Best Buy $39.95 "Optimization" At Best a Waste of Money 504
DCFC writes "The Consumerist deconstructs the appalling 'optimization service' that Best Buy has been pushing on consumers in recent weeks. The retailer charges 40 bucks to give you a slower PC, and make bizarre claims that it makes it go 200% faster. 'We ran the 3DMark 2003 graphics benchmark on each laptop, comparing optimized and non-optimized settings. For two of our samples, the Gateway and Toshiba, performance changes were negligible. On the Asus laptop, however, optimized tests actually scored about 32% worse than the non-optimized setup. We have been unable to isolate the source of this performance change. On none of the three tested laptops did the optimized settings give a performance boost in our test.'"
Friends (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Friends (Score:4, Insightful)
More basic than that: Friends don't let friends -buy- computers from Best Buy.
Re:Friends (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Friends (Score:4, Interesting)
I check out Best Buy once every couple months, I have found a total of 2 good deals in the last 10 years. One was some half price ram a near the beginning of that period and the other was a 1080p 42 inch LCD tv for less than $600 last christmas. Every other time, all their stuff was over priced and underpowered in the rare case where they had something like what I wanted. And most of the time, they didn't have what I was looking for anyway.
Re:Friends (Score:4, Insightful)
Bestbuy used to be much much better. I grew up in MPLS/SP where it got started and before it became a national chain they had much wider selections of stuff. I really blame the internet for killing their selection of PC parts as I can totally understand no b&m is going to be able to compete in that space. Other stuff though like stereo equipment and the like I really don't know what happened. You used to be able to go in and look at 20 different receivers/amps and 10 complete sets of speakers, now you'd be lucky to find five different makes of either.
They have really gone lowest common denominator and totally main stream.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
... Remember a well informed consumer always gets the deal!
Chears!
I think you meant:
Chairs!
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I stopped shopping at Best Buy several years ago when they basically announced that they don't want well informed consumers, they only want suckers. They actually came out and said that they were trying to get rid of customers who buy stuff on sale and who always fill out the rebate forms in favor of people who buy at full price and forget to fill out/send in the rebate forms.
Re:Friends (Score:5, Insightful)
There's one word you could remove from that sentence and have it remain grammatically, orthographically and factually correct...
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Don't they have some really good sales especially on movies and what not?
Re:Friends (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Friends (Score:5, Insightful)
I guess if you said "who buys round plastic shiny discs that ship with a limited viewing license for a movie" I would hold up my hand and say "me".
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Re:Friends (Score:5, Funny)
How am I supposed to touch stuff before I buy it from Amazon?
My favorite is setting the home page of all the computers to MonoPrice cables.
Re:Friends (Score:4, Informative)
I like it! Did you know you can also do that with dresses? Wear it to a party! As long as you don't get food or jizz on it just return it and say you accidentally bought the wrong size or that it doesn't match your panties or whatever.
Re:Friends (Score:5, Funny)
I like it! Did you know you can also do that with dresses? Wear it to a party! As long as you don't get food or jizz on it just return it and say you accidentally bought the wrong size or that it doesn't match your panties or whatever.
Yeah, I use the, "it don't match my panties," excuse every time I return a dress for my wife. The clerks never ask further questions.
Re:Friends (Score:5, Insightful)
So you go to Best Buy,
and rip them off...
That way we can make sure to encourage the retail chains in the US to remain as shitty as possible?
I don't shop at Best Buy, but I disagree with the practice of wasting other people's time and money, which is what this is. It is much wiser to go to Microcenter and get a $10 SATA or IDE enclosure and just keep your old drive in it as a spare or to give to a friend who needs one. All my old 100-120GB drives from the turn of the millenium are happily housed in such units and come in handy when someone needs temp storage or truck around some data.
Doing it this way, the retail establishment has no reason to jack up prices further, keeps employees employed, and Startech or whoever made the enclosure got a sale for a manufacturing a decent enough product.
