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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!
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.