Patrick and Marlena.
We are a husband and wife shop. Patrick is on the bench: ten years of repairs, seven of them at CD Computers in Spruce Grove, plus a degree in Network Systems Administration. Marlena is the other half of the business, and between us there is nobody else your computer gets handed off to.
Our shop is a dedicated building on our own property in Stony Plain. That means no landlord, no franchise, and no rent pressure pushing every job toward a sale. It also means we can tell you when not to fix something.
Soft Effects Inc. started in 1986. Computer Wall is what it became. Dale Evjen ran that shop from a Stony Plain home for 28 years, and clients drove out from Edmonton to keep dealing with him. When he passed away in 2022, his family chose us to carry the business on. Same town, same model, same way of talking to people who are worried about their computer.
Patrick learned the trade over seven years on the bench at CD Computers, John and Charlene’s busy Spruce Grove counter shop. Years of high-volume bench work is where you see every make, every failure, and every strange intermittent fault. That is where the hands were trained.
We have earned 163 five-star reviews. Every one of them came from someone in Stony Plain, Spruce Grove, or Parkland County who brought us a problem and got a straight answer.
Our repair shop is a dedicated separate building on our own property. Small by design, not a rented storefront chasing growth. We built it this way on purpose so we can take the time each job actually needs, and so a call before any money is involved is the default, not the exception.
We created Computer Wall because we genuinely love helping people get their computers working again. That is the reason we exist.
Three things every customer gets, every time.
Same person from intake to handoff.
The person who answers your call, runs the diagnosis, opens the machine, and hands it back is the same person every time. That is the model, not a shortage of staff, not a temporary arrangement. It means the answer you get is the same person doing the work.
Your money goes to the people doing the work.
The shop is on our own property in Stony Plain. There is no head office taking a cut, no dispatcher, no call centre. Your repair dollars go directly to Patrick and Marlena, which is also why we can tell you when not to fix something. No rent pressure pushing every job toward a sale.
Time to actually listen.
You get the time the problem actually deserves, including time for the questions you might be embarrassed to ask elsewhere. Slow laptop, mystery error, or "something just feels off." Bring it in. No job is too small. No question is dumb.
Told it can’t be fixed? Bring it here.
End-of-life laptops. Intermittent symptoms nobody can reproduce. Custom builds with unusual parts. Machines already returned unsolved. The repairs that do not show up in a YouTube tutorial are the ones the shop was built around.
Because we work small, we can chase a problem that takes three days to figure out. That is where being local pays off in something the customer actually feels: a real diagnosis instead of "sorry, can’t help."
- "Won’t power on" with no obvious cause
- Intermittent crashes nobody else can reproduce
- Older or end-of-life hardware others won’t touch
- Symptoms that only appear at the worst moments
- Custom-built rigs and uncommon configurations
- Repairs another shop returned unsolved
The standard came first. The shop was built around it.
Careful diagnosis, honest advice, no pressure to repair what should be replaced, and the patience to chase the hard cases through to a real answer.
Patrick learned the trade over seven years on the bench at CD Computers, John and Charlene’s busy Spruce Grove counter shop, right up until the shop closed. High-volume bench work is where you see every make, every failure, and every strange intermittent fault. That is where the hands were trained.
Soft Effects Inc. is the shop Dale Evjen ran from a Stony Plain home for 28 years. When he passed away in 2022, his family chose us to carry the business on. The name on the door changed. What happens at the bench did not. Patrick is still the person you will find there when you walk in.
The formal training under every diagnosis.
Patrick holds a degree in Network Systems Administration, the formal foundation that sits under his years of hands-on bench work. Layered onto seven years of high-volume bench experience at CD Computers, it is what lets us take on the diagnostic cases most people give up on.
Coaching mastery. Outside the lab too.
Patrick is part of the coaching team behind Memphis Macintosh, two-time national boxing champion. The patience to coach high-level performance under pressure is the same patience that shows up in a careful diagnosis: methodical, honest about what is working and what is not, and committed to the long-term result instead of the quick fix.
The combination of formal network systems credentials, ten years of hands-on repair experience, and proven elite-level coaching is a rare profile in any local repair shop. It is the reason we can stay calm with the hard cases, and the reason we can confidently tell a customer when not to spend money on a repair.
What follows every job.
- A free triage on the phone, by text, or in person — no charge for the conversation, and no commitment.
- Most cases answered by the next business day. Parts-ordered jobs and deep bench work take longer, and we will tell you up front which path your case is on.
- A clear repair-or-replace recommendation — including when the answer is “don’t fix this.”
- A flat-rate quote before any paid work — so you decide before money changes hands.
- Data safety considered before any repair that puts your files at risk.
- Careful notes on every job — so a follow-up six months from now picks up where the last visit ended.
- A 90-day guarantee on every approved repair.
- A real person, in a real shop, who’ll be here when you come back.
Bring your computer to a shop built to listen.
Free triage. Honest answer. Quote before any work. 90-day guarantee. Walk in or book — whichever’s easier.
Walk-ins: Mon–Fri 11am–5pm · Sat 11am–2pm · 5019 47 Ave, Stony Plain