There is a thousand ways to royally screw over companies using warranty and return policies, they don't take much thought to discover and abuse, but I don't think doing so is the path to any form of enlightenment.
Re:Friends (Score:5, Interesting)
Completely OT: Installing Win7 on a netbook (Score:3, Informative)
But why? Assuming you have access to a PC with a DVD drive, a USB port, and a 4GB or larger USB drive, you didn't need a USB DVD drive. Installing Windows from a USB stick is trivial:
My favourite bit.. (Score:5, Funny)
When she asked if she could install anti-virus software herself instead of paying Geek Squad to do it, she was told installing software yourself, "negates the vendor's warranty."
Heh. I *love* that part!
Now, whenever someone tells me that Linux can't work on the desktop because "off-the-shelf" Windows software doesn't work on it, I can tell them that you can't do it on Windows without voiding the warranty!
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Best Buy is coming to the UK this year.
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I used to take tech support phone calls for a major internet company. I can not tell you how many times somebody would call in right after taking their pc to best buy and nothing would work correctly.
They actually talked my friend's mom into getting a wireless router, Geek Squad charged her to set it up, but they did not put the wep key into her computer, and the wep key they wrote down
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That alone should be considered criminal negligance.
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Certain major companies like Nintendo only figured out the whole "WPA" thing less than a year ago, so WEP is sadly still the default for compatibility reasons.
Re:Friends (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Friends (Score:5, Funny)
...especially if they don't want to be tech support for the rest of the friendship ;)
Which certainly won't last long with friendly advice like that!
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
While true, the thrust of TFA is that friends don't let friends buy their computers from Best Buy.
If you follow consumerist, you'd know that Best Buy is all-around one of the worst companies in the world, right up there with AT&T, Comcast, and AIG. Best Buy is also famous for lying on the phone about their inventory [consumerist.com], holding holiday orders hostage [consumerist.com], not honoring extended warranties [consumerist.com], overcharging for items they don't have and refusing to cancel th [consumerist.com]
System tuning... (Score:5, Interesting)
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"System tuning" would require actual tuning to the system.
The Goon Squad is probably just running some automated crapware to defrag, "fix" the registry, and other such nonsense. Of course, being crapware, it can often do more harm than good.
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Re:System tuning... (Score:4, Funny)
Re:System tuning... (Score:5, Insightful)
So as a former Geek Squad agent I have to chime in. First, I do believe the service is overpriced. Second, I don't speak for the whole company, just my store.
That being said, the "optimization" service that we sold consisted of 1) Applying any available Windows updates, including service packs in the case of sales immediately following the release of a new one. 2) Uninstall of any trialware that comes preloaded that is of no real value (I.E. most of the shit preloaded on Toshibas, HPs, etc)
3) Tweaking of MSConfig to disable any excess run-at-startup items that are for legitimate software but that shouldn't run at startup (Nero, Roxio, Adobe Reader, etc)
Finally the agent would ensure that automatic updates are enabled etc.
While yeah, you may say that this service is overpriced (I would tend to agree) it's not as much bullshit as everyone is imagining.
Again, as you might imagine with a corporation as large as Best Buy, consistency is not exactly 100% (My agent number was in the 18,000s, and that was assigned to me two years ago) so YMMV.
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The REAL question is why the computer didn't COME THAT WAY IN THE FIRST PLACE!
Re:System tuning... (Score:5, Informative)
That's exactly it. I've read stories about how good the Geek Squad USED TO BE. And, I've read more stories about what they are now. All they have is an almost completely automated boot CD with which they activate a half dozen antivirus and some system testing tools. A couple of cleanup tools. It takes ages to run the full suite of tools, which is why people bring their computer in on Monday, and it's still not done on Friday. Googling for MRI-5.1 might be informative. You might even find an ISO to explore.
MRI has basically good tools on it, I won't badmouth the CD - it's worth having in your toolkit. But, tools can't make a craftsman out of a novice.
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Re:System tuning... (Score:5, Informative)
Can you remember when system tuning was part of the sysadmin's job?
