Being Your Own Geek Squad - Setup, Security and Optimization continued
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If you're not tech savvy, you might not know how to use your computer or digital camera. Geek Squad will help you learn how to use all the features of your camera and how to take the best pictures possible. This is a great service to have. They can quickly and easily tell you anything you want. The downside is that it will run you $160 an hour.
It makes me want to cry to see someone shelling out $160 for an hour to learn how to use a digital camera. If you have a tech savvy relative, or know someone that knows how to use a camera, it would be a lot better to have them teach you. It won't take very long, and even if you pay them $80, you still save half of the Geek Squad fee and I'm sure they will appreciate it. Reading the instructions will take you far too.
The last service they offer that I will be talking about is hardware installation. Until this point, I would recommend to anyone that knows how to use a computer that they do the things I have covered themselves. Putting hardware physically into your computer is on a whole new level. Finding out how to connect the part to your existing computer could prove difficult. Also, when working on a computer, it becomes dangerous with the power from the power supply and charges from electrical sockets you may have built up over time.
If you know how to install hardware, go for it. If not, let someone that knows what they are doing do it. The Geek Squad charges $40 to do it if you bring your computer into the store. This isn't a terribly bad fee. If they end up frying your computer, you aren't responsible for it, they are.
Conclusion
My purpose today was to show you that you can save a lot of money by doing some easy stuff by yourself. For example, if you just bought a new computer, you get a wireless network and have the Geek Squad set it up for you and connect your older computer to it also. When you got the computer you paid to have Geek Squad optimize it and secure it. This is all stuff that you could do yourself and isn't very hard to do on your own. Total cost of doing it yourself: $0. Total bill from Geek Squad: over $500.
At that amount, you could buy yourself another computer. Services such as hardware installation, however, are better left to the experts in case something goes wrong. I hope you have learned a lot here today and I hope it ends up saving you some serious cash.
| DISCLAIMER: The content provided in this article is not warranted or guaranteed by Developer Shed, Inc. The content provided is intended for entertainment and/or educational purposes in order to introduce to the reader key ideas, concepts, and/or product reviews. As such it is incumbent upon the reader to employ real-world tactics for security and implementation of best practices. We are not liable for any negative consequences that may result from implementing any information covered in our articles or tutorials. If this is a hardware review, it is not recommended to open and/or modify your hardware. |
