Channel 10 out of Columbus, Ohio recently conducted a sting operation in which they equipped themselves with an easily repaired laptop and took it to Geek Squad, FireDog and Micro Center to see who could figure out what was wrong.

The station’s IT guy changed one settling in the BIOS.

“This is definitely something you can find out while you’re doing your diagnostics or troubleshooting,” 10TV’s IT guy, Josh Waibel said.

Here’s a summary of the results:

Circuit City FireDog
Consultation: $64.04
Diagnosis: “The hard drive is working correctly. Your operating system is fried on it, though,” said the technician. “The operating system is essentially dead.”
Additional Cost: $130 to reinstall the operating system.
Total Estimated Cost to Repair: $194.04

Best Buy Geek Squad:
Consultation: $62.98
Diagnosis: “It just clicked and that’s usually an indicator that the hard drive’s bad.” “It’s clicking – making some weird sounds – which is not a good thing.”
Additional Cost: $80 hard drive, $39 hard drive installation, $129 operating system installation
Total Estimated Cost to Repair: $310.98

Micro Center:
Consultation: $74.67
Diagnosis: Repaired

Computer Technicians Put To Test [10TV](Thanks, M!)
Video [10TV]

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