Yeah, back when computers were so slow that they really needed tuning.
Now? Let's be honest, your computer will probably run best if you just don't screw around with it. You want your Windows system "tuned"? Reformat the drive, reinstall Windows, install the latest version of all appropriate drivers, run Windows update, and then install *only* the applications that you're going to use. That's about as "tuned" as most people need.
If you want to tune it further, try changing your performance settings to "Optimize for best performance" or whatever the equivalent is in Windows 7. It'll look a bit worse, but it may improve performance a little. Yes, you might also be able to disable some services and squeeze out a couple extra cycles, but how much does it matter these days? You're much more likely to break something than to effect significant performance improvements.
Re:System tuning... (Score:4, Insightful)
A complete reinstall will clean out a kiloton of junk and make a computer much faster. Especially if it's reinstalled with a standard version of the OS and not some vendor crippled, bogged-down version with a lot of software packages you don't need or want.
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Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
Is it surprising? (Score:2)
Really, all these services designed to do what, exactly? You've just added two more processes to my current roster of whatever is installed and allowed to boot on startup.
I've been saying that since BB acquired the Geek Squad, it has become a sham, a scam, and I'm quite sure a violation of many privacy laws.
Sadly, they have my laptop (or actually, it has them) and I'm waiting for it to get totally replaced. Enough hardware failed enough times that it should warrant them just giving me a new machine.
Preinstall deals are probably to blame (Score:2)
their agreements with the software companies would prevent the tune-up techies from removing the autostarts like most of us geeks would, so all they can do is delete temp files, update programs to the latest release (therefore, often, bigger files being autosta
Re:Preinstall deals are probably to blame (Score:4, Interesting)
Of course, the *reason* the techies don't remove autostarts and really do anything meaningful to these machines isn't so sinister. The staff at these places are generally high-school kids who typically lack the professionalism and experience to solve a lot of these problems (trust me... it's appalling some of the things I worked on that were so over my head). Don't get me wrong- it's great to get the bright kids next door to mow your lawn and fix your computer for $20 extra lunch money. Not so great when they charge professional rates for lackluster service.
As always, your mileage may vary. My old shop had one extremely competent technician. He hit the top of the (very low) payscale quickly and moved on.
To be fair... (Score:3, Interesting)
...of course this is probably a junk "service," but it's unlikely that the reference PCs were bloated with the sort of crap that they MIGHT be removing in the service.
Sure, they probably update drivers and "set aside" obvious bloatware, but other than that, they can't do anything -- and your reference PCs are probably least likely to get benefit from that, ahem, service.
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It's no worse than their obscene markup on peripherals, and their insistence on pushing their crappy store warranties.
I once bought a fricking SATA cable there (9 bucks), and they tried to sell me a warranty. I loudly pointed out that the cable they were selling was marked up 400% over an equivalent cable bought online, or at the Radio Shack 5 miles up the road, and that the odds of there being any failure in the cable in the time covered by the warranty. The guy behind me in line actually put his stuff dow
BCA + Oblig. "Fargo" reference (Score:2)
the problem that Consumerist has is that you can't seem to avoid paying for it. "Sorry, they're all pre-optimized."
I don't want undercoating on my car!
It's going to be fun when consumers start walking on them like the customer at the car lot in Fargo. Karma's a bitch.
--
Toro
Best Buy (Score:3, Informative)
Jiffy Lube? (Score:2)
What are you even talking about? I just got my oil changed at a Jiffy Lube last month and they didn't try to push anything else on me. It was $20 out the door with a $12 rebate that I just received last week.
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Some Jiffy Lube stores try to con customers into replacing things like air filters every time they come in. One person I knew took her small car there, and they brought out some dirty air filter from a Mack truck and said she needed a new air filter...
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My brother bought an old Dreamcast game from EB for $2. The clerk said, "I have to ask in case you're a mystery shopper: Do you want scratch protection for $5?" So there's a good chance that they'll get dragged to the carpet / fired for not asking the right questions.
