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Boink

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  1. Like
    Boink got a reaction from da na in Experiences with non-techies   
    So I had two experiences today, the first is best summed up by this post:
    Yeah, that happened...
     
    The second involves a little story.
    After school today the school newspaper team met up to discuss the next issue. I was writing my article and a friend of mine who will be known as SLG (Sister's Laptop Girl) was doing her own share of research for her article on her sister's laptop.
    SLG: What is with all these popups?
    Silently praying that it wasn't what I thought it was, I went over and investigated. Sure enough, my worst fears were confirmed: viruses and malware. The web browser was open to a tab with several popups saying things such as "Gmail has been hacked, protect yourself here!" before the page redirected itself to google.
    Me: You have viruses or malware on there, let me take a look.
    SLG: It's my sister's laptop, don't do anything!
    Me: I won't break anything, you know that I know what I'm doing.
    SLG: Okay, fine. *hands laptop over*
    Me: Do you even have antivirus on here?
    SLG: Yeah, we pay for it.
    I did my best to avoid facepalming at the fact that her family is actually paying for antivirus and checked the icons. As it turns out, there was an antivirus running: NORTON
    Me: Norton is a terrible antivirus. There are much better free alternatives out there like Avast or AVG.
    So anyway, after some (about 10 minutes) back and forth bickering and her absolutely refusing to let me uninstall Norton or even disable it and install something else, I settled for the only remaining option: doing a full scan using the piece of crap commonly known as Norton.
    It found 49 viruses in the first 20 minutes of the scan... and the last scan was only 2 days ago...
     
    I don't know how people manage to get viruses that quickly, but they do.
    And yes, Nortonofcrap had been running live protection the entire time.
  2. Agree
    Boink got a reaction from da na in Experiences with non-techies   
    Someone came up to me today after school while I was reading on my phone (yay e-books) 
    "Is that the new iPhone 6?" He asks, leaning over me and reaching out as if to grab it.
    Now I don't know about anyone else here but I am extremely sensitive about other people looking at what I'm doing on my phone or computer, let alone handling and using them. I also happen to hate being interrupted while reading, and I hate it when people don't use their @*$!ing eyes. This guy had annoyed me on three fronts so I was just a bit miffed when I pulled my Nexus 5 away from his grabby hands and replied in a rather annoyed tone: "Why do people always assume a phone is an iPhone? No, it's not an iPhone, it says Nexus right on the back."
     
    Another thing that people do all the time at my school is pop up behind me when I'm working on my laptop. I already mentioned I hate people seeing what I'm doing, so much that I could be typing up a paper comparing the first 6 presidents and I would still try to hide my screen. Another thing I absolutely HATE is dirty screens. (can you see where I'm going with this?) These people come up behind me and ask the dreaded question: "Ooh, is that a touch screen?" as they reach out and start wiping their greasy fingers all over my perfectly clean panel. 
    My response is almost universal to these ones: "No, it's not, now get your hand off my laptop. Did I say you could touch it?"
  3. Like
    Boink got a reaction from da na in Experiences with non-techies   
    Still on the topic of school computers, the most powerful computers in my school are total overkill is a few aspects. They use cheap PSUs (I am just waiting for one to explode, especially in the rooms without AC) and older i5s (under a stock cooler) with no cooling fans besides the PSU and the CPU cooler (sometimes the graphics card when it isn't passively cooled). They use dedicated graphics cards, cheap ones. The last time I checked with the tech guys they were using GT 610s in some and GT 640s in others. All of the graphics cards have 2GB of vram because the tech guys think vram is the only important metric when comparing graphics cards.
    But (the engineering ones at least) are loaded with 24GB of high speed ram (at least 2400MHz)... because clearly we need that much. (The most intensive programs max out at ~2GB under extreme loads on freak occurrences)
     
    On top of that everything in my school is locked down beyond belief, I can't even open up task manager to close a non-responsive program.
  4. Like
    Boink got a reaction from da na in Experiences with non-techies   
    Some people know it's a joke, others are really microwaving their phones. It reminds me of last year when a similar hoax had people believing that a software update would make their iPhones waterproof.
  5. Like
    Boink got a reaction from da na in Experiences with non-techies   
    Anyone who thinks this is real:

     
    Some people apparently do...
     

