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#11
Good piece Stefan. I've thought of another major difference which I meant to touch on the other day but never got round to, apologies there. When taking your machine to a store it's like you've said, minimal effort apart from travel and payment, but you learn nothing. The person/people who work in the store may give you some miniscule amount of information as to what they've done, but to the uneducated they may as well be talking Klingon. Or, if they do pick up on the fact that the person paying for repairs isn't well versed in computers they may blind them with technical jargon knowing that the customer will remain scared of dealing with problems themselves as it just sounds far too complicated. Future custom in the bag.
On the other hand, when dealing with a forum such as ourselves, it takes a lot more time and effort but the payoff is huge. Newcomers land here every day and those that get their problems solved take away a massive chunk of knowledge. It empowers the user and shows them that they can learn about computers, maybe more easily than they thought.
I found my way here with an issue years ago, and while I was certainly no computer illiterate I recognised my knowledge only scratched the surface. I stuck around, lurking at first then actively helping other users, and I'm still learning to this day. I never thought I'd get to the level I'm at now (which admittedly is still light years behind some of our members) but it goes to show that getting involved with forums not only helps get your problem solved, it gives you the opportunity to learn from some of the best in the business and, in turn, raise your PC skills immeasurably.
You ain't getting that from a PC store.