I actually got mystery shopped on my very first day at Pearle Vision. I got good marks on everything except product knowledge.
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I guess I'm saying...if you are too stupid to stop, research and think a little bit on purchase of things you don't know that much about (hell, even on stuff you DO know), then you deserve to get what you get.
If someone is an idiot, and is more than willing to give me lots of money, I'm not gonna stop him.
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If you adequately explain what you are doing and then you charge a fair price for fair work, then you have no problems with that idea. I've made a fair bit of money doing exactly that, and it makes for a very good client relationship.
The problem here is that they aren't actually doing any work, they've lost cables, and then they're forcing you to buy the service. That's not acceptable from either a moral or legal standpoint.
BestBuy will never be allowed to "optimize" (Score:2)
Re:BestBuy will never be allowed to "optimize" (Score:4, Insightful)
Half (or more) of that bloat comes from the default installs. On new machines, I find it easier to blow away everything they have and start fresh. A nice clean OS install is always wonderful. :)
I haven't bought a new machine from BestBuy in years, but even then it was a machine to install Linux on. They tried a variety of upsells on me, and couldn't quite grasp my answer. "No, I'm wiping out everything and putting Linux on".
At another store, they were very insistent on selling me an antivirus suite. I asked "So, does it run under Linux". Their answer was "Oh, I'm sure it does." I had them spinning for about 10 minutes and finally broke the bad news to them. Come on, you're selling computers. You should have a clue what Linux is, even if it's just enough to know, a Linux person wouldn't want anything packaged for Windows.
A friend of mine called me the other day about antiviruses for Win7. A friend of hers just bought a new computer for Christmas, and they upsold him on an antivirus suite. Unfortunately, it wouldn't install on Win7. They were going to return it for a refund, and I warned them that since the box had been opened, that'll probably be next to impossible. I haven't heard what finally happened with that.
If they could, they'd upsell a karma suite. "You'll have good computer karma, you won't get any viruses, and not much will break anytime soon." :)
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I haven't bought a new machine from BestBuy in years, but even then it was a machine to install Linux on. They tried a variety of upsells on me, and couldn't quite grasp my answer. "No, I'm wiping out everything and putting Linux on".
At another store, they were very insistent on selling me an antivirus suite. I asked "So, does it run under Linux". Their answer was "Oh, I'm sure it does." I had them spinning for about 10 minutes and finally broke the bad news to them. Come on, you're selling computers. You should have a clue what Linux is, even if it's just enough to know, a Linux person wouldn't want anything packaged for Windows.
Okay, so basically youre a smug linux user that feels a constant need to rub your level of competence in computers in the face of other people?
Oh no, the fat bearded guy REALLY told them!
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(and not from the restore partition, which invariably puts all the crap back on there).
Pray tell who or what is this store or manufacturer that will include actual Windows install discs on a new PC purchase? That has become a deciding factor for me personally on a future laptop purchase.
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I believe that dell do at least with their business machines.
Must be a Mistake (Score:2)
Best Buy selling snake oil? No , it must be a mistake. A misunderstanding.
I mean they got a Geek Squad in farfergnugen cop cars. These are professionals.
I guess they gotta have A+ certification and everything. You must be missing out on the subtle but brilliant improvement.
It may start slow but in that last second everything goes 200% faster. Just like those Geek buggies.
I'll optimize your new PC for free. (Score:5, Informative)
1) Download: http://www.pcdecrapifier.com/ [pcdecrapifier.com]
2) Install
3) Run program.
Hell, I'll even give you free PC optimization months down the road after your PC looses it's new PC smell!
1) Download: http://www.ccleaner.com/ [ccleaner.com]
2) Install
3) Run program.
You're welcome.
Re:I'll optimize your new PC for free. (Score:5, Informative)
I'll give an optimization, but not free (due to time). I'll take the new PC and:
1: Image off the original partitions so I make sure I have all drivers. These go on two copies of burned media, as well as a USB flash drive.
