Robert Stephens

Do you predict a shift in culture where people will learn to fix their computers rather than call for help?

Time has finally become more valuable than money for most people. We're really moving toward a flat-rate society that is saying, "I could go get the oil filter and get underneath my car and jack it up and try and do all this stuff. But I know that for $30 a national company like Rapid Oil Change can have it in and out in 20 minutes." We modeled our business after that shift. People could call up and get a fixed quote before we even touched their computer, just based on what they said. Then they'd be more inclined to use the service, even if they could do it themselves.

How does your book -- The Geek Squad Guide to Solving Any Computer Glitch -- fit into this whole philosophy, since in it you encourage computer users to take things into their own hands?

This book is really an FAQ. What you're buying from Geek Squad is our knowledge. Up until the book, the way that we delivered that information was either through phone support or house calls. We see the same questions being asked over and over and over: How do I deal with a dead battery? What do I do if my floppy drive gets stuck? What do I do with an old computer? Can I donate and get a tax deduction? I started writing down all these things.

Now, this book fits because it's right in-line with what we do. We help people, and we're just trying to get our name out there and provide something that's really not available. There's DOS for Dummies and Windows for Dummies, but there's not a book that's written in clear language to explain users' relationships with their computers.

This is going to be one of the first books to comes with text support through our Web site. We want to stand by the purchase and our brand, so if a reader doesn't find what they need, they can call us at 1-800-GEEKSQUAD or go to the Web site.

So, is the book just for technophobes?

It's for road warriors -- they're the people who know how to use computers. We even get rocket scientists and programmers who don't know how to get a floppy unstuck out of a drive. This book was written for the AOL audience. We covered the life span of your computer, from buying it, to using it and having problems with it, to getting rid of it.

What are some of the most bizarre requests you have received over time?

One woman called once because her son had put one of those chocolate diskettes in the floppy drive and it melted. The poor kid actually thought it would work. Another one was when Penthouse magazine was in Minneapolis a few months ago. They were doing a photo shoot, but they were using a digital camera and needed to hook it up to the computer and beam the photos back to New York or L.A. So they called us and I said, "Who's been this good this week?" So we sent Kyle over. He was in seventh heaven because they paid him to sit around on the set while he got the computer working with all these models standing around.

What I like about that is the idea that these dorky nerd guys who never got girls in high school are now highly sought after, highly talented, and well paid -- and they find themselves in the coolest situations. For example, we got called to do the Rolling Stones a couple of years ago, and now we actually are the sole computer support for them while they're on tour. Mick Jagger is a real big computer geek, by the way.

And we are actually working with the FBI right now on a project to help them tie together different databases for forensic examination. So we're offering our expertise to help the government in this area, to give them expertise. We're going to start teaching classes to the rookies at the police academy in St. Paul to teach them how to properly confiscate computer equipment so they can get the data back.

All we're doing is leveraging our knowledge of computers toward helping people. And if we can help law enforcement, it's good PR. It's a really interesting work, and another important part is that you got to keep the work interesting for the employees. If they just do the same laptop repairs every day, that's no fun, but if they can work with the FBI, that's cops and robbers to these guys. They love that.