Who's Smarter: Apple Genius or Best Buy Geek?

Who?s smarter: Apple Genius or Best Buy Geek? - Technology & science - Tech and gadgets - msnbc.com

Geniuses ultimately outpoint geeks
The overall winner: Geniuses

The final score in my tests was Geniuses 3, Geeks 1, with 3 ties. For the kind of over-the-counter troubleshooting advice my test questions sought, all of the Geniuses and Geeks I consulted did quite well. Still, overall, the Geniuses were a bit more helpful, and the advice they offered was more specific and result-oriented. I did have to ignore the too-slick atmosphere of the Apple store, but braving that environment can be worth the free support, and all of the Geniuses I spoke to were friendly.

Click to expand...

Did you read the comments below the article? One guy said the reason Apple geniuses were better versed and trained is that they were paid more than the Best Buy geeks. I thought (maybe mistakenly) that they were both paid around the minimum wage and were given salary increases over time - according to their abilities.

Overall I thought the questions presented to both were very good. However, my personal experience with both geniuses and geeks (I may be biased) is that the geniuses I spoke with were much better informed than the geeks. On several occasions I've had geeks try to "snow" me with double talk.

Regards.

That's a trick question....Neither! LOL!!!!!

When I was doing my research into going to work for one of them for a little side money (did neither; opened my own repair shop), as I recall they both got paid fairly similarly in the $15.00/hr range to start. Not bad really. Not gonna make more than about 16 or 17 unless your A+ certified, though.

My Dad bought my MacBook at Best Buy and the sales person told him that he needed to buy iLife because a Mac "doesn't come pre-installed with it".

Ha..yeah..right.

Geniuses know far more.

It can obviously vary by the person (there's a Geek Squad guy up here in Victoria who's *extremely* well-versed on the Mac), but overall the Geniuses are always going to win this one.

First of all, it's not actually easy to become an Apple Genius. Second, they get more/better training. Third, in metropolitan areas (ie the big cities) they definitely get paid more (and along with that comes higher expectations).

chas_m said:

It can obviously vary by the person (there's a Geek Squad guy up here in Victoria who's *extremely* well-versed on the Mac), but overall the Geniuses are always going to win this one.

First of all, it's not actually easy to become an Apple Genius. Second, they get more/better training. Third, in metropolitan areas (ie the big cities) they definitely get paid more (and along with that comes higher expectations).

Click to expand...

Completely agree with this statement. I had a huge problem with my old MacBook (GF spilled a glass of water on it, but I was quick enough to tip the laptop over and get almost all of the water off before getting to the internal components), and the genius I worked with spent a good 2 hours helping me. Luckily, the water damage was minimal and didn't have to get anything replaced. He laughed and said he's spilled stuff on his own computer and has seen much worse happen to other computers that he's worked on.

I wanted to become a Genius as a sidejob while I was in school until I found out how many hoops I'd have to jump through to do it. While it would've been a great experience IMO I just didn't have the energy or time to do it while finishing grad. school.

What kind of hoops do ya have to jump thru in order to become a Genius?