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Experiences with non-techies

I was reinstalling Windows XP for my neighbor, an elderly woman. Her installation mysteriously started bluescreening every time she booted the PC. So, I get everything done, all of the drivers back, all of the programs she uses, and shut down the PC. It starts to install a few updates that the first reboot didn't get, and she says, "oh, it does this sometimes," and unplugs it to get it to turn off. Before I can get out, "d-dont!" she's smiling at me with the power cord in her hand. 

 

... Mystery solved.

Can she read?  If I recall correctly, there is a very clear message on the screen while it's updating that says something to the effect of "do not power off your computer"

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I glance through the instructions since more often then not there is something that I didn't know or I could just watch a youtube video on the topic...

when i get bored i dig out the manuals to things and read them like books. im telling you every time i do that i learn some new thing about my machine that i had no idea it could do. i normally only do this for consoles though or stuff. no point in reading a monitor manual or something

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Can she read?  If I recall correctly, there is a very clear message on the screen while it's updating that says something to the effect of "do not power off your computer"

Oh no, you're entirely right. I have no idea. My best guess is that it looked like scary computer text and she didn't read it. Either that or she had a habit of turning off the monitor immediately after powering off the PC, and again, just didn't look long enough to read it. I told her that was what it was and she said she didn't know and that never saw that message.

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Can she read? If I recall correctly, there is a very clear message on the screen while it's updating that says something to the effect of "do not power off your computer"

that's typical end user behavior, they don't need to read messages; they know better than the machine!

You'd be surprised to see how much tech support is about talking to complete idiots!

Remind me of a woman who called the ISP one of my friend was working for, she was ranting about them spying on her (Snowden leaks and all that) and that they had to stop and unconnect her from the internet, etc ... Turns out she didn't have any account with any ISP, since she sounded crazy and wasn't a client, the call ended there. My friend tried to get the recording but he couldn't convince his manager! lol

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Today I was at my local Fry's and we brought my dad's 6 year old PC for repairs as it won't boot and I don't have spare parts for testing.

 

The latter is besides the point, I went window shopping and eventually headed into the GPU sections. Now if you've read my sig or have known me long enough, you know I want an EVGA reference GTX 970 for my X51, as that's the only one that makes sense in my PC.

 

Now I know that neither of my two Fry's in my area has that card, but for shits and giggles, I asked the guy in there anyways just to make sure. I asked "Do you have any reference 970s?" or something along those lines. He didn't know what a reference cooler was. So I told him that it was a "blower card" with actual finger marks in the air. I did this as in the other location the quite good and knowledgeable employee (not today, at a separate time and location) just got confused and wasn't familiar with the "reference" term, so I thought this guy (today) might have been the same way. He told me to look in the components section, which I presume would be the CPU, RAM, Motherboard section. Quick sanity check, I was asking for a reference GTX 970. I told him a reference cooler is just a cooler that attaches to the card (didn't tell him it exhausts air out of the case instead of downwards, FYI). He still told me to look in the component section again. (There is nothing in the component section relating to GPUs except for Corsair's crappy HG10, I prefer NZXT's G10 instead)

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Also, the motherboard comes with a chipset

YOU_DONT_SAY.png

He probably meant the cpu, by chipset and used a random "tech savy-ish" word.

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The sales people in pc world are crap! Here's my story.

 

So my mum and I are looking for two cheap laptops in pc world for my mums company, we know what we want but a sales women comes up and asks us what we're looking for we tell we're alright but she insists so she starts pointing out the microsoft surface but they're way to expensive so she then tells us that she should get a netbook. So we tell that we want at least 4gb of ram and the netbook only had 2gb and so I say no we want a proper laptop with 4gb of ram with that she replied "How would you know you just play games and listen to music!" At that point my mum and I were furious and we just left! Goes to show you have to look after your customers and not offend them.

 

(She also had a foul breath!)

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Technically this doesn't belong in the thread as the people are techies but it's so bad I'll put it here anyway.

Class of 12x A+ Certified students and the lecturer (He taught me 3 years ago and is cool guy) bring in a computer that they can't get to boot and none of them knew why. A student was building it at home and brought it in to build in class.