  6. Like
    Boink got a reaction from da na in Experiences with non-techies   
    I love people who are willing to learn about tech when they know nothing about it. Once a friend of mine saw that I had over 20 tabs open in Chrome and told me that I shouldn't do that because it would put too much load on my processor so I opened task manager and showed him my processes: Chrome was putting .01% load on the processor. He then proceeded to actually listen as I explained that Chrome generally doesn't load your processor but it does use up a lot of memory (for me it was about 500 MB at the time but I have moments when I use almost 2 GB) and the two shouldn't be confused. By the end of the conversation he seemed to understand the difference. Every time we have one of these conversations my faith in humanity goes up just a bit. 
  7. Like
    Boink got a reaction from da na in Experiences with non-techies   
    In AP physics today our teacher was telling us that we should download logger pro at some point and that he had links for the Windows and Mac versions. He said the people with chromebooks would have to download it on a different computer because it doesn't work on chromebooks. Then this conversation happened:
    NBK (netbook kid): You should be able to run logger pro on a chromebook just fine!
    Me: No, a chromebook is just a glorified web browser, you can't run windows programs on it.
    NBK: But my chromebook runs windows!
    Me: You probably have a NETbook, that's not the same as a chromebook. Trust me, I know from personal experience. (I've owned a chromebook in the past)
    NBK: But it works!
    Teacher: Okay moving on!
     
    ...so in the eye of a non-techie: small, crappy laptop (netbook) = chromebook. 100% of the time.  :huh:
  8. Agree
    Boink got a reaction from Thias.TG in Experiences with non-techies   
    Apple wasn't the first to come up with the idea of a GUI or mouse. They were just the first to put it in a package, put into manufacturing, and sell it to the public. So while what you said is technically correct it is not the full story.
  9. Funny
    Boink got a reaction from Roll_Like_Rollo in Experiences with non-techies   
    A friend of mine has an aging, but still functional, gaming PC that keeps running out of hard drive space which I looked into a few days ago. He has a 500GB (full) primary HDD and a 1TB data drive that he has never used at all. He packed his install drive completely full to the point where I couldn't even install WinDirStat to see what I could clean up without deleting a few older files. 
    All I had to do was move his Steam install directory to the data drive, giving him 270GB of free space on his primary drive...
  10. Funny
    Boink got a reaction from Roll_Like_Rollo in Experiences with non-techies   
    I'm tempted to go into the nearest Best Buy, ask for a gaming computer, play dumb until they ask me if I want to check out, and then go into full techie rant mode as to why it wouldn't work. Recorded for the internet's viewing pleasure of course. 
  11. Funny
    Boink got a reaction from Roll_Like_Rollo in Experiences with non-techies   
    I was at a friend's house last night and while I was there I cleaned out his PC. It took almost an hour because of the insane amount of dust caked onto that thing, which could have been mistaken for a smoke machine during the first five minutes. (my lungs are half filled with dust now) Afterward, he wanted to hook his TV up to his computer using a DVI to HDMI adapter that he had, but he also wanted audio, which doesn't transmit over DVI. 
    Turns out he bought an HDMI to DVI adapter when there was a HDMI port on his graphics card the entire time. His entire family didn't know it was there because the graphics card came with a protective plug in the socket.
  12. Funny
    Boink got a reaction from Roll_Like_Rollo in Experiences with non-techies   
    I was at a friend's house yesterday and he wanted to show me a YouTube video. I watched in horror as his computer took 20 seconds to register him pausing the video. Turns out his dad keeps telling him that he just needs to delete stuff off his computer to make it faster even though the thing is running a 7 year old CPU. I don't think his dad understands thermal degradation of a processor over time even though he has worked with computers for years.
  13. Funny
    Boink got a reaction from LucasDerpYT in Experiences with non-techies   
    Yeah... If Dell detected that not only would it be an insane breach of privacy, but they would be calling almost all of their customers.
  14. Funny
    Boink got a reaction from Roll_Like_Rollo in Experiences with non-techies   
    So there was a student in one of my classes today who asked how to send a document with outlook (our teacher has us turn most of our stuff in via email) As it turns out, not only did he not have a Microsoft account which makes it pretty difficult to use outlook, but he also didn't even know how to attach documents to an email. It makes me wonder what he's been doing the last 3 and a half years...
  15. Funny
    Boink got a reaction from Roll_Like_Rollo in Experiences with non-techies   
    Whenever I mention anything about building computers while I'm using my laptop I immediately get asked:
    "Oh, did you build your laptop?"
     
