CtW

My dad was the same when we got him a Lenovo yoga 2 pro. I told him before he got it that he would need a bunch of adapters as the laptop only had 2 USB ports and a Micro/Mini HDMI port for I/O, but the second he went to set it up, he was saying "Where's the CD drive? Where's the VGA port? Where's the ethernet jack?" I had to respond: "Dad, I told you  many times that you would have this problem!" He told me that I never told him any of that. After he told me that he could set it up himself, I face-palmed all the way back to my room because of his listening skills.

The only Alienware products that I'm moderately OK with are their laptops as they seem to be on the smaller end of the 2+ inch thick group of super mega ultra 1337,       it-weighs-more-than-an-elephant-so-it-is-obviously-amazing, e-peen G4M3R laptops. There are a few who are like that in my grade; constantly  Blabbering on about COD ON XBOX NOT PC and how epic their alienware pc is that their parents bought for them. I once asked one if they knew what steam was and they thought it was a game. THEY OWN A FUCKING $2000 ALIENWARE BUT DON'T KNOW WHAT STEAM IS. HOW COULD THIS HAPPEN. MY SISTER EVEN KNOWS WHAT STEAM IS AND USES IT VERY REGULARLY. (I'm very proud of her for that)

Yeah that is happening in a BIG way. It doesn't help that she is a tad bi-polar.
 
My sister was the same. After she started playing minecraft (January/Febuary of last year), I tried to convince her to get a desktop that I would build for her. She refused, claiming that she needed a new laptop not a new desktop. At this point in time, she already had that iMac that I dismantled (link in my sig) and an HP net book that worked perfectly fine for her. I eventually conceded and was fine with her getting a laptop. I imagined that she would want to get a gaming laptop due to her then recent infatuation with minecraft. Nope. She wanted a MacBook. I eventually managed to get her to come to the side of the PC master race and she got a lenovo, which is really damn nice and only cost $750 despite having a touch screen, Haswell i7, and is really thin and the screen flips around in a weird way and I kinda want it. 
 
About the OEM windows license: Those things are pretty annoying. A similar thing happened with a few of the newer computers at my school. If I have a class in the library, one of the people always freaks out over windows "not being genuine" on that computer

aside from what terrytek said, conduit also is always accompanied by programs that add toolbars and extensions that add ads to what ever browser you are using (On once found its way onto my computer that replaces the related videos section on youtube with an ad that either had some game with sound effects or a video ad that I could not mute) or tries to scam money out of you. Also, they start up at boot, with a very high impact on boot times. 
 
Also, my sister managed to install McAfee onto her computer, which probably happened when she installed a new version of flash player or Java. 

I recently did a similar thing with my sister's brand new laptop. After i ranted about people using the chrome omni-bar to google google, my sister told me that when ever she went to search anything, she was rerouted to some other search with an ad on the front page. My reaction: HOLY SHIT WE NEED TO FIX THIS NOW BEFORE YOU BREAK YOUR COMPUTER. She then told me that whenever she went to a website, she was diverted to an ad. When I got onto her computer, I found multiple utilities for "cleaning" your computer, different sales things, and the worst bits, Conduit and MySearchDial. My sister tried to convince me that she never went to any websites that she could get  these from, and that she never clicked any illegitimate links or ads. She even argued with me over her web activity. After 30 minutes, and multiple restarts, I managed to get rid of the crap on her laptop. 
 
Yay 5 total stories of my sister's stupidity!

Sister story 1:
 
Me: Would you like me to swap out he 4GBs of RAM in your computer for 8? It should speed up your laptop a bit and I have it lying around.
My sister: No! I like my computer the way it is. I don't want you touching my computer.
Me: But It will be faster and I can just give it to you for free. ( have 16GBs in my laptop that I now only use for taking notes in school)
My sister: No! I don't want you to break my computer!
 
Sister story 2:
 
Me: You should get an external monitor. I have seen you have your phone sitting on top of your laptop when you are playing TF2 and it looks like it is kind of awkward. 
My sister: I don't want a monitor. My laptop's screen is touch and the monitor isn't.
Me: But you could have multiple things open at once in larger windows and you will be better able to watch movies. 
My sister: I don't want to be able to do more than one things at once.
Me: *Facepalms then walks away*
 
Sister story 3:
 
Me: Hey, when you get your new computer, can I dismantle your iMac? (see mah sig for the build log which will be updated soon, I promise)
My sister: NO YOU CAN NOT!
Me: Why? It's not like you are going to use it or anything. 
My sister: We are going to throw it out.
Me: If you are just going to chuck it, then why the hell can't I dismantle it and use it for something?
My sister: It's my computer and I control what happens to it and I say that you can not have it.
*Arguement happens which causes my mom to step in*
My mom: What's the problem here?
My sister: Christopher (its the C in CtW) wants to dismantle my iMac after I get my new computer
My mom: Why can't he  do that.
My sister: Because we are going to throw it out instead.
Me: That is why I think I should get it. I think it is better to use it than to let get thrown away.
My mom: I don't see why he can't do this? Its not like you are going to use it any way. Why do you insist on throwing it away?
My sister: I don't want him to break it.
Me/My mom: Ok this dam Mac is being dismantled. That logic is retarded.
The irony in this story is that my sister is all about saving the environment. She will yell at me if I leave the water on while washing the dishes. 
 
