What is Digg?548 Comments
- allaboutdatiki, on 10/15/2007, -3/+260Geek Squad, single-handedly turning geek into a four-letter word. :(
- imrickjamesbich, on 10/15/2007, -1/+174It's amazing how much they charge and how bad they are. On the other hand, it never feels worth the effort to help someone who isn't a good friend. Half of what they get paid must be to deal with stupid computer users. Guess thats not much different than other customer service jobs.
- khalidhajsaleh, on 10/15/2007, -8/+165are you telling me that the Geek Squad is not good?????
- ripstuntz, on 10/15/2007, -5/+136Funny story. I was a freshman in high school and received a custom gaming rig for Christmas. After school was out my computer started acting really funny, giving me beep codes on boot. Being only 14 years old and having dicked around with the family computer numerous times (breaking it more times than not), I decided to take it to a local computer repair shop. $145 and the promise that the video card they were replacing was far better than the one I had in the PC I thought my problems were over.
I took the baby home and booted it up. It started this time, although the video card was a total piece of *****. Going from a steady 60fps in Counter-Strike to a mere 30 MAX was not what I was looking for, so I decided to take matters into my own hands. I did my research, borrowed some parts from a buddies computer that was basically exactly the same and finally discovered there was something wrong with the mother board.
I took the PC back up to the repair shop and gave them a piece of my mind. I never thought Id see an adult be so embarrassed by a 14 year old kid in my life. To make this story short, I received a refund, my old video card back, and a new motherboard from NewEgg.com.
It's this exact reason why as we speak I am pursuing a computer science degree. I was tired of being pushed around by computer stores that absolutely no idea what they are talking about and don't know how to trouble shoot to save their lives.
If you live in the St. Louis region STAY AWAY FROM DATAJACKS.
/rant - KevenM, on 10/13/2007, -1/+108Though technically correct, the title can be wrongly interpreted. 10 cases were done with only 3 passing. It's a bit of small sample. I'd be curious to see the results if the whole thing were repeated a few times.
/nitpick off - Godlike, on 10/10/2007, -0/+96I fixed (reimaged) my Aunt's machine and 3 months later my Father accused me of breaking it. I don't help them anymore.
- rootryan, on 10/10/2007, -1/+96like if they call a computer a cpu?
- maz2331, on 10/10/2007, -0/+94It's simple: they hire anyone who knows how to load Windows and log in. Actually hiring and keeping good, knowlegeable techs is too expensive, and good techs and engineers have so many opportunities that they can just move on when faced with horn-haired management.
The people running the bigger integration companies or IT departments don't really want smart people working under them. They are a threat and may actually question stupid decisions, and won't be too keen to work 14-hour days with no overtime on a routine basis. - steelclash84, on 10/10/2007, -0/+85FYI, a computer science degree will teach you little to nothing about pc repair and diagnostic, as it mostly deals with programming software. Computer Engineering deals with software and hardware interaction as well as the inner workings of different computer modules, which is probably what you want based on your description.
- kingp, on 10/10/2007, -0/+82I've been an IT Admin for over 5 years and sometimes I don't know what I'm doing. Most of the time I have a general idea, but sometimes 40%-50% of the stuff I have to do is improvisation because the user can't properly explain a problem (beyond saying that it "blew up and won't work"), so I have to figure it out on the fly.
- Mudcrutch, on 10/10/2007, -3/+84We need a TV station dedicated to hidden camera stuff. I can't get enough of it.
- Hoojo, on 10/10/2007, -1/+65Most people are very ungrateful for computer repair work.
- Serapthi, on 10/10/2007, -1/+62I love the way that 7 screw ups out of a sample of 10 companies/stores is considered 70% of computer repair companies.
- Squeetard, on 10/10/2007, -0/+55I've had my own IT support company for 14 years now. Just me, have never found anyone decent enough to hire. And this ***** is rampant. And it infuriates me.
Example: An employee of a company I support asked me to have a look at their computer, they had taken it to the local nerd herd and were told the capacitors in the motherboard were fried. One look told me there was nothing wrong with the capacitors in the motherboard. A simple Bios check revealed that the pc-100 ram was set to run at 133, hence the instability and crashing. I grabbed the person, the computer and their $120 invoice and marched down and got a refund for them.
