We all know Best Buy’s Geek Squad has had questionable tactics in the past. We have recently investigated yet another troubling practice by the Geek Squad: “in-store optimization” of new laptops. You might think your shiny new laptop from Best Buy is straight from the manufacturer, and you’re going to get the deal you saw advertised. In fact, an in-store optimized computer is by definition used, and might be slower than had it been direct from the manufacturer. In an identical study in January, the Consumerist.com performed yet another secret shopper study:

http://consumerist.com/2010/01/consumerist-investigation-best-buy-optimization-is-a-big-stupid-annoying-waste-of-money.html

Here’s the common scenario: You walk into Best Buy to purchase a computer at $750. When you try to pay, your subtotal becomes $790. Why? You are paying for a useless, and often harmful “in-store optimization” that was performed on your new laptop without your consent. We have at least three issues with this questionable practice:

1) You are paying for a computer that is by definition used, but paying the new-computer price. A Geek Squad agent has taken the computer out of the box from the factory, messed around with some of the settings, and repackaged it. You should be paying a reduced price for the used laptop, and certainly not $40 more.

2) You have no option in the matter. What if you don’t want the optimization service? Too bad. You’re gonna pay for it, unless you want to buy another laptop, because they probably won’t have the one you want without the “optimization” service.

3) Talking with Geek Squad’s employees, it quickly becomes unclear what exactly the optimization service is. We have found no evidence of true optimization on the two laptops that we investigated, and our findings concur with those of the Consumerist.com’s study. The latter study actually found a DECREASE in performance in some catagories.

Although the scale of our study pales in comparison with that of the Consumerist.com (18 Best Buy locations vs our 2), the bottom line is the same. Do your research before throwing your money away. And once you have bought your new laptop, do your own REAL optimizations with a simple Google search.

Have comments or experiences with this? Share your stories below.

Have more questions about these alarming, but not so surprising study results? Send us an email at help@pcxmedics.com, or use our contact form.

Of course, there are many other factors to consider when picking a new laptop, but this study raises some interesting points. An interesting thing to note is that Apple computers fail just as often as their competitors (but seem to have better marketing selling them). Also, according to the study, netbooks fail 20% more often than their bigger laptop counterparts.

About 30,000 laptops are accounted for by the study. The facts are disturbing: 1/3 laptops fail in the first 3 years of service. 1/3 of those failing are due to accidental damage, while 2/3 due to other hardware damage.

Bottom line: are Asus and Toshiba computers better? Will my netbook fail me soon? Maybe, maybe not. We see our fair share of each brand and type of computer in the pcXmedics shop. No matter what brand you choose, take care of your laptop and it will last longer. Back up your data regularly. And get a care plan!

Need more help? Send us an email at help@pcxmedics.com, or use our contact form.

Common sources of data loss: physical damage
Ever drop or jar your laptop as it’s accessing a file? This can force the head(s) into the spinning platter, causing all sorts of damage to your drive. If you’re lucky, it only contacts the platter for a bit, causing minimal damage. Otherwise, the heads can actually rip the magnetic substrate off of the platters, taking your data with it. It’s also possible to rip head(s) off of their mechanical arms, disabling the hard drive, requiring a head stack replacement or platter transfer to recover data. This procedure is difficult and can cost thousands of dollars.

Electric failure
There is a printed circuit board (PCB) that controls the movement of the head arm and the spin of the platter(s) in your drive. If that becomes destroyed by electric shock, burn, or arc, it is usually possible to replace the PCB and remove the data. Electric shock generally does not destroy the data on the drive, just the circuitry controlling it. The work should be done with electrostatic discharge in mind, but is relatively simple. The most common pitfall here is replacing the PCB with one that is similar. The PCB must be exact, down to the revision level of the software on it. Otherwise, the head will not be able to find the files on your platter(s).

Logical damage
Logical damage may occur if your hard drive loses electrical power during a writing operation. This could happen in a viral attack, power outage, system crash, or other interruption. In this case, file system structures are partially written to the drive. This can cause strange behavior such as folders within folders or folders containing negatively sized files. Sometimes logical errors may cause clicking sounds.

Human error
This is one of the most common sources of data loss. Deleting, misplacing, and overwriting files are very common ways to lose your term paper, accounting for about one third of lost data. It is sometimes possible to recover data that have been overwritten, although there is much debate about extracting data that have been overwritten more than once. If you delete a file on accident, even from the recycling bin, stop using your computer and hand the drive over to someone who knows what they’re doing. This, of course means that, even if you delete something from the recycling bin, it’s not actually gone.

Data recovery vs data extraction
There is common confusion about the difference between data recovery and extraction. Data extraction is generally required when the electronics surrounding the hard drive fail. For example, your laptop’s motherboard is fried, nothing is wrong with your drive, and you want to get your photos off of the drive. The process involves removing the hard drive from the laptop and accessing it via another computer.

Data recovery is required when the hard drive itself has a malfunction, such as one of the ones described above. There are many types of data recovery. Here are some of the more common types:

1. PCB replacement: this is the replacement of the PCB on the hard drive that is used to correct PCB failure.
2. Imaging: this technique generally reads the drive bit by bit so that attempts may be made to rebuild files on another hard drive. This technique is labor and computing intensive so it tends to be expensive.
3. Carving: this is a very labor intensive recovery technique for hard drives that have lost their allocation information. This is basically the legend that tells the hard drive where files begin and end.
4. Head stack replacement: a head stack replacement may be necessary if the head array is damaged, usually due to physical trauma. This requires trained technicians in a cleanroom environment and tends to be expensive. The hard drive is opened, and the faulty mechanical arm is replaced by one from a healthy drive.
5. Platter transplant: This is another other option if a hard drive head stack is damaged. The platters are extracted from the faulty drive and put into a healthy drive case. This must also be done by a trained technician in a cleanroom environment.
6. Freezing: In some cases, unstable hard drives (those that are only accessible for short periods of time by operating systems) can be made stable for longer by dipping them in ice, or running them from inside your freezer. While this is not recommended, it may be a last resort for recovering data that is not worth thousands of dollars.

Need more help? Send us an email at help@pcxmedics.com, or use our contact form.