Originally posted by SiliconAddict
I swear I heard a tech tell this poor couple that by increasing the hard drive size you would increase the overall performance of your computer *slams head into keyboard. It wasnt as entertaining as listening to a rep talk about how this USB 1 scanner was just as fast as a USB 2 scanner. He talked about how USB 2 could handle more devices or some other BS like that.
Your post neglects to mention if the larger hard drive would've increased overall performance and if the USB 1 scanner was just as fast as the USB 2 scanner. It's very possible both were true.
If this person had an older hard driver (often older=smaller) then perhaps buying a new (larger) hard drive would've made things much faster. Likewise if they're maxing out their smaller hard drive, a larger hard drive could help by allowing larger swap files and reducing fragmentation.
As far as the scanner, USB is often not a bottleneck for printers or scanners. It can be, but not always. Furthermore, did the computer they have feature USB 2? Again, it's very possible that the salesperson was right in saying that the USB 1 scanner was just as fast (it could even have been faster).
The point here is that often people hear a little bit about what a salesperson says and makes all kinds of false assumptions.
The other thing I have to say is that it is REALLY difficult to get good salespeople when it comes to computer products. It's hard enough with consumer electronics, but with computers the problem is that the only way someone is really going to be truly knowledgeable is if they have career experience...and even then they'll have all kinds of bias based on what they're familiar with.
The bigger problem is that if a salesperson has career experience, what are they doing working for the lower waged job of a salesperson?
Making things worse is the fact that the computer field is so incredibly broad these days. It used to be that someone just needed to know Word, WordPerfect, Lotus, Excel, dBase, BASIC, DOS, etc... to be full expert on all that was computers.
Know people go in to a store and they want an expert in Photography, or an expert on Music production, or an expert in Video production, or an expert in ______.
And the hardware and software changes way too fast to keep up with everything.
I managed a computer store. I used to say that about 50% of my time was spent on information, 25% was on management, and 25% was dealing with customers (or servicing their equipment). In addition, I was doing this while going to school at the time for multimedia studies.
Here's what should happen:
First, customers should realize that the salespeople aren't going to know everything, and in some cases may have learned something incorrectly and be giving misinformation.
Salespeople should always back up every question with printed, displayed or demonstrated answers.
"Does this have a FireWire port?"
"Yes, it's listed in the specsheet and you can see it right here."
Managers should always offer a path for salespeople to easily get answers to questions.
I find it frustrating as hell that 99% of all possible answers are easily found on the Website for the product and yet very few stores offer customers Web access.
Stores should have kiosks set up with links to all the products they sell.
Likewise a searchable FAQ database should be created for questions like, "Does this USB2 device work with a USB 1.1 port?"
Then you run into the less tangible questions...many of them should not be asked, or when asked should not be answered. What I mean by this is that of all the products in the store, it's unlikely that the salesperson could know all the information about them all, but even more unlikely that the salesperson could regularly *USE* them all.
Usually salespeople have a passion for the products they sell. This makes it easy to ask them what products they're excited about, but it makes it hard to ask them about feelings towards products they don't actually use. Usually when questions like this are asked, they are answered based on biases which may or may not match the customer's situation.
"Should I get a Mac or a PC?" is often going to be answered by the type of computer the salesperson actually uses. That's pretty obvious, but it extends to lower levels of decisions as well. The biases aren't always as easily understood and usually the question as a shortcut is part of the problem.
If someone says PC, and then is asked why, they may say, "Cheaper, faster, more expandable, more compatible, more software, more likely to remain in business, etc..."
Of course those could all be argued *directly*, but there are indirect arguments based on a person's situation that could counter those claims.
Examples:
Cheaper...
The eMac is already less than what I was willing to spend.
Faster...
No the Dual G4 is faster *for me* to do many of my tasks.
More expandable...
the MDD G4s have much more room for drives than the average PC
More compatible...
Not in my office which is mostly Macs
More software...
Not for the software I use
More likely to remain in business...
Apple is very likely to remain in business longer than the life of my products from them.
Anyway, I'm glad to see Apple getting back into Best Buy. If done right, it could be a very good thing for them. They need to invest heavily in it for presence, training and fully maintained demo equipment.
Do me a favor and actually LOOK at the software that is available for a PC before saying such things. There are a lot of good products out there. Nintendo did the quality over quantity argument as well for the N64 when it first came out and Sony soundly thrashed them by doing sorta quality AND quantity. I swear the PC world has its myths about Macs and the Mac world has its myths about PC's and I can tell you THIS is one of those myths. You don't get quality software from an OS you get it from the person sitting behind the keyboard doing the programming and contrary to popular belief (Thats aimed at you tlhash.) there ARE intelligent programmers working on the PC platform. Just look at all those virus writers. 