I have way too many stories to tell, just like this. - KelliShaver, on 10/10/2007, -0/+49I own a computer repair shop and we take a lot of pride in what we do. Our number one commitment is customer satisfaction and doing the job right, because if you can't diagnose and fix problems correctly, for a fair price, then what's the point? We really don't do any advertising other than the phone book and 90%+ of our business comes from referrals from past customers. I find it personally a bit offensive when other people don't do their jobs and charge an arm and a leg beyond what is reasonable. It makes the rest of us look bad, and it really makes me feel badly for the customer. I've seen it happen a lot, though, and I've heard a lot of horror stories from customers (companies that wanted $120 for a part that costs us $14, etc.). Usually, I just smile and nod, because discussing the failings and shortcomings of the competition doesn't seem like ethical business, but each time I feel a mixture of frustration, anger, and pride.
- MrNexus, on 10/10/2007, -1/+47Because you know, it can't be their fault. Just blame the guy fixed it before.
- pintomp3, on 10/10/2007, -0/+45inadequate descriptions from users is bad enough, but many lie about what they did or tried to do when fixing it themselves. it's like the show "house" sometimes.
- quentinp, on 10/10/2007, -2/+47you're retarded?
- aspec, on 10/10/2007, -5/+49Funny, because I've made it a policy not to help friends.
Ever get a drunk dial from a buddy at 2 in the morning? "Hey, I can't get counterstrike to work. You got a minute?" - Trocisp, on 10/10/2007, -3/+46I don't care if it is sarcasm, it's still ***** retarded.
- keyboardduder, on 10/10/2007, -5/+47Blown outta proportion a little bit. I would like to see the guy who's willing to come to your house and put a new stick of RAM in for 25 bucks. If any place is going to make any money off that, you cant just charge the face value for the RAM. id charge $35 and its still fair. You cant use the price quote from newegg for the crappiest brand of ram (crucial) versus the guy who brings in half-decent ram like Kingston. (the RAM they use most) And you don't need to reinstall windows to fix that stupid "corrupted" problem. You pop in the XP cd and when prompted to "repair" the second time, do that. It rewrites all the important system files and rebuilds the HAL. And an installation of windows is not worth $60. The service is easy yeah, but its very time consuming. I could be doing other things in that time. For example, since theres no service pack 3 yet for XP, it takes the whole install of windows, reinstalling the drivers (if neccessary) then running windows update (like 50+ updates with a fresh install of SP2 including IE7 and WMP11), activating windows (if the product has been activated more than a few times you have to talk to some indian across the ocean to do it) takes 5-10 min, then possibly giving them back their data. A reinstall of windows is worth at least $100 to me if I come to your house plus backup. But seriously, all those guys were retarded. If you hear beeps coming from a motherboard, the processor is working. The first thing I'd do is go online to the BIOS manufacturer's site and check the beep message. Chances are you need to re-seat the RAM if that doesn't work, then insert a new stick. I used to work at a best buy once and I talked to a geek about Nvidia motherboard chipsets messing with ATI video cards, error messages and stuff and she said "The chipset IS THE VIDEO CARD, WHATA RE YOU TALKING ABOUT?" I nearly fainted.
- inactive, on 10/10/2007, -2/+42what are these "friends" you speak of?
- AnarkeIncarnate, on 10/10/2007, -2/+41Exactly.....it is called a hard drive /sarcasm
- pepsiguy94, on 10/10/2007, -2/+4134% of statistics are made up.
- Lasereth, on 10/10/2007, -1/+39CPU Knowledge ha ha ha ha
- inactive, on 10/10/2007, -0/+35I agree, you will learn how to program but not troubleshoot.
Actually Ive encountered alot of programmers that did not know how to fix their own computer, kinda sad actually! - akatherder, on 10/10/2007, -1/+32No, the hard drive just tells you how much memory you have.
- ExSlashdotter, on 10/10/2007, -1/+30IT Helpdesk, sure. But us real corporate sysadmins? Hardly. I'd like to see the geek squad try to administer Exchange or Citrix for a company of 64,000 employees.
