Tired of Tinkering With a Tech Gift? Take a Number.

Technology is a hot holiday gift and an equally hot holiday return.

Thanks to the complexity of many newfangled gadgets, a lot of people unwrap gifts only to agonize over how to use them or grow frustrated because the devices don't do exactly what their new owners want. Sometimes, they call in the Geek Squad for tech support.

Joe Brand got a taste of tech's frustrating side when his children gave him a hot portable satellite radio this week -- the Pioneer Inno, an iPod-size device that plays programming from XM Satellite Radio. Brand wanted satellite radio so he could listen to the Metropolitan Opera, but he discovered that that channel is offered only on Sirius, XM's rival.

"My kids aren't opera buffs," Brand said on Wednesday as he stood in line to return the radio at the Tenleytown Best Buy.

Tod Tompkins, a Microsoft salesman, arrived at the same store with the photo printer his family got for Christmas. The problem? It didn't print images in the size his daughter needed. It was his second trip for an exchange since Christmas, because he mistakenly got the Nintendo DS game device for his 7-year-old, Sophia, instead of the slightly more stylish DS Lite.

At Best Buy in Rockville, more than a dozen people were waiting in line, carting various devices they didn't want for one reason or another. Nobody seemed cranky.

"I thought it would be worse," shrugged Maen Qadan, who had just joined the line to return an antenna his mother-in-law had given him and his wife.

The couple recently ordered satellite TV with Dish Network, which won't get installed for another six weeks. During the interim, his family wanted a temporary antenna, but they didn't consider the one they got as a present worth its $50 price tag.

While some give up quickly on new electronic devices, others struggle to make them work, ushering in the busy season for tech-support workers. People often spend the week between Christmas and New Year's trying to get their new gadgets to work at home, said a spokeswoman for Geek Squad, a tech-support service offered in Best Buy stores. If they haven't succeeded by New Year's, many call in the professionals.

For Joe Aumann, one of 16 Geek Squad agents in the Washington area, that means a spike in calls related to using gadgets like the latest MP3 player or digital camera. Aumann said he spends much of his time during the rest of the year setting up wireless networks in homes. The holiday season, by comparison, is more focused on getting the latest gadget or computer to work. Aumann spent the day after Christmas with a grandmother who had gotten her first computer as a present from her kids.

Hiring the Geek Squad to set up a home network costs $159, the same as an hour of personalized computer training. Two hours of training costs $229. Aumann says his job is "49 percent technology and 51 percent personality."

Why spend time getting frustrated with techie toys when you can spend a few extra dollars for help? That's the Geek Squad sales pitch.

Sometimes not having technology can frustrate, too. Gabrielle Stecchino of Silver Spring had no problems with the devices she got for Christmas, an iPod and digital camera.

But she was still hanging out at Best Buy this week, frustrated because of something she still wanted: the Nintendo Wii game console. The 15-year-old had been to two Best Buy locations, two Circuit City stores and two GameStops. She made the same tour two weeks ago, and the employees all told her to come back in two weeks. Now they were telling her the same thing: Come back in two weeks.

"It's bothering me," she said. You see all these commercials where people are having all this fun playing, then you come here and they don't have any."

To kill time, Gabrielle and her boyfriend, Bryan, played through a Rush song at a kiosk demonstrating the Guitar Hero video game. She doesn't own the game but from all the time she has spent in electronics stores the past few weeks, she's gotten pretty good at it.

Gabrielle said she heard Best Buy is getting a fresh shipment of Wii consoles that will go on sale Sunday. She'll be back.