Gearfuse Technology, Science, Culture & More
Best Buy’s Geek Squad offers to “optimize” your computer for $40, claiming to double your computer’s speed in some cases. But if Consumerist’s little unscientific study is correct, this whole optimization thing could just be a giant scam:
Upon comparing the optimized changes, the first noticeable change was a cleaner desktop. Most of the removed shortcuts were for trials, promotions and software added by the manufacture. The programs themselves were still installed and available for later access. Updates had been downloaded on all three models, but differences in the factory default setup can affect how the system is optimized. On one laptop, for example, because Windows Defender was deactivated by default, its definitions had not been updated.
Some optimization changes seemed intended to make the laptop easier to use, such as adding the status bar to the file explorer, or displaying the file menu bar in Internet Explorer. Including a link to the Downloads folder in the Start menu, for example, can save you a few clicks. Security settings were adjusted to allow for automatic Windows updates, and in Internet Explorer, privacy settings were eased up to allow websites you visit to save info you provide on your PC.
In fact, Consumerist claims that this so called optimization slowed down new computers by an average of 32%. Deleting shortcuts, but leaving the actual bloatware intact. So congratulations on your newly “optimized” PC. Dude, you’ve just been pwned by the Geek Squad.
I think you always have to take what Consumerist has to say about Best Buy/Geek Squad with a giant grain of salt, as well. They have always had a huge vendetta against the companies.
Just went through this horrible experience with Best Buy on 3/13/10! Here’s how it went: purchased an “on sale” Toshiba laptop for a “great price” tax and ‘optimization’ package all for $484.00, came to pick it up the next day to find that it was the WRONG machine! They did an “even exchange” saying that the one we wanted had the wrong tag in front of it, wasn’t really on sale and we were getting a much better machine (right!)…. so, we had to wait another whole day for them to ‘optimize’ the correct machine, took it home and noticed that it booted up slower than our old laptop that just died at 6-years-old….loaded the CD for my print drivers and it wouldn’t kick in right away, had to reload twice and then it loaded; loaded MS Office and my digital camera software, then it wouldn’t let us connect to the internet……tried to work on some other stuff and it kept freezing up, so I tried to remove the software I had just loaded and it wouldn’t delete them, just sat there flickering……wouldn’t open the start button to shut down, so I had to do a hard shut down from the on/off switch, it booted back to the black screen that counts backwards, went to the opening screen and it dropped all of the Windows icons!!!!!!!!! Talk about some yelling and screaming from my husband!!!!!! We only had it in our home for 6 hours and all of this happened…….SO, back I go the next morning nicely asking for a FULL REFUND after I told them it kept freezing up. They started to tell me that they ‘normally’ don’t refund the labor for the optimizing package and would apply it to another machine…I insisted that I needed a full refund due to the horrible experience we had from the beginning and gave a look to the associate that told her to not mess with me!!!!! After “manager approval” she returned and quickly processed the full refund for the machine and service without a word. NEVER AGAIN!!!!!!!!
Well Lorijo, Seems to me like u cant use a computer…..hahahahahahaha