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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.'"
Can you remember when system tuning was part of the sysadmin's job? A big part of it? Then you'll remember how often we got it wrong, before we rediscovered the science of minimum change + measurement of results. I guess good system tuners are so rare now that people pounce on anyone who claims the skill, and pushes an old trick of the trade out wrapped as high tech. Fail.
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...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.
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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(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.
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.
We just ordered a PC online for "in store pickup" at Bestbuy.com. It will be interesting to see what they do, seeing as we already have a receipt and it says nothing about any extra services. I want the PC (Core Duo Quad with 8Gigs of ram and a Tb drive) but I almost want them to dick with me as we bought it across state lines and State Attorney Generals (State Attorneys General? States Attorney General?) just LOVE to dick with internet cases.... Still, I do want to walk out with my new box.
You have the right to remain sentient. If you give up the right to remain sentient, you will be elected to public office
Having worked in a tech shop for a similarly hated company, I will say that there was no agreement preventing techs from removing auto-starts and other crapware from a computer after a customer has purchased it. The conflict of interest wasn't from modifying software from the OEMs-- it was from tying support income to sales income and sales management setting goals for the tech shops.
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.
+1 Disagree
Sufficiently advanced incompetence is indistinguishable from malice.
Any pseudo-interest I once had in Best Buy quickly died after some years ago when my parents bought me a new computer from there. At least, it was supposed to be new. When I opened the CD drive, I found a ghost file of the previous owner's journal entry that detailed how she was going to try to burn her journal entries to CD in one last test before she returned it to Best Buy because the CD drive refused to burn. After 40 hours of "negotiating" with Best Buy reps over the fact that they sold me a refurbished OOB computer as a new one, they deemed the most appropriate solution was to knock $50 off the price and cancel the $300 warranty. They are nothing more than a consortium of crooks hellbent on raping the wallets of the ignorant. This surprises me about as much as gravity.
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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ECHELON is a government program to find words like bomb, jihad, plutonium, assassinate, and anarchy.
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.
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ECHELON is a government program to find words like bomb, jihad, plutonium, assassinate, and anarchy.
Best Buy is coming to the UK this year.
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.
"`Ford, you're turning into a penguin. Stop it.'" -Douglas Adams, THHGTTG
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.