2: Pull a live CD, dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sda (or whatever the disk is.) This makes sure that any defects on outer tracks get reassigned if they might be a bit faulty.
3: Install the included version of Windows clean.
4: Install Microsoft Security Essentialls from a USB flash drive.
5: Activate the machine if needed. Then image the activated machine so it can be restored to a known good imaged state that is activated.
6: Update everything via Windows Update and add service packs if needed.
7: Install ccleaner, Malwarebytes Anti-Malware, Firefox/Adblock or Chrome/Adblock, and SpywareBlaster.
8: Install user software that is licensed (Office, Acrobat, etc.)
9: Make an image of the complete system.
Now the machine is ready to be handed over to a customer with high recommendations of doing backups to an external drive or Mozy. The advantage of this system is that the customer, should he or she trash the HDD, a complete image restore is just a boot of a recovery CD away.
And they seemed so honest. (Score:2, Funny)
Wow. I don't know how I can possibly reconcile this anomalous data point with all of the other things I've heard about them.
Optimized...for.... (Score:3, Insightful)
Ahhh but did they say it was to be optimized for speed? Could it be that they are optimizing your machine for replacement? Optimized for reporting marketing data to best buy? Optimized for suck? Optimized to make other peoples PCs look better?
I have to wonder, if surveyed, what percentage of users would report that their PC was faster :)
Salesmen are kinda scumbags everywhere. NPR has been doing some great programs on it recently. This morning there was talk of car buying and all the tricks. They talk about "monthly payments" and other abstract notions, because it makes it much easier for them to hide fees into a fully broken up payment than if they were actually talking "out the door" price. Also they even make "math errors" to the point that the person telling the story claimed to have bought cars 4 times and EVERY TIME caught a "math error" that would have had him paying more.
"Error" indeed.
I like to keep the salesman's tricks in mind while talking to them. It takes away a lot of their power if your going over the tricks and intended effects in your head "Oh he is looking for a yes here so he can foster agreement" "oh, hes repeating his question again looking to see if I am faltering" "oh, there we go, mentioning value again, must mean its way overpriced"
then again, I question even this. As it seems some salesmen are extremely vulnerable to their own pitches. I have a friend who briefly sold Kirby vaccuumes. From what I hear their best customers end up being their own salesmen sometimes, and judging from him.... he seemed so sold you almost thought he would end up buying one if he stayed with it. (you may see one demo on how much dirt it picks up, he sees several demos a week...)
-Steve
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I have a friend who briefly sold Kirby vaccuumes. From what I hear their best customers end up being their own salesmen sometimes, and judging from him.... he seemed so sold you almost thought he would end up buying one if he stayed with it.
To be fair, Kirby's are bitchin vacuums. If you've never owned one, you're missing out. They last practically forever too. My parents had one that they got used and kept it for about 10 years before the hose finally wore out. They then bought another used Kirby and have been using it for the past 5 or 6 years.
I just wish they weren't so expensive, I have a cheapo $60 vacuum and man does it suck, and not in the good way. I think when it finally dies I'm going to get a Kirby. They are similar in quality
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Yea, related to your car dealer tricks - my mom recently bought a new car from a local dealership, and a month later discovered they'd charged her for a 'sport package' or something that she didn't want, they never discussed during the sale, and they hadn't given her. And it wasn't that there was an option in there for it - they said the base price for the car was a certain amount, but that base price was for the car including the sport package. So essentially they quoted the base price from a different car
Some good comes of this (Score:2)
First thing I do with a retail computer is delete all the crud. Trials, stuff that runs at startup unnecessarily, etc. Sometimes you can just reinstall the OS from the restore disk and start from there. Then there is the icon cleanup, which can take forever.
"Bob's Software Company\Tax Pro\Tax Pro.lnk" becomes "Tax Pro"
"Adobe\Adobe Acrobate Reader.lnk" becomes "Junk\Acrobat Reader.lnk"
The article says that Best Buy did cleanup the desktop. Hopefully, this will create an awareness of just how much manufac
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The restore disk most often has plenty of crap ware on it. Given the option its better to just reformat and install a clean OS and add any hardware specific drivers needed.
