like a retail store. Instead we will look for a business-class system that is refurbished, with a warranty, and offer options to enhance it, if needed.

We don't sell used products as new. Too many customers have shown us their "custom builds" that clearly contain hardware that wasn't new or custom. We will clearly identify what is new and what is not, and give you the option to select your preference.

We aren't going to wipe out all your data when "restoring" your computer. This is all too common and it doesn't need to happen. Usuallly for the cost of a "fix" from a box store, that concludes with wiping your hard drive, we can clone your hard drive, wipe and repair the existing or copy over your data to a replacement system or hard drive. Under most circumstances this isn't a labor-intensive process--it just needs to be done by someone who spends the extra 15 minutes needed to protect your data.

We don't sell or upsell software. If you need software, we can recommend options that suit your budget and security need. There are quality freeware alternatives for popular software products that cost $100+/year. We can install the free software and you can see if you like it. If not, we can help you download the branded version if you need it. If you only need to access something for a short time, or convert it to a format you need, we might be able to do that using software we own.

We won't offer to repair a system that is not worth the investment. Plain and simple. When you can buy a newer, replacement unit for $300, we'll tell you that it's not worth investing $250 of labor plus parts on your seven-year-old Windows 7 laptop.

We won't charge you hourly labor for doing something the slow way. While re-typing a 400-page manual may be fun for some, if we can OCR scan it in 3 minutes, and give you a Word file you can edit yourself, that's what we'll do. If you want us to type it or make it pretty, that can be arranged.