- aspec, on 11/06/2007, -0/+29"You should really think about buying a replacement pc. The amount of work required here to replace the hard drive, and memory, and install the operating system because you seem incapable of putting the restore discs in to your cd rom drive, not to mention you want me to back up the pictures of your hard drive because you didn't think to make an archive or upload them to flickr. Your computer is 5 years old and the cost of repairing this one is more than a cheap computer out there, which will run 10 times faster."
"So you don't think I should get this done."
"Honestly, no."
"Hmm... Ok, let's do it."
"Get another computer?"
"No, fix this one."
"But I-"
"I know what you said." - ThankTheCheese, on 10/10/2007, -1/+30no excuse for the Nerds on Site guy (17:50)
- showed up an hour late
- blamed hard drive
- was rather rude and abrupt
- says HD needs to go to dust-free room for HDD recovery for $2000
considering Nerds on Site are regular sponsors of Security Now and pushed heavily by Leo, perhaps that should be reconsidering their sponsorship deal. - jiminizer, on 10/10/2007, -0/+27I've had worse - 3am, "JIM! I've spilt a litre of vodka on my motherboard and now my computer isnt working." ...after 20 minutes... "Hmm you need a new graphics card, you're lucky thats all that was amaged." "Right..., you can do that for free right?"
It's just at bad at work too. Watching this article i think it's too harsh on us techies - a lot of the people were making educated guesses, but were ikely going to do a propper diagnosis later - a lot of the time i say "It could be the motherboard, but i'll have to take it back and look at it, just to ind its a CPU / RAM whatever... and the people diagnosing the laptop got the problem correct (apart from the guy who wanted to take it for further diagnosis) but got the cause wrong... but it isn't that unreasnable to assume a virus was to blame rather than the user deliberately corrupted the file. - L0phtpDK, on 10/10/2007, -2/+29Hold on though... These "Estimated Costs" are outrageous.
$25 for a ram module? With a Diagnose? They even prove that they found the part online for ONLY $65... They are not even including the service cost.
Look you're paying for my knowledge, not for the part. - dgingerich, on 10/10/2007, -1/+28I run my own computer repair business and have a couple hundred satisfied customers because I do things the right way. Geek Squad does not! One of my current customers paid them over $800 to upgrade her computer to Windows XP, install an anti-virus, and set up a wireless network that wasn't even secure! Plus, they sold her a wireless adapter for her desktop that she didn't even need because you can plug directly into the router (duh!). Sometimes I go hang out at Best Buy just to listen to some of the advice they give people. Then, after the "Geek" has gone, I give them some real advice, and usually save them a lot of money. Geek Squad makes me sick!
- Malakin, on 10/10/2007, -1/+28For those wanting to take a shot at it themselves, here's a quick guide to solving serious hardware problems on a PC. Just Google the details on anything I glossed over.
If nothing happens when you flick the power switch then it's probably the power supply, but it's simple to test using a paper clip and a multimeter or you can just quickly swap it with another one. Sometimes a power supply will look fine with a multimter test and will quickly fail under any significant load, but this is rare.
When you open the case, you should always check for bad capacitors (bulging/leaking). It only take a few seconds, and I see them all the time. If you see bad caps, it's important to realize that they might not be causing the problem you're currently trying to fix--but they might be. Note that about 90% of bad motherboards that are causing the computer to not boot or be extremely unstable will have visible bad caps on them. So if there are no bad caps, then you should should test the other hardware first and come back to the motherboard if the other hardware is fine. This should be obivous, but if you see completely burst caps or caps that have been blown right off the motherboard then it's safe to assume this is the cause of the problem.
If there are clunking or clicking noises then it's probably the hard drive (duh). To test the hard drive you simply boot off of a diagnostic CD or flash drive and test it from there. If the computer is still unstable, you will need to test the hard drive with your own system. There are all the diagnostic programs you need on the "ultimate boot cd", which you can Google. Note that sometimes a hard drive is bad and yet it passes all the tests, but this is fairly uncommon. Note also that a bad motherboard can sometimes falsely indicate a bad hard drive, but this is also uncommon.
