As a former employee (amicably separated), I am no...

As a former employee (amicably separated), I am now able to leave a review without conflict of interest problems. :-)

The key to understanding Universal Systems is to understand that their primary business interest is in serving enterprise and managed services (i.e. your local IT guy). That is where they excel, and they provide desktop and server systems for these types of clients, who in turn serve small and medium-sized businesses - or in-house IT departments for larger corporations. The emphasis is on assembling HARDWARE, and basic configuration of the OS and other software that is amenable to being imaged on multiple devices.

That being said, they do have a storefront that anybody can walk into, and if you want a custom built home computer, they can do anything you want. They are not the low-price leader (they don't have to be), but the prices are reasonable and the service is second-to-none. Let me just say, however, that if you expect the royal treatment because your business-critical machine has failed (shame on you for having a single point of failure in the operation of your business), you must understand that that is a common scenario, and they must rigidly stick to a first-in-first-out service queue. Nothing unfair about that.

You can also buy just about any computer-related cable you need (for AV stuff you should go to Performance Audio), as well as any of the components they use for computer builds (CPUs, motherboards, graphics cards, hard drives, SSDs, power supplies, cases, displays, etc...) but again, the selection is not comprehensive - it is primarily geared towards hardware that they frequently build for their larger clients. Also, small business-grade networking equipment is available.

Keep in mind, this is accurate only as of mid-2014, when I left the company. I can say that they are honest in everything they do, they always try to make things right when a customer is unsatisfied, but like any decent human beings, they have their limits as to what kind of nonsense they will tolerate from unreasonable customers. All that being said, if you are looking for a place to have a long-term relationship for your computer hardware needs, there really is no better place in the state than USI. Where other companies are obsessed with growth at the fastest pace possible - at any cost - Universal Systems puts customer service first and will continue to be around for a long time as a result.