My sister is the sort of person who you will want to beat the shit out of after meeting, as shown by these stories.

And my sig leads people to my build log which means extra views on the topic.
 
Also, my dad has a Samsung Galaxy Note 3 and only uses it for calls and email. I have tried to convince him to use the S-Pen and all of its other features but he is not interested in doing work on a phone.

Last year, my science teacher told the class that the computer he used to teach the class was broken as it was not booting into Windows and that the tech department would be fixing it soon. After a week they had yet to take his computer away for repairs so a friend and I got permission to take a look inside. (The teacher was pretty much cool with anything we did as we were his best students and are both very good with tech.) We opened it up and I took out the hard drive then reconnected it to its cables. (I forget whether it was IDE or SATA) After we did they the thing was fine. A similar problem which took 2 minutes to fix would have taken the tech people a week. My most recent topic shows the extent of their stupidity.

I happen to live about 12 miles or less from the city in a commuter town, NYC is not really that cool to go to (I still like it a ton), but whenever my cousins visit, who live in North Carolina, they MUST go to New York. When we have to go in with them, they always want to use a taxi to get around, go in the empire state building and go to all the really touristy places. That annoys the hell out of me. There is SO much shit to do there but you want to see THE EMPIRE STATE BUILDING ONLY? ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME? They expressed no interest in central park or any museum, just the above mentioned building. They also only want to go to the really famous places for lunch that are well known but serve mediocre food. That annoys me to no end. Also, they walk through the city like tourists. 

You should take a trip to the chipset. I have been there my self and it is quite scenic.

Recently when I was at a party, I told the group of adults i was talking to that I had built my own PC.
 
These were the responses: (one in particular is funny)
 
A few people: "Wow! I had no idea that you could do that! That is really cool! How do you do that?"
Me: 'It is basically adult legos, It is a ton simpler than you think."
Those people: "How much have you spent on it?"
Me: "~$1600"
One of the people: "Can it do word processing?" (MS Word)
-When that person said that I mentally facepalmed EXTREMELY hard.-
Me: Of course it can, any new computer is able to do that. Of all things you can possible do with a computer, using MS Word is one of the least intensive. How could a computer that I have spent that much on not do word processing?
That person: "Oh really, that's all I do so I was just wondering. That's pretty cool. What video chip are you using?"
After that, the person and I began to discuss some things and I found out that he dealt with hardware in the 90's and is essentially stuck there when it comes to tech knowledge,

The program itself is fine for beginners and is actually quite good. HOWEVER I am so used to Inventor and Revit that the controls for manipulating objects pisses me off. With inventor, you hold down middle mouse button to move around the object 2 dimensionally and hold shift with middle mouse button to orbit around the object. In SketchUp, it is the opposite. Also software is generally less powerful than what I'm used to using.

This is the link: http://linustechtips.com/main/topic/131898-wip-project-do-something-random-with-an-old-imac-main-teardown-big-picture-heavy/
Currently it is just the teardown. I fucking hate SketchUp. If Inventor worked on my computer, then the renderings would be up already and of much higher quality.

My dad does the same exact thing whenever he sees me watching gameplay videos. I don't ever tell him that I'm watching a video as he would probably find it weird that I'm watching someone play a game instead if playing it myself.

I don't know. He actually said that the keyboard he tried (a Logitech G710+ at best buy) had too much key travel and did not have the tactile feedback of the laptop keyboard or something stupid like that. However, the keyboard of his old HP laptop was pretty good.

In 6th grade (2010-2011) my friend tried to convince me that Minecraft is terrible and Roblox is better. (He claimed it had better graphics and was more fun.)I then proceeded to show him the game and he completely changed his mind. That summer, he tried his best to spend as much time over at my house as possible in order to play it. The following year his older brother built him a $500 computer with a Pentium and a GT 440, which he still uses and is convinced that it is a pretty powerful computer. With his "powerful computer", he runs all games at 720p Nd medium settings. I have tried to convince him to bump up the settings, but he claims that he prefers lower settings in games.

They are amazing. my mom uses one and I really envy her. What pisses me off, is when the kids at school think it is a great idea to change the contrast of the monitors so windows explorer and any web browser instantly look weird.

