For a lot of low-end PC users, it's often cheaper to throw out their machine and get a new one rather than pay anyone in a white-collared shirt to crack it open.

If you really need computer repair, find a friend who knows what they're doing and buy them dinner or beer to fix your tech.

People who just replace the PC rather than get if fixed will be in the same shape in a few weeks, at most, unless they somehow stop clicking on every link that's offered by facebook or email. Plus they'll lose those holiday photos that they still haven't learned how to back up. A good malware scan and browser reset is all most of them need.

As that friend, can I ask for more then a beer or a dinner? Shit took me 4 hours last time to fix your windows that you unplugged in the middle of an update and hadn't backed up the photos on.

I see your update woes and raise you an 80-year-old mother-in-law who smokes constantly near her cheapo Dell and calls me when it breaks telling me "I didn't do anything! Why can't it be like my old computer was?!"

That "old computer" was one running Windows XP. She hates Windows 10, though only for the layout changes.

That is something that should be a product, if it isn't: An overlay for every OS, regardless of what system it runs on, that lets the computer run whatever the latest & greatest is, yet has a GUI that can be tailored to the appearance and function of whatever year/version the user wants. It would be a boon to the aging Boomer population and would make amateur tech-support less homicidal.

My parents got their computer so hot the video card unsoldered itself after melting the clips that held on the heat sink. They have shorted the motherboard with enough dirt to literally fill the bottom half of the computer. They don't back up data or really do any of the things I ask them to do and their dog regularly chews through wires. My.father sent his first text last week. So things are looking up.

My mother in law can't do bookmarks in any browser. Every website she wants to visit regularly has to be a shortcut on her desktop or she "can't find it anywhere."

Ever clean cigarette-and-dust-glop off of a heat sink? Hers remained attached, but it had no thermal paste left when I last removed it, the original coat having turned to powder.

My going rate is a case of beer, dinner, and either drugs or do weird sex things with me that most people wouldn't be willing to do. I'm not even into the sex things, but it feels like a fair price for digging into something worse than someone's dirty hoarder closet.

You would be better off going to "The GREEK Squad" to get your computer fixed.

Free baklava with every 3rd visit.

And anal every visit.

There is an easy solution to this. Don't allow paid informants and don't allow such informants to be confidential. They should be called into court and expected to testify every time a case goes to court. Suddenly that $500 is more of a hassle.

Thinking back to how Wells Fargo incentives encouraged fraudulent data, I wonder how these FBI informant programs create similar cultures. If an employer/employee feels that it is OK to snoop through any computer for illegal porn or other fraudulent data, how do they feel about finding other personal data for their own gain?

Geek Squad, you get what you paid for and more.

I never trusted them in the first place.

I never trusted their parent company (Best Buy). They treat their employees like shit, so of course this was bound to happen.

On a computer related note.
Tonight, I am modding a 775 motherboard to take a 771 xeon. Have any of you ever done this mod and if so did it work out okay.

Yeah, it was easy, I used this:


Worked out great, only needed to buy one of these afterwards:

:) thanks but I'm done.
From a q6600 to a Xeon 5460. Took about an hour. Minor overclocking about twice as fast. Cost 2 dollars for the sticker ( got the chip for free).