Why get an optimized computer?
That question is a simple one for many of you. For lots of people, it's not hard to set up your own computer. You should be able to get booted up and online within half an hour on most new machines. You can make recovery discs for windows in about an hour and a half, and install anti virus in about 5 minutes.
The fee for the full setup is 99 dollars. The optimization is 39, as noted here.
That includes six months of free antivirus with any new PC purchase.
If it seems strange to you that someone would pay to have their computer set up, consider that most of our customers are people who fall into one of two groups;
Folks Who Haven't Used a Computer
Many people don't have much experience. The majority of our customers hope they can press a
button and get on facebook, send email to their grandkids, or download some free, virus ridden mp3 files. These people often have problems understanding how to correctly install software and get confused by the pop ups they get from every program on their machine, and they often lack the willingness to do any kind of research to figure it out on their own. They like being helped to understand the basic use of their machine.
These are some of our best customers. Many of them won't see this site (that's a bit out of the comfort zone) so they can't attest to it, but some people actually really find it useful.
These customers are often the most grateful we're there to help. I love getting someone taken care of so even if they don't know much, I've explained how to get their email and set their homepage to direct there so they have an easy time of it. I don't have an hour to spend with them, but I'll send them out with a "7 for dummies" book, and hope I don't have to take a phone call from them twenty minutes later to help them figure out how to plug in the power cord.
People Who Make Too Much $ An Hour To Spend Two Hours Setting Up a New Unit
Business customers may have dedicated IT departments, but more and more often they rely on independant contractors that aren't readily available. If they have four notebooks they need office on and a corporate AV program along with upgrades to the 7 Pro software, I can make that happen. It's not economical for many of these people to spend their own time working on it when they should be spending their time looking at yachts to buy or new supercars to test drive.
Some machines don't benefit as much from the optimization. Asus have very little bloatware. HP, or Gateway, on the other hand...So there are updates and we remove trialware. The tweaks probably have a very minimial benefit, but some machines do see a marked decrease in start up and shut down time from having these programs disabled.
That might seem strange, and I understand that. At my store, we will also install a music program such as iTunes, a web browser, and personalize the machine with a name or email account.
The pre-optimization percentage is set by our corporate offices to offer a convenience to customers who don't want to wait the two or three hours to have the unit set up. If that time estimate seems unreasonable to you, consider the fact that one person is charged with setting up seven or eight units while taking questions from people at the counter, as well as inspecting returns on everything from tv's to mp3 players and taking phone calls.
They shouldn't be setting up more than 40% of their units with this service. There have been several official releases mandating that we are strictly forbidden from hard bundles, and we frequently penny out the service if it's not something the client expresses an interest in. It's not some overarching conspiracy.
We get five to six returns on laptops a day. Many of these are units clients took home and tried to set up themselves, only to install another antivirus without removing the trial, which in some cases locks down their system, or shutting it off (or more likely, shutting the lid and carrying it around, half-asleep in a bag for a few hours) during an update, corrupting the OS.
One of the people at my store built his first computer in 1974 and spent 20 years he can't talk about working special projects in the navy. He works at my store as a hobby to kill some time and get a discount, along with a little time away from the wife.
The rest of my team is made of college students pursuing technology degrees. One of my co-workers is studying engineering and planning on working for nVidia. Some of us specialize in networking.
My specialty is recording technology and gaming.
The reason I mention all this is that we will match our talents to a particular person's needs. It's about going above and beyond. If someone brings in an older computer for an upgrade on his graphics card, I will optimize his computer. There's more to it than msconfig and updates. One of our tools is a bootable disc that can clean temporary files outside of windows and then defragment the drive down to under 1%. I've seen jumps in performance in the form of reduced load times by 30% or more on a particularly neglected machine. Of course, I'll go out of my way to go above the "scope of work" so when the customer gets home he's taken care of.
We're understaffed, and work 11 hours shifts without breaks to try and make deadlines. We stay late to try and get your computer back up and running.
We each have an impossible amount of work we're expected to complete each day. Each person in my department has around 100 interactions with customers a day, and ends up being responsible for about ten computers in an eight hour shift.
I'm a little tired of reading how everyone on here acts like we're idiots. I get hot shots who come into the store to try and impress me by trying to "talk shop" and try and see if I know what I'm talking about. It's not impressive. I don't pretend to know everything. It's not cool to strut around to talk down to the local guy. It's not his fault your torrent program got past the antivirus you got for free online, again.
Some of our seasonal staff isn't that familiar with policies. Some of them aren't good salespeople. The truth is that people who know enough about computers to really know what they are talking about won't work for 9 dollars an hour, and consumers won't pay IT people 25 an hour to stand there and field questions.
Some responsibility has to fall back on people to do their own research. At least have a basic amount of literacy, and if you don't, hopefully one of the sales team will be able to get them led down the right path.
The quality of your experience obviously ties down to the dedication of the staff at each location.
Our store is peerless. I can't count the number of things that I've seen that won't end up on here that have changed people's lives because I was able to get them taken care of. Maybe I let things slide into a grey area of policy once in a while. My managers support my decisions to get my customers out the door with faith in our company and our location.
I believe that money isn't as important as the relationship I have with my clients. They can buy a computer anywhere. I hope that because of my hard work, they will choose to come back to my store to have us take care of them again, and trust me to work on their relative's machines as well.
Also, I care enough to write a response longer than the original article on my own time at two in the morning instead to going to sleep for my shift, which starts in seven hours.
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