Microcenter Madness

So I was at a Microcenter location today and ran across the most unbelievable bit of tech advice I ever heard.

If you have ever been shopping at any of the hardware/electronic chains then you probably ran into a similar situation: you are minding your own business looking or browsing for hardware/software in any given aisle and you can overhear technical information being handed down from the sales people to customers inquiring and looking for help.

Well I was in such a situation: There I was buying a powersupply for my brand new duo core pc and I could over hear the sales men talking to a customer in behind me. The conversation went like this:

Customer: "Well my pc doesn't turn on anymore and I saw some smoke just before the screen went dead."
SalesMan: "Sounds like an electrical problem. It might need a power supply or worse you have to buy a new motherboard. "

Customer: "Well what about my data and software?"
SalesMan: "You really can't tell until you get it to boot back up. You may have lost everything in which case you would need to reinstall all your software"

Customer: "Well I don't have all the software like Windows. It was preloaded on the computer along with Quicken, etc. I only use the computer mainly for school papers, etc."
SalesMan: "Well ... if you don't have the software, you can always download it. There's this site called bittorrent"

It was at this moment that I nearly dropped my power supply. Here I was in a commercial store and the salesman was advocating downloading pirated software instead of using legit free software or worse yet he wasn't even trying to sell the software to the customer.

Customer: "You mean I can get XP."
SalesMan: "Or Vista. They have that too."

Customer: "I heard Vista sucks. Should I just download the XP software instead."
SalesMan: "I have Vista on my computer and it runs fine, but you can get both and try it out."

Unbelievable. Normally I am silent when I hear bad tech advice given at the store. No matter how hard the temptation is, I always find a way to hold my tongue. Why? Well lots of reasons: I could be wrong, even if I am right, the person may not be technically knoweledgable to know what I am talking about and besides I don't work at Microcenter and am garnered with the responsibility of correctly every tech wrong I see. Nevertheless I decided in this one instance I would speak out.

When the salesman left, I approached the customer and pardoned myself for over hearing his problem. I explained that he probably could benefit from looking at the Linux book aisle at Microcenter. That there were alternatives to using Microsoft Windows XP or Vista and that he may not necessarily give up anything especially if all he uses his pc for was school papers and internet. The conversation was going great until I told him the software was free.

Customer: "Free??!"
ME: "Yep. Just download it or you can have a cd sent to you via the ubuntu shipit site."

Customer: "They'll send me a CD?"
ME: "Yep"

Customer: "I don't want to be on a mailinglist."
ME: {Looking stupidly at him} I could tell he thought I was a hippie or something.

Some people you just can't help. This person would rather pirate illegal copies of XP, Vista, Quicken then use legit versions of free software. I walked away feeling like an idiot and reminded myself that I should just keep my mouth shut when I hear stupid tech advice at a stupid electronic/hardware store.