Most of the monitors in the school are 1080p dell monitors (except for those hooked up to the old pcs) which is nice, but having to render stuff in 1080p is annoying. Also, there is exactly one Mac in the entire school that I know of. It is a powermac G3 that is running OS9 or lower and is hooked up to a 23+ inch CRT monitor. It is in the yearbook/photography room. If I ever get a chance to use it, I will probably geek out so much that I would have to be removed from the building. (I love old tech and messing around with it)

We spend 1-2 TRILLION dollars on the military and related stuff per year and for some reason, people think that is not enough (*cough* Republicans *cough*)
Please no political arguments as a result of this post kthxbye
 
Also, I wonder how much of WD, Seagate, Toshiba, or Hitatch's revenue comes from the NSA. That much goddamn data must require a royal fuck-ton of drives. 

I did manage to convert my entire family to Windows/Android with the exception my mom's mid-2011 iMac, and when that will be replaced (in a couple years), I will build her a glorious PC! 
 
It is always so rewarding!
I must also mention that I'm inducting my dad into the pc master race by building a computer in the Slverstone FT03 with him!

About a year ago, my dad called me into his office to tell me something. Eventually I noticed the slowness of his 5 year old HP laptop and told him, which resulted in him saying that he was going to buy a new one soon. I started looking and found that, not only was he using and old version of IE that had many tool bars, but also that he had not gotten rid of ANY of the bloatware on his laptop and most of it was set to run on start up. I installed chrome and got rid of all of the bloatware which resulted in a large increase in relative speed. When he got his new laptop recently, he refused to let me take the thing away for an hour to set it up properly but had no idea how to configure windows properly (mostly the windows live stuff in windows 8 as he was upgrading from Vista),  but yelled at me when I tried to take over. 
 
My mom is the sort of person who thinks that they know more than they actually do about tech. Also she uses an iMac. There will be many times when she will ask me to come and help her with a problem that is exclusive to macs (navigating through Finder, changing file types, etc.) and expects me to know everything there is to know about the damn thing despite the fact that I never use OSX. Sometimes she is completely clueless with tech. The other day, she purchased a second monitor for her Mac (Dell ultrasharp) and purchased a miniDsplayport to Displayport cable (under my supervision, naturally). The whole package came before I managed to get home from school and she tried to hook it up w/ the monitor. Instead of plugging the cable into its proper port on the monitor, she instead tried to plug it into the USB port on the side of the monitor. Instead of waiting until I got home and asking me to help, she instead "went online and did a help" (as she puts it). According to her, the Dell person was completely useless and was asking her various questions that "she had already answered." Before I finish the story, **I must mention that my mom thinks that tech support are supposed know everything about the problem that you have and will solve it without your involvement. As a result, from what I have heard, she NEVER provides sufficient info to the person on the other end then complains about how crap all tech support is (minus apple, according to her.) ** Anyway, after she got nowhere with Dell, she decided to go to Radio Shack and purchase a thunderbolt to VGA adapter... For her god damn new Dell ULTRASHARP  monitor. She then proceeded to use VGA WITH A FUCKING PROFESSIONAL GRADE MONITOR AND A REALLY SHITTY ADAPTER. Just let that sink in for a bit. 

Recently when I was at a party, I told the group of adults i was talking to that I had built my own PC.
 
These were the responses: (one in particular is funny)
 
A few people: "Wow! I had no idea that you could do that! That is really cool! How do you do that?"
Me: 'It is basically adult legos, It is a ton simpler than you think."
Those people: "How much have you spent on it?"
Me: "~$1600"
One of the people: "Can it do word processing?" (MS Word)
-When that person said that I mentally facepalmed EXTREMELY hard.-
Me: Of course it can, any new computer is able to do that. Of all things you can possible do with a computer, using MS Word is one of the least intensive. How could a computer that I have spent that much on not do word processing?
That person: "Oh really, that's all I do so I was just wondering. That's pretty cool. What video chip are you using?"
After that, the person and I began to discuss some things and I found out that he dealt with hardware in the 90's and is essentially stuck there when it comes to tech knowledge,

The things that bug me about apple are are:
Lack of open-ness Lack of ability to customize/upgrade hardware  Amount of proprietary standards for software and hardware Stubborn-ness in regards to the adoption of features that have become standard in the industry (cough NFC cough) Some of their marketing Patent trolling  Lack of window snap on OSX (not having it pisses me off so much when ever I try to use a Mac) Staying with OSX so long that people call it "O-S-X" instead of "O-S-Ten" and not at least hinting at OSXI (OS 11)

Well they have to make money somehow. At least they are just adding new features rather than charging for ones that were previously free.

Just going to add that Project Veritas is a fucking awful publication known for misleading people (ref: Washington Post Vs Project Veritas)