The easiest way to test the memory is to just swap it with some you carry around that you know is good. Testing it takes too long and a bad motherboard can also make the memory look bad during tests. If the motherboard looks fine (no bad caps), and you don't have extra ram then you can test it using the memory test on the ultimate boot cd. A motherboard causing instability which causes a memory test to look bad is fairly common, so make sure the processor isn't overclocked and there are no bad caps before trusting any failing results of this test.
If the computer will not boot and it's not the power supply and the capacitors look fine, then you should disconnect everything from the motherboard except for what you need for it to boot. You need still need the processor/ram/power supply and possibly a video card if it's not built in--absolutely nothing else, no USB/PS2 devices, no PCI/ISA/PCI-E/floppy/IDE/SATA devices. If it boots after this, then you should slowly add everything back until it stops booting again and figure out what it is. If it's still not booting, then disconnect the ram and see if it beeps. If it doesn't even beep without ram, then it's probably a bad motherboard. Depending on what your resources are, you may want to just swap the motherboard next. Bad processors are extremely rare as long as the cooling isn't interrupted, and newer processors shouldn't be damaged by cooling problems anyways. You can try removing the motherboard from its case and booting it outside of the case as sometimes it can short itself on the case, but this is rare. - XistenZ, on 10/10/2007, -1/+28work for the government, its great....
- natedouglas, on 10/10/2007, -3/+29I agree that 70% is likely a low figure.
- NJank, on 10/10/2007, -1/+26actually computer engineering sounds a bit over the top. IT Tech, my friend. 2 year trade school. something of that nature.
- countingthedays, on 10/10/2007, -1/+26because they don't like you. Anyone with a little bit of knowledge can do it in a few minutes. That means they just didn't want to. Maybe you should be nicer.
- NJank, on 10/10/2007, -3/+27ummm... how do you outsource local PC repair?
- IEatHamburgers, on 10/10/2007, -2/+2593% of these jokes are getting old really fast
- DJNewStyle, on 10/10/2007, -0/+22That's a very good point.
Anyone who is more computer literate than more than one family member or friend will undoubtedly become the "computer guy" they go to when something "doesn't work" They think that since you enjoy computers so much your time is essentially worthless and can be better spent removing adware and supposedly unwanted pornography from their completely ***** systems.
You'll do this a couple times and you may even get a "thank you", but when you have to tell them their computer is obsolete and they need a new one, they think you have no idea what you're talking about and will be very ***** towards you.
***** you, fix your own ***** computer. - warnergt, on 10/10/2007, -0/+22Very deceptive. What service organization gives you parts at the best Internet price? You can always expect a 2X markup whether it auto repairs, computer repairs or any kind of repairs.
- Rekkid, on 10/10/2007, -0/+21I've been repairing machines for two fortune 500 companies for the past 12 years, I rarely see bad RAM, but it does happen. I've seen more "bad" RAM than I have bad mommaboards.
- inactive, on 10/10/2007, -0/+21"Uhhh, your motherboard is fried, that's going to be $250 to replace the ribbon cable to your flop drive."
Scary words in 1991. - inactive, on 10/10/2007, -1/+22lock out the idiots from their own system. Get rid of the admin account and force them to use a normal account.
- daniel2e, on 10/10/2007, -4/+24That isn't nitpicking. It's not a "bit" of a small sample. It's so small that the results have about as close to zero meaning as is statistically possible. Anyone who is interpreting anything from this article only does so because it bears out what they already believed to be true. Is the digg community getting dumber?
- Godlike, on 10/10/2007, -0/+20The 1's and 0's are out of alignment. They have to equal 2. Pick up the PC and shake it. Now slam it against the desk. Now pretend that I am you, and you are your PC. Have a nice day. *click*
- inactive, on 10/10/2007, -2/+22true. then again, most people don't know anything about computers at all, let alone how to fix them.
i stopped fixing computers for people because even when i cleaned up their messes completely, they still managed to ***** everything up again and that is just plain neglegence. let them deal with their own problems or learn how to use the computer. - Squeetard, on 10/10/2007, -1/+21Puhleeeeze. We are talking about people who are claiming to be as smart as you and charging unknowing consumers exorbitant amounts of money for failing to resolve a simple basic tech problem and then pulling a load of technobable out of their ass to baffle them with.
Luck?, lol, stick around laddie, in another 10 years you'll have no need for luck. You can call it skill. -
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