Subject: Re: [Shop-talk] This is why I don't work in IT, was: Re: Entirely not shop related, but...

From: David Scheidt <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 4 Dec 2012 08:30:37 -0600

On Mon, Dec 3, 2012 at 5:41 PM, Tim <[email-masked]> wrote:
> Since there are others on this list that will be albe to answer the IT part
> of this better than I can, all I want to talk about right now is the Best
> Buy part of this problem....
>
> If you bought software from them based on THEIR incorrect
> information/guidance....then they should make good on THEIR error. If I was
> you I would make a stink and see to it that they make it right.

In most states, there's an 'implied warranty of merchantability',
which means if you're sold something as being suitable for a purpose,
it needs to be.  They've certainly failed at that, and need to make it
right, or give you your money back.  It's best buy, though, so you're
probably stuck bitching at your credit card company.  I fail to
understand how that place stays in business.

>
> Did you pay with a credit card? I'd call your credit card company and see if
> they can help as well.
>
> tim
>
>
> ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> On Mon, Dec 3, 2012 at 2:44 PM, Scott wrote:
>
>> Okay, bought new Win8 discs.  Bought new Samsung 250GB SSD.
>>
>> Put SSD in laptop, works. Installed Win8, works.
>>
>> Win8 is not 'activated', because the discs I purchased appear to be for an
>> upgrade, not a clean installation, according to the popup when typing in the
>> activation key.
>>
>> I asked specifically that question at Best Buy when buying the discs--can
>> I put a NEW HD in my laptop, NO CLONING and install this Win8 set? They said
>> yes. There's nothing on the packaging that says 'upgrade'. Not that it
>> matters, but I suspect my solution is illegal, so I'm staking out the moral
>> high ground now.
>>
>> I don't want to clone anything from the old drive to the new one. I have
>> the cables, but they (the drives) are different capacities, and last time I
>> tried that it all went bad. I also don't want to risk any malware going from
>> the old drive to the new one.
>>
>> I'm inclined to say screw it and just use the Win8 on the laptop in its
>> unactivated state--it seems to work fine. Am I risking jail time or anything
>> else awful? I assume I cannot return the Win8 set to Best Buy and buy the
>> 'right' set.
>>
>>
>> On a side note, there are no Win8 video drivers on Dell's website for an
>> E6400, and the display randomly shuts off, but then it did that on the old
>> HD, too, but only after I installed Win8.
>>
>> This is why I avoid IT stuff on my own. Is the 'right' solution to clone
>> the old drive, and if so, can any one recommend a web tutorial written as if
>> for a five year-old, but that is also comprehensive? I'd need to clone an 80
>> GB drive to a 250 GB SSD, and I want the bare minimum necessary to be kosher
>> with those Redmond bastages.
>>
>> And Dell sucks. All hail Lenovo. This crap never happened on our Lenovo
>> machines.
>>
>> Scott
>> _______________________________________________
>
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-- 
David Scheidt
[email-masked]
_______________________________________________

[email-masked]
Archive: http://www.team.net/archive

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From: Wayne <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 04 Dec 2012 09:52:19 -0500

On 12/4/2012 9:30 AM, David Scheidt wrote:
> It's best buy, though, so you're

Competition - or lack thereof. Back during the 1990s, they ran all the 
other local chain and mom 'n' pop A/V, appliance, computer, and record & 
CD stores (remember those?) out of business. They came across as a mecca 
of electronics and good prices, and sold CDs and videos at what may have 
been loss-leader prices to get people in the store, in hopes they'd 
impulse purchase a TV or fridge.

Now as a near monopoly of brick & mortar stores, they suck and are far 
from inexpensive. But'ca know what? They make a great showroom to check 
things out before you buy from Amazon or NewEgg! (take THAT f*****s!) I 
don't despise them nearly as much as walmart, but they're getting closer.

-Wayne

[email-masked]

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From: John Miller <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 04 Dec 2012 08:51:43 -0800

> don't despise them nearly as much as walmart, but they're getting closer.

Part of the problem is, back in the day you had a few product lines, and 
each line had a few models, and they weren't all that different in their 
features, and so a mom-and-pop or small local chain could manage to 
stock enough variety of product to keep everyone happy.

Then product lines got too big for a small stocking retailer to keep up 
with, Joe Blow would come through the door looking for the one with the 
orange light or the 170-frammis epithelium, and he'd end up down at the 
big-box store where they had twenty different models from ten different 
manufacturers on the shelf, and you could pick the one that had the 
switch here or the switch there (while the helpful sales rep tried to 
sell you the one with two switches instead of one 'cause it paid him more.)

Now of course we have, for whatever reason, vastly too much product out 
there for even the big-boxes.   And the narrow (in the case of the small 
shops) or dubious (in the case of the big-boxes) expertise has been 
replaced by the Internet hive-mind.

It's really down to (a) products you have to touch before buying (b) 
stuff you have to have NOW (c) stuff too bulky, heavy, dangerous, or 
spoilable to ship and (d) retailers who can maintain or develop a 
specific product niche.

John.

[email-masked]

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From: steve hochschild <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 04 Dec 2012 13:48:04 -0600

As a former tech support/ retail sales guy, I probably would have 
answered the question the same way the Best Buy person did, if I had 
been that clerk.  I am standing up for the sales people who generally do 
know far more than is being assumed here.  Do you have any idea how much 
Microsoft Windows 8 training Best Buy employees have had in the last few 
weeks?  Many, many, many hours.  Getting and keeping a job at Best Buy 
is not easy; I do not agree that they hire idiots, which someone said.