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They cleaned up the desktop icons, but they didn't remove any of the programs that created those desktop icons in the first place. The junk is still there, but now the user doesn't see it. How is that good?
"sold out" of the "worse" computer (Score:2)
My first question would be if "optimized" pc's are better, why is everyone buying the non-optimized ones?
Shouldn't it be harder to get the "better" ones?
I'm always amazed at the shift in their sales ploy after you look like you're going to buy something. It goes from "This is the best on the market" to "this thing is a piece of crap. You better get an extended warranty." Uhm, didn't you just tell me how great this thing was?
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None of the computers are optimized until you bring them to Geek Squad.
Inconceivable!! (Score:2)
I'll save you $40 (Score:2)
Remove programs:
Norton
McAfee
ANYTHING made by Symantec
Replace with any decent free antivirus. Easily increases performance by a metric fuckton.
or just uninstall Vista.
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I used to recommend AVG or ClamWin, but honestly, these days Microsoft Security Essentials is the way to go.
I know, I know. I'm recommending Microsoft. But it has a great detection engine, it doesn't nag or get in your way too much, and it has a very small footprint.
It is free so long as Windows can pass validation.
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Yup, I've started using Microsoft Security Essentials. Honestly, all I want from AV software is that it's lightweight, unobtrusive, and does an acceptable job of detecting and removing viruses. Seems like all the antivirus software these days is trying to up-sell you to some more complicated suite, and if you install that suite you'll find that it's a bloated POS that's doing way more than it needs to. Amazingly, Security Essentials seems to be the best thing out there for my needs.
Being free helps. Al
3dMark??? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:3dMark??? (Score:4, Interesting)
It is possible their "optimization" is Windows update, updated drivers, and maybe removing some built-in bloatware. And that by swapping the video driver for another one, it can negatively affect 3D performance a great deal.
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It's not that bad. Processor and memory utilization effect your score in a measurable way, and enough people use it that the basis for comparison is broad.
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Best Buy salesmen (Score:5, Insightful)
Buying ANYTHING at Best Buy these days is a chore.
"No I don't want your optimization plan."
"No I don't want an extended warranty."
"No I don't want any accessories."
"No I don't want the super awesome $50 Monster Cables with gold tips."
"No I don't want your PlatinumShield super-dupper service plan."
What's bad is when you get a salesman who wants to argue with you. "But you need our service plan!!" Sometimes I just want to throttle these guys. If there was another place I could get computer parts and electronics locally (for times when waiting three or four days for Newegg isn't an option) I would never set foot inside their doors. A few weeks ago I had pushy BB salesmen try to sell me a warranty plan on a $20 card reader, for crying out loud.
Thanks to the broken US justice system (Score:5, Funny)
Some lawyer will file a class action suit against Best Buy for this practice.
Best Buy will ignore it until the moment it looks like they will really go to court, then Best Buy will settle.
The settlement will be for $48 million. The lawyers will get $45 million, and the other $3 million will be in the form of "certificates" awarded to the plaintiffs good for 1 free "optimization" on a computer purchase at Best Buy within the next 12 months.
That's how it works.
THIS JUST IN!!! (Score:2)
Best Buy a waste of money!
G-Spot hard to find!
Something else you already knew!
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G-Spot hard to find!
That's because you aren't using Monster Cables.
Staples (Score:5, Informative)
Sadly I happen to be preaching to the choir. We will continue to have customers pouring in with the most mind-numbingly simple problems that we charge $150 to fix in the end. It's this fact that actually makes it a difficult job for me.
