Geek Squad

In My Humble Opinion
21

No experience with Geek Squad, but 15 years of experience in IT. With corporate IT contracts, the people working in level 1 tech support are almost universally clueless. If they had much of a clue, they’d be working a higher level of tech support, or they’d not be working support at all. The folks at Geek Squad are likely to be even lower on the ladder than this.

That said, occasionally you’ll find a gifted person working the “low end” of tech support, Geek Squad, etc, someone with a passion for the field, quite knowledgable, and just trying to get their foot in the door. You’ll only get that if you’re very, very lucky.

So, the reason they’re advocating a reinstall is because that’s generally their primary course of action. They know that, barring a hardware problem, your machine will function after a reinstall. So they’re not going to spend time troubleshooting. If you do choose to troubleshoot, please post the details your “black screen of death” displays.

So in general, I wouldn’t trust them, or pay them to do pretty much anything. If they’re not even going to reinstall your apps, restore your backups, etc, don’t pay them $200. You can do this yourself. If you do want to reinstall, have a license key, but don’t have your original install media, you can call Microsoft and they will provide you with replacement media for a nominal fee, on the order of $10-20 US. However, Windows XP is currently under Extended Support until 2014. This means that the only updates you would receive from Windows Update will be security related, and not bugfixes, performance related improvements, etc. Only security-related bugs will be fixed.

A new machine is a good choice, you can get a machine that will blow away your current machine for a remarkably cheap price. It will come with Windows 7, which is far better than Vista IMHO, and you’ve already got backups of your data.

Anyway, I’ve rambled enough, last thing I’ll say is, you mentioned a few Antivirus packages. I can’t recommend NOD32 enough. It places pretty much no performance hit on your machine ever, and has never missed a virus “in the wild”. I’ve been happily using it as a “set it and forget it” virus software for a while now, have had zero infections, and I’m known to download from some fairly shady sources. :wink: It’s from http://www.eset.com/

22

While it does take a goodly amount of clock time to reinstall the OS, the actual tech time is quite small. In a store type environment, a tech could be working on 5 or more installs at a time. $200 may be their way of getting the person to either cough up a ridiculous amount of money or buy a new box from them. The customer’s needs come last, the store comes first.

OTOH, if the OP didn’t have the original disc, maybe the quote includes a new copy of the OS. I don’t touch a machine that doesn’t have a proper disc of the OS.

23

That may not actually matter. They have clever people at Microsoft who may be able to talk you through fixing it. Give them a ring, and after they confirm that it’s non-chargable then give it a whirl.

24

We bit the bullet and bought a new machine on the theory that on a machine this old something else would likely go, and we could get more storage and memory anyway.

Thanks for the opinions on Geek Squad. They had been recommended by someone who said they were just wonderful. What’s been said here makes a lot of sense.

I also appreciate the advice on the anti-virus. Someone else told me that the Microsoft security software is pretty good, too.

25

I know people who work for BestBuy and know former Geek Squad agents - went for happy hour with three former Geek Squad agents last week. Some of the most talented IT people I know - programmers, developers, project managers - started their careers with Best Buy as Geek Squad.

There are a LOT of Geek Squad agents. Whenever you get a lot people doing a job, you are going to get high variability in that job. A lot of Geek Squad agents are darn talented. Right now, there are, IMO, more talented ones than non-talented ones (its a high turnover job, and with unemployment being high, you don’t get into the Geek Squad in most locations without years of corporate IT experience.)

But I agree on the decision just to buy a new PC.