Forgive me if I misread it, but I understood your question to be whether 
or not you could do a clean Windows install on a brand new hard drive 
with an upgrade copy of Windows, and the answer to that is yes, you 
can.  I would have assumed that you actually had the license cd.  No 
sales guy is going to suggest that you are running Windows without a 
license cd, that would not be good sales technique.

Did you specifically ask if you could do a clean install on a new drive 
with an upgrade copy without the original Windows CD?  I believe the 
answer to that question is no, as you have discovered.   Again, I don't 
know what you asked, but that is the way I would have heard and answered 
it.

Anyway, I will go out on a limb and predict that BestBuy will exchange 
the opened upgrade copy you purchased for a full license copy, and 
charge you the difference, if you politely explain that you purchased an 
upgrade product that you can't use.   They might be even more likely to 
agree to this if you take your machine in to them and ask them how much 
the Geek Squad would charge to do this new install for you, which will 
get you what you want, done right, very quickly, and allow them to 
provide the service that makes them useful in this new retail world, 
where places with employees compete with places without employees.  Look 
at the Amazon page, does it answer the question you asked?  How could 
it, there is no one to ask!...

  Please let us know what happens...

On 12/4/2012 10:51 AM, John Miller wrote:
> Part of the problem is, back in the day you had a few product lines, 
> and each line had a few models, and they weren't all that different in 
> their features, and so a mom-and-pop or small local chain could manage 
> to stock enough variety of product to keep everyone happy.
>
> Then product lines got too big for a small stocking retailer to keep 
> up with, Joe Blow would come through the door looking for the one with 
> the orange light or the 170-frammis epithelium, and he'd end up down 
> at the big-box store where they had twenty different models from ten 
> different manufacturers on the shelf, and you could pick the one that 
> had the switch here or the switch there (while the helpful sales rep 
> tried to sell you the one with two switches instead of one 'cause it 
> paid him more.)
>
> Now of course we have, for whatever reason, vastly too much product 
> out there for even the big-boxes.   And the narrow (in the case of the 
> small shops) or dubious (in the case of the big-boxes) expertise has 
> been replaced by the Internet hive-mind.
>
> http://autox.team.net/mailman/options/shop-talk/[email-masked]

[email-masked]

---

From: Scott <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 05 Dec 2012 17:13:31 -0500

To tell the truth, I'm more perturbed at Microsoft than I am at the Best 
Buy guy. A lot of that is because I share the same opinion of Best Buy 
employees that most people do--I fully expect if I held up a CD of 
Ke$ha's greatest hits and asked the drone if that would install an OS on 
my laptop that he'd have said yes to that, too. So that he got that 
wrong is expected. I'd have been more surprised had he actually known 
the right answer and cared to give it.

But I've looked over the box my Win8 copy came in, and nowhere does it 
say 'upgrade'. And there wasn't anything on the display, either. There 
were other displays that mentioned 'upgrade', but this one did not. I 
remember that because I wanted to avoid just this exact situation (and I 
knew I didn't have the Vista discs), and I wasn't fully sure that Vista 
qualified for the cheap upgrade, so I just wanted the plain, full, 
stick-it-on-the-hard-drive OS. I got Win8 Pro, and this was the most 
expensive Win8 at the Best Buy I could find, my 'logic' further being 
that I expected the upgrade versions were cheaper, therefore the 
non-upgrade version must be more expensive.

For what it's worth, though, I held up the Win8 box to the guy and said, 
"can I install this on a new hard drive on my laptop without cloning or 
copying anything from the old drive?"  I dunno, maybe you got the good 
Best Buy--I think you can correctly assess my (novice) level of computer 
knowledge based on my questions here, and just based on that I'm 
reasonably certain I qualify to manage the Geek Squad operation in that 
particular store.

My plan is let Peter get me an ISO, which I assume will allow me to use 
the discs I have to authenticate the copy of Win8 I have. If that 
doesn't work, I'll assess how determined I am to deal with the Best Buy 
retards to get a 'full' copy or a refund, and if that doesn't work, I'll 
dispute the charge on my credit card and buy a full copy, or else worst 
case suck it up and clone my old drive to the new one. I'm sure the 
process isn't that bad, but I really don't want any of the malware on 
that drive to get on the new drive, hence the purchase of the new drive 
and the new OS and it's proved very difficult to eradicate. There's no 
kill like overkill.

I'll have to do something, though, because the SSD is taking several 
minutes to boot, whereas the old HDD was talking about fifteen seconds 
(both on Win8). I'd expect an SSD to do at least as well, so I'm hoping 
that's an OS issue that will go away when the problems with it are 
corrected.

Scott

On 12/4/2012 2:48 PM, steve hochschild wrote:
> been that clerk.  I am standing up for the sales people who generally 
> do know far more than is being assumed here.  Do you have any idea how 
> much Microsoft Windows 8 training Best Buy employees have had in the 
> last few weeks?  Many, many, many hours.  Getting and keeping a job at 
> Best Buy is not easy; I do not agree that they hire idiots, which 
> someone said.

[email-masked]

---

From: steve hochschild <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 05 Dec 2012 17:13:24 -0600

On 12/5/2012 4:13 PM, Scott wrote:
> I held up the Win8 box to the guy and said, "can I install this on a 
> new hard drive on my laptop without cloning or copying anything from 
> the old drive?"

And again, the answer to that question is yes, you can.  You have no 
complaint, and no reason to insult the salespeople who helped you.
_______________________________________________

[email-masked]

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From: Scott <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 05 Dec 2012 18:26:13 -0500

You should tell that to my laptop--it's disagreeing with you.

[email-masked]

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From: steve hochschild <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 05 Dec 2012 17:57:04 -0600

I believe that you have a full copy, that the cds that are being sent to 
you will not help, and that all of your problems are due to operator error.

Good luck with all of that...

[email-masked]