Simple fix (Score:2)
Just edit the Windows registry and set BUGS=OFF
Exciting (Score:3, Interesting)
Bah (Score:3, Informative)
Had this happen myself looking at a dell netbook. I asked why one was more expensive than the other as it looked like a similiar spec. They said they'd optimised it. I asked what needed to be optimised on a stock xp install (thinking drivers perhaps updated, nothing that a windows update wouldn't fix) and was then shown task-manager and told to look at all the things running. I asked 'which service can you disable in that list that isn't needed and will make the system run faster?' and she didn't know.
I got the 'unoptimised' version, and noticed it had been filled with crapware and dell/bestbuy links that aren't standard. So, yeah, basically, you're paying them to remove the stuff that THEY've already added.
What a ripoff.
Bleh. (Score:3, Interesting)
The concept of the optimization is to prepare a new computer in such a way that someone with little to no computer experience can take their new machine home and not have to worry about certain things. For example:
Now, these might all seem trivial to you, but believe me when I say that way too many people came to the Geek Squad to complain about those exact things not being done. The target here should not be Best Buy, but the manufacturers who do a customer-unfriendly job of preparing new PCs for sale.
This only needs to be said one time (Score:3, Insightful)
If i am buying a new computer that computer had better be in sealed factory condition since i have no idea what was done to the computer after it was opened. If I select to have it "optimized" i want to see the tech that is doing the service (so i can "shoot him later").
How do i know that the previous person didn't put a webserver and a nice selection of kiddie porn on it??
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Anybody who buys anything from Best Buy deserves what they get. If you really need it right then and there go to Wal-Mart or so, they have the same stuff at least 50% cheaper and you can actually return your shit if it doesn't work as advertised. They also don't have Tweek trying to sell you gold connector USB cables because 'they go faster'.
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Is TigerDirect that good? I would trust Newegg with my newborn (if I had one), but I always got a shady vibe from TigerDirect...
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Is TigerDirect that good? I would trust Newegg with my newborn (if I had one), but I always got a shady vibe from TigerDirect...
I've never had a problem in years and years of ordering, probably at least five figures total of "stuff" from them.
Three things to note:
1) They have (or had) "special rules" for certain products like CPUs, memory, maybe others, and the rules vary over time. You don't like the rules, don't buy anyway, then complain you don't like the rules. The "special rules" all seem to vaguely revolve around improper cooling experiments and/or overclocking related misadventures.
2) They sell stuff, as opposed to being a
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This is not about "you". This is about the consumer which gets scammed into a worse than neutral purchase and someone else gets to clean it up. That someone is frequently an IT type person doing work for their employers, families, and friends. So continue to business with an organization known for it's perpetual fraud and know that you're only creating a more problems for youself and your peers, as it's your choice, but after considering to choice to do so maybe you'll understand it's not harmless, nor a
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No, but as an advanced user (I design SAN and NAS stuff) it insults me when they try and talk past me. When I buy a piece of electronics I've usually researched it to death and just want the salesman to get the box and ring it up for me; that's all. I've lost count of how many times these bogus "PC experts" have tried to blow smoke up my butt and impress me. Usually all it takes is telling them, "Fine. I'm on my way to Microcenter / Fry's," and they suddenly are able to sell me what I want.
The worst thi
Re:Anonymouse Coward (Score:5, Insightful)
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Malice is to employ incompetent people to do crappy work.
So the management is malicious and the employees are crap.
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How much do you have to pay for stock OEM windows? Because whenever I optimize a computer, it mostly involves removing the shoddy always-on software installed by the manufacturer / Best Buy.
Hell, don't even pay for it. Borrow a disk from someone and use the already-bought-and-paid-for OEM license key on the side of the case. Usually works.
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Students can get Retail Windows 7 (not just upgrade) for $30 for the ISO or I think $35 if you want them to ship you the box.
Computers don't come with stock OEM windows anymore, the only way to get that is to buy the software and install it yourself.
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Let's be fair. Best Buy tried selling me an $80 monster HDMI cable that I absolutely needed to get a good picture, even though HDMI is digital and not analog. I don't know how I get by with my $6 HDMI cable.
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They tried selling us an extended warranty on a Wii Nunchuck accessory. It's just getting ridiculous.
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