The Geek Squad & Macs

I was flipping through the Sunday flyer from Best Buy when a service of the Geek Squad caught my eye. On a page touting Apple & Macs at the big box store, there is a plug for the service of “Mac Optimization & File Transfer” for $130. Wow. Where can I sign up to do this kind of work at that kind of pay? When I worked at a car stereo shop in the early 90’s, the standard practice was for the installers to get half of the quoted labor rate. $65/hr sound good to me. Are these guys in the skinny black ties serious about charging such rates? I must be in the wrong part of the business.

But what does your $130 get you. Not much:

“We’ll help you make a smooth transition to Mac by setting it up for you and transferring your photos, music and more from your old PC.”

Here’s the kicker, in the fine print:

“Price includes transfer of up to 9GB of data.”

huh? 9GB? So what happens if you have 30GB+ of pictures, music and other stuff to move (but not applications, more fine print)? Do they charge you by the GB or at 15 minute increments as the copy from one machine to the other takes place? Using FireWire, 9GB should move quite fast. Better would be GigEthernet, back to back. Even 1TB wouldn’t big that big a deal for if your system is semi-automated, then it’ll just be time sitting in front of the machine while it does all of the work. 9GB is also the amount of raw data held by two single layer DVD+RW’s. Is that their yard stick?

All I know is what they are doing is simple and setting up customers for more fees. If they move all the data and you refuse to pay the additional charge, do they erase all but 9GB on the new machine? Setting up a Mac is simply turning it on and answering a few questions to create a user account & tell it which time zone you are in. It’ll even help you move data from an old Mac using FireWire Target Disk Mode. Apple, among others (many with free or cheap applications, which are just essentially scripts), will also help you move data from WinXP drive paths to OS X paths.

Save the money and buy more memory, then find a local kid or MUG that can help you for a smile & a “Thank You”.

(Now if I could get a job installing home theater and stereo gear for big fees, I’d be in heaven.)

-Mike M.