Best Buy hacking the registry for $30

Hey Everyone-

I was offered a Best Buy service when I bought my lappy. They said they'd perform 100 registry modifications to make Vista run faster. Did anyone try this or does anyone know what they actually do?

 

Just browse the internet and tweak your laptop yourself. There are a bunch of things you can do that do not involve the registry at all that will give your laptop running vista a noticeable performance boost.

I suggest looking at these threads before shelling out $30:

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=166532
http://www.notebookreview.com/default.asp?newsID=3945
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=167282
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=169037

 

BB has no clue what they are doing.

Wait, I take that back. They know how to rip customers off.

 

True and true.
But unfortunately, there's a market for that, since 95% (or greater) computer users are just average joes that don't know how to do such things, and don't want to take the time to learn, so they rely on people like the Geek Squad (which is a misnomer in itself lol). They want their computers to "just work", they don't want to tinker.

 

dont think theirs such thing as bb hacking the registery, its just tweaks, just follow this guide

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=166532

enjoy ^^

 

Maybe BB found that guide and is using it as a cheat sheet.

 

I'm pretty sure 100 registry modification goes something like this:

1) Set Vista shutdown kill time to 5s
2) Set Vista shutdown kill time to 1000s
3-99) Repeat steps 1-2
100) Set Vista shutdown kill time to 1s

Step 101) Steal $30 from someone who doesn't know any better.

 

That's hilarious. $30 for something that you could just google and have to click a few buttons to modify.

 

"Hack" is a great term for what Best Buy will do to your registry...

 

sure they will hack it and then next time you restart the os will fail becuase they deleted something out of the registry that vista needs

 

From what they told me, they get rid of all the crap and perform over 100 tweaks to the system.

I'll find out from an agent on friday when I go back to work. When I bought my 6860, I like the rest of you, refused that service. I almost wish I would of had it done though seeing how much crap gateway seemed to put on this laptop.

 

Actually I found that Gateway is pretty light on crapware compared to other manufacturers(ie Sony, Acer, HP, etc)

 

System Optimization - $29.99

100+ Registry Tweaks - exactly as it sounds, various things like changing the response time of the start menu. This is done with a proprietary program, coded by professional computer scientists.

System Cleanup - Uninstall some/most of the bloatware (AOL, WildTangent, etc...). This is done mostly manually, so the quality of service greatly varies depending on who's doing the work.

Total Labor - ~30 minutes. $60/hour for technical servicing is well within the accepted range. This is far from ripping customers off. Ripping customers off is charging $99 for transferring approximately 4 MEGAbytes of data, which are already on floppy discs, to a new computer. Ripping people off is charging $199 to delete 6 cookies.

...and oh, I almost forgot - STFU if you don't know what you're talking about, thanks.

 

I take it you work for BB Lithus? Because in all honesty, I would only expect a response like that from a BB employee.
Either way, the point is, with just a bit of time people could learn to do that on their own, without the need to spend money to have it done for them.
Computers are not hard, people are just intimidated by them, or are just too lazy to want to learn. Again, they just want a computer that works, without needing to tinker with it. For those kinds of people, there is BB, for everyone else (<5% of computer users), there is google and NBR.

 

Thanks again for such a great response.

I didn't want to spend the $30 because I knew I could find what BB does here or somewhere on Google.

Now I could spend that $30 on hardware.

 

I take it your a member of the geek squad maybe...
I have tons of love for the geek squad and they have helped me out alot with the simple questions i did have and for the most part the ones at the store i shop at are good people.

But from what i understand they stick a "proggie" into my computer that edits my registry in complete secret. Unless the program is relativly transparent then i'm not going to even let "professionals" just start screwing with my registry in the hope that a one size fits all proggie does what its supposed to do.

Now, i dont doubt the program is good at what it does, but a single mess up anywhere and you have nothing to check to see what happened. With out transparency to see what happened and the changed that were made its too dangerous. You could use a system months before you find the registry path that messed up and totally slags your system... thats much to great a risk.

If i start hacking the registry (which i have done and enjoy my WEI of 6.3) i know what i'm doing to the machine and unless i get WAY over my head i can always replace the original vaules. Having a proggie mass attack my registry is simply not an option.

Its like Winbubbles... its a really cool program that can do a bunch of stuff, but if i didnt know what it was doing to my system before i used the easy way (through the program) then i would have never used it to begin with.

As to the rest of your post... i find it totally true. The price is well with in reason and the manual part will basically only be as good as the one doing it. And i dont doubt its a very good service for people that do need it because lack of knowledge or ability or just plain fear.

 

Lithus used to work for Best Buy. Typically, he knows what he is talking about too. You wouldn't think so sometimes by the way he rants p), but he does.

If only he could keep his tongue in is mouth sometimes .

 

Lithus cracks me up. And I'd rather have someone like him on the geek squad, then some others I've encountered at BB before. (Long story I posted about once long time ago, I was looking for a boxed Intel processor that day, and was looking at local stores) Sorry, but it is true.

 

i went with my mom to get my laptop at BB and it was embaressing when she asked them questions I allready knew th answer to and they were wrong.

o well, best buy makes me laugh, some of the employees know what there talking about, but none of them usually do.

 

Agreed. I like Lithus. He makes me laugh.

And in case you're wondering, he does lay it on Best Buy sometimes as well.

 

Seriously, the tweaks they do is well worth the $30. Especially if you have very little investing in computer electronics. $30 for tweaks that usually take well over an hour of reading and typing. The program they use is a pretty cool one. I've seen it in action and it takes about 30 secs to crank. Well worth the $30 IMO.

 

Yup, defintely a good deal; but with those 4 given tutorials you learn ALOT about your OS. I would recommend doing it manually from that aspect.

 

I don't trust anyone who drives a VM Beetle to touch my notebook.

 

yeah i work at circuitcity with Firedog and it's the same thing. most people don't know ANYTHING about their pc so the 29.99 is a good deal for them since it saves them time and headaches eventually. but people who work at BB and CCity aren't always the most informed.

2 days ago when i was working one of the new sales people was helping a customer buy a desktop computer. he came up to me and asked if they have to use an HP keyboard with an HP computer...

 

Yea, I hear people who drive those VolksMagens are very untrustworthy.

 

I always get asked if you can use the Apple keyboards with a PC. I just point at the keyboard on my desk and say there is your answer.