I don't know how many people I have had come to me that had already been to
Best Buy and their "geek squad". Although I am retired and not officially
in business, I do work on a few computers as a pastime.
Here are a couple of examples that really stand out to me.
A lady had a computer that wouldn't start up. The "geek squad" told her it
was the motherboard and were going to charge her 80 some dollars just to
send it to the factory for her; not counting what the factory would charge.
In about five minutes of process elimination I took her modem out and it
booted right up. She didn't use dialup anyway so I put a slot cover in
place of it and sent her home happy for $10.
Just today another lady brought me one with Vista that wouldn't boot past
the Microsoft Windows logo at the bottom. They told her it was the hard
drive and that it would cost between 300 and 400 dollars to fix it. I took
the drive out and slaved it to one of my computers to see if I could
retrieve her data. Checkdisk wanted to run on it when I booted it so I let
it. Her stuff was there. I put the drive back in her computer and all was
well. Checkdisk (chkdsk) had fixed it.
I realize this post is inappropriate but I felt the need to vent.
The people are ripoff artists!

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--- Everybody has a right to my opinion. ---