THE LITTLE LAPTOP SHOP

It went well. The shop is indeed tiny, but they were able to recover my data and restore my computer. They charge per gig of data recovered, which in my view is a more reasonable way to charge for data recovery than the usual hourly rate. I was able to trust that I would pay for the actual work performed (measured by how much data was recovered) rather than by time. They back up the data on their network for a period of time after you take the computer home, so that in case something goes wrong, the data will not be lost. I thought this was really helpful and luckily an unnecessary precaution in my case. Their service quality is fairly standard for IT people, not too friendly but not rude like the Computer Guy on Saturday Night Live. Overall, a solid shop.