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Best Buy $39.95 "Optimization" At Best a Waste of Money
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 don't let friends take their computers to Best Buy!
"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.
Never attribute to malice what could be ascribed to incompetence.
+1 Disagree
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.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
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." :)
Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
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.
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
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.