I open it, unplug the floppy power from the system fan header and facepalm.
I got them sorted with a new board after testing the old one that ended up being dead and installed it for them,

 

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Second post because I just remembered it and am pretty sure I haven't posted it here

Before final exam of a course I'm doing, the most annoying guy of the 7 people who had lasted to now was going on about how you'd have to be an idiot to not pass the exam. Exam was to take apart and rebuild a computer, install windows and drivers then do some stuff other easy stuff. I guess he was right that you'd have to be an idiot not to pass.

Cut part way through the exam, I'm finishing up the windows install, and other people have just started windows except for two people, guy across the room and the annoying guy next to me. 
Guy next to me starts swearing at the computer while trying to solve the issue for around 10 minutes,guy across the room quietly works at it and eventually gets a post.

Guy next to me seeing he is the last one, starts crying and storms out of the room, I peek in his computer, jump the power connectors and laugh as it comes on.

TLDR: Guy says you have to be stupid not to be able to build a PC prior to an exam, he starts crying and leaves when he can't get it to turn on, turns out he forgot to connect the case switch / jumping the connectors with a screwdriver..


 

CPU: i7 5820K 4.0GHz @1.15V | MOBO: Asus X99 Sabertooth | GPU: Gigabyte Windforce GTX 980Ti, LTT Orange | CASE: NZXT H440 Black 2015 | COOLER: Noctua NH-D15S w/ LTT Fans | RAM: 32GB Patriot 3000MHz | STORAGE: 512GB Samsung 950 Pro, 960GB Sandisk Ultra II 3 x 8TB Seagate HDD's | PSU: 750W Seasonic X series, black / orange cablemod cables| Monitors: 3x Asus VX24AH's | AUDIO OUT: Microlab SOLO 8C, Sennheiser HD 650's, Audio engine D1 Amp / DAC | AUDIO IN: Blue Snowball | Keyboard: CM Storm QuickFire TK MX Green | Mouse: Logitech G900 Proteus Spectrum + RSI Extended Mouse Pad | PCPP Linkhttp://nz.pcpartpicker.com/list/hPjFd6

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snip

CPU: i7 5820K 4.0GHz @1.15V | MOBO: Asus X99 Sabertooth | GPU: Gigabyte Windforce GTX 980Ti, LTT Orange | CASE: NZXT H440 Black 2015 | COOLER: Noctua NH-D15S w/ LTT Fans | RAM: 32GB Patriot 3000MHz | STORAGE: 512GB Samsung 950 Pro, 960GB Sandisk Ultra II 3 x 8TB Seagate HDD's | PSU: 750W Seasonic X series, black / orange cablemod cables| Monitors: 3x Asus VX24AH's | AUDIO OUT: Microlab SOLO 8C, Sennheiser HD 650's, Audio engine D1 Amp / DAC | AUDIO IN: Blue Snowball | Keyboard: CM Storm QuickFire TK MX Green | Mouse: Logitech G900 Proteus Spectrum + RSI Extended Mouse Pad | PCPP Linkhttp://nz.pcpartpicker.com/list/hPjFd6

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Thought it would be fun to make a topic about, all of our experiences with all the people, who doesn't really understand all the tech. Note: Don't make this too harsh on them. You need to help them, not yell at them. I'll go first: So my mom has a daycare. And one day I am sitting on the floor with my laptop. And one of the kids, with real dirty hands come and put his hand on the screen. Guess he thought it was a touch screen. Still haven't gotten it off, and it was 3 months ago. My grandmother is scared of getting rid of the computer, because she thinks it will cut the power to her house.

oh well what do you know another dane! looks like im not alone here either. im telling you we seem to pop up in all sorts of places

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Another quote from my boss "144 Mega Hertz is similar technologies to G-Sync Synchronise"

No..... Both have to deal with refresh rates, but they are not similar to one another

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One day I will have my GTX 970. One day. PC specs are at my profile.

Not sure how to check what part works with what? Check out my compatibility guide!

