Back when I was in grad school I had a friend who told me that a friend of his wife’s was having spyware issues. She was getting all sorts of random pop up ads and her computer was basically becoming unusable. So to fix the problem, instead of bothering one of her knowledgeable computer friends (and she apparently had quite a few), she called Best Buy’s Geek Squad.
For an absurd amount of money (I forget how much exactly), they drove to her house and spent a few hours installing the freeware versions of Spybot and Adaware. And to top things off, that didn’t even completely fix the problem. I believe she ended up getting a friend to help her straighten everything else out, but I can’t remember because I was too in shock after hearing the first part of the story. Though maybe I’m such a computer geek that things that seem obvious to me aren’t really that obvious to others (when I have a problem, the first thing I do is google for a solution).
I don’t think I’d ever trust a computer repairman. I know people who fix computers, and some of them I wouldn’t feel comfortable handing my computer over to. Granted, there are quality computer repairmen, but there are a lot of duds (and yes, I do know some – none that read this blog though). Luckily, whenever I have a computer issue I can’t handle, I just talk to my dad (former President of the Las Cruces computer club). Most people aren’t that lucky, so for them they’re stuck with either trying to convince one of their friends to help them or to take it into the shop.
I’d personally recommend getting a friend to help you – offer them free pizza. And it might interesting to try and get two or more to come look at it. Computer people are usually pretty egotistical so if there’s more than one working on the problem, they’ll be more motivated to be the one who solves it. The only exception to this would be if you have some kind of warranty issue. Then you should make the company/store fix it for free.
This may seem somewhat cynical, but I’ve always had a distrust of repairmen – especially in the computer industry. So what brought on this mini-tirade today? A disturbing video I just saw on youtube:
And to be a little more clear, when I brought up not trusting computer people (above), I was thinking more towards them not fully understanding computers enough to solve the problem. Not being dishonest like the people in that video, that’s just disgusting.
My favorite are the ‘Geniuses’ at the Apple store in Montgomery Mall. Whenever they don’t know how to solve something they recommend a clean wipe and a reinstallation of the operating system. Then they try to sell you a new ipod while humming the new ‘Feist’ song from their promos. It’s eerie.
lol, as bad as this sounds, whenever I’m in a social situation and someone comes up to me hoping I can solve their computer problem, I usually give them that advice – unless of course I know the answer off the top of my head, but fixing most people’s problems involves a decent amount of investigating. The people that work at the apple store probably aren’t that bright, they’re probably told to give that advice if they don’t know the answer since it’ll fix all software problems.
I remember Fiest from her Mushaboom video (mtvu). It’s neat to see her gain a decent amount of fame.
I bought the new Feist CD just so that I could sing along to ‘1234’ while rolling down Rockville Pike. I should never admit that to anyone. 🙂
You bought a whole CD for just one song? tsk tsk tsk.
I used to have the Mushaboom song on my computer, but I lost it when my hard drive crashed about a year ago. It’s the only song I ever found (I’ve got excellent mp3 googling skills) without knowing any of the lyrics. All I knew was it was sung by a female, it was a new-ish indie-ish song, and the video featured her flying through the air.