Adjusted for inflation, the cost of a computer has gone down, the cost of repair has stayed relatively steady.
Did they have a lot of business contracts? If not, I don’t know how they’ve even hung on this long.
If you have enough money to have the space for a desk with a keyboard, monitor, and screen, the cost of a dedicated computer to plug into it isn't going to be an obstacle. I think this is the reason we haven't seen docking take off.
Geek Squad is not IT support for businesses, it's IT support for consumers. Consumers definitely have had computer usage/necessity displaced by phones. Many consumers will now only have a computer through their work or school, and those will have their own IT.
very true, my kids and wife dont really email enough to need a keyboard, just message or app messages, banking and watching videos and shopping all done on phone or MAYBE tablet. Cloud stores all the photos and documents. You can do your taxes on the phone, which is probably the most complicated “home” task majority of people do.
I know some older people who don't work with computers at all and just have mobile phones but they don't do anything important on them and instead continue doing those things by phone and dead tree mail for the most part.
Consider from the perspective of an average, non-technical person - someone who has never installed an OS or opened the case.
Their $900, 3-year old system "breaks". It'll cost $100 to diagnose, and anywhere from tens to hundreds to fix. Is it worth it? They're going to consider just buying a new $900 system, which will be faster and back under warranty again.
While a broken tv could be a $0.50 capacitor, the shame is a huge number of "broken" computers are purely software problems: sometimes malware, sometimes fixed by updating a driver, or even just changing a setting (And of course also "fixed" by paving over and installing a new OS).
This isn't hard to learn, but understandably people don't have the time or desire. And the value-risk-cost balance is off when compared to buying new. So perfectly good hardware becomes e-waste.
I want to to qualify that as: "There isn't much repair to be done anymore at geek squad." Computer/cellphone repair is still alive. For example, pretty much anyone with some time on their hands and access to youtube can do cellphone screen replacements. I've personally replaced the screen on my phones 4 times, and the battery once, all without any training or past experience. Laptops are even easier since you don't have to pry a screen off.