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On 11/9/2015 at 7:45 PM, Fgtfv567 said:

No..... Both have to deal with refresh rates, but they are not similar to one another

snip

CPU: i7 5820K 4.0GHz @1.15V | MOBO: Asus X99 Sabertooth | GPU: Gigabyte Windforce GTX 980Ti, LTT Orange | CASE: NZXT H440 Black 2015 | COOLER: Noctua NH-D15S w/ LTT Fans | RAM: 32GB Patriot 3000MHz | STORAGE: 512GB Samsung 950 Pro, 960GB Sandisk Ultra II 3 x 8TB Seagate HDD's | PSU: 750W Seasonic X series, black / orange cablemod cables| Monitors: 3x Asus VX24AH's | AUDIO OUT: Microlab SOLO 8C, Sennheiser HD 650's, Audio engine D1 Amp / DAC | AUDIO IN: Blue Snowball | Keyboard: CM Storm QuickFire TK MX Green | Mouse: Logitech G900 Proteus Spectrum + RSI Extended Mouse Pad | PCPP Linkhttp://nz.pcpartpicker.com/list/hPjFd6

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when i get bored i dig out the manuals to things and read them like books. im telling you every time i do that i learn some new thing about my machine that i had no idea it could do. i normally only do this for consoles though or stuff. no point in reading a monitor manual or something

I know exactly what you mean I do this sometimes!
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I thought it would be but I wasn't sure .

I HATE THAT SITE AND ALL IT STANDS FOR.  I WISH IT WOULD JUST GO UP IN FLAMES.  <- Does that look like green crayon?   All decent rant/hate  letters are written in green crayon?

Are you kidding me?  This is the best site ever!  It's so hilarious for people who know it's a joke and hilarious for those people to watch other people who think it's legit actually try to use it.

My life is consumed by CS:GO, even though I'm not exceptionally good at it.

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Are you kidding me? 

 

 

I am not kidding. I think that particular 'joke' (downloading RAM) has been over played for years and certainly overplayed in here.

 Two motoes to live by   "Sometimes there are no shortcuts"

                                           "This too shall pass"

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-Snippers-

*sigh* Just when I had a little bit of hope for humanity...

I've built 3 PC's, but none for myself... In fact, I'm using an iMac that my dad bought for me as my desktop. Awkward...

Please don't say "SSD drive." By doing so, you are literally saying "Solid State Drive Drive" and causing my brain cells to commit suicide. The same applies to HDD (Hard Disk Drive) and PCIe (Peripheral Component Interconnect Express).

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.....

41f46214eb.png

 

This is so painful and hilarious at the same time.

Solve your own audio issues  |  First Steps with RPi 3  |  Humidity & Condensation  |  Sleep & Hibernation  |  Overclocking RAM  |  Making Backups  |  Displays  |  4K / 8K / 16K / etc.  |  Do I need 80+ Platinum?

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if you had hope for humanity, you probably haven't read any on the posts on this thread

or worked as tech or customer support...

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or worked as tech or customer support...

or interacted with another human being, either online or in person :P

Solve your own audio issues  |  First Steps with RPi 3  |  Humidity & Condensation  |  Sleep & Hibernation  |  Overclocking RAM  |  Making Backups  |  Displays  |  4K / 8K / 16K / etc.  |  Do I need 80+ Platinum?

If you can read this you're using the wrong theme.  You can change it at the bottom.

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This is so painful and hilarious at the same time.

i think i just died a little....

“I am Holo the Wise Wolf. I know that there are things in this world that I do not know and that makes me wise!”

Spoiler

Use the following style specs for your profile!
Screeninator:  Asus GeForce GTX 750Ti 2GB
Powermathingy: EVGA 500W
Stickaminator: Crucial 16GB 「4x4GB」DDR3-1600
Procrastinator: Intel i5-4460 3.2ghz
Holdametalicizor:  Corsair 200R 
Noisoundacreator:  Razer kracken pro
Attatchamajiggy :  Asrock H97 Anniversairy ATX LGA1150
Remembrerthing:  i've got a-lot of drives
Flat-Colorful-Thing:  LG not actually sure the model of it
See-A-Move-O: Razer Mamba 2012
ButtonBoard:  Razer Deathstalker 

 

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