    ...yes I did, that's why it says Lenovo on it.
  16. Funny
    Boink got a reaction from Roll_Like_Rollo in Experiences with non-techies   
    I'm starting to make a name for myself at my school as "The kid who is good with tech"
    (Accurate, I guess, but that's besides the point)
    A girl came up to me and asked how to add more storage to her phone because her SD card was full...
     
    Really? You put the files on your computer and then delete them off the card. And if you really want the files on your phone, just get a bigger SD card!
    Mind blowing, I know.
  17. Funny
    Boink got a reaction from Roll_Like_Rollo in Experiences with non-techies   
    Anyone who thinks this is real:

     
    Some people apparently do...
     

  18. Agree
    Boink got a reaction from Roll_Like_Rollo in Experiences with non-techies   
    Someone came up to me today after school while I was reading on my phone (yay e-books) 
    "Is that the new iPhone 6?" He asks, leaning over me and reaching out as if to grab it.
    Now I don't know about anyone else here but I am extremely sensitive about other people looking at what I'm doing on my phone or computer, let alone handling and using them. I also happen to hate being interrupted while reading, and I hate it when people don't use their @*$!ing eyes. This guy had annoyed me on three fronts so I was just a bit miffed when I pulled my Nexus 5 away from his grabby hands and replied in a rather annoyed tone: "Why do people always assume a phone is an iPhone? No, it's not an iPhone, it says Nexus right on the back."
     
    Another thing that people do all the time at my school is pop up behind me when I'm working on my laptop. I already mentioned I hate people seeing what I'm doing, so much that I could be typing up a paper comparing the first 6 presidents and I would still try to hide my screen. Another thing I absolutely HATE is dirty screens. (can you see where I'm going with this?) These people come up behind me and ask the dreaded question: "Ooh, is that a touch screen?" as they reach out and start wiping their greasy fingers all over my perfectly clean panel. 
    My response is almost universal to these ones: "No, it's not, now get your hand off my laptop. Did I say you could touch it?"
  19. Funny
    Boink got a reaction from DocSwag in Experiences with non-techies   
    I never thought I would find non-techie experiences in the food service industry but I just did. Yesterday my boss started freaking out because two of the POS computers and the second cash drawer weren't turning on. Since I had closed the night before he thought I may have done something to them.
     
    All three just weren't plugged in firmly enough. 
  20. Funny
    Boink got a reaction from RahulR in Experiences with non-techies   
    I never thought I would find non-techie experiences in the food service industry but I just did. Yesterday my boss started freaking out because two of the POS computers and the second cash drawer weren't turning on. Since I had closed the night before he thought I may have done something to them.
     
    All three just weren't plugged in firmly enough. 
  21. Agree
    Boink got a reaction from Samsonsuperco in Experiences with non-techies   
    I'm tempted to go into the nearest Best Buy, ask for a gaming computer, play dumb until they ask me if I want to check out, and then go into full techie rant mode as to why it wouldn't work. Recorded for the internet's viewing pleasure of course. 
  22. Funny
    Boink got a reaction from DocSwag in Experiences with non-techies   
    *sings*
    And I will walk 500 miles and I will walk 500 more
    just to be the man who walked a thousand miles to plug things in once more!
  23. Agree
    Boink got a reaction from DocSwag in Experiences with non-techies   
    Apple wasn't the first to come up with the idea of a GUI or mouse. They were just the first to put it in a package, put into manufacturing, and sell it to the public. So while what you said is technically correct it is not the full story.
  24. Funny
    Boink got a reaction from DocSwag in Experiences with non-techies   
    So you know those audioquest cables that we like to make fun of? The really expensive ones of Amazon made of pure silver?
    Yeah, one of my teachers (he has a large inheritance fund so he can afford things like this) thinks that their silver power cable is not only worthwhile, but it will actually give him better sound quality on his new sound system.
    Despite my 2 years of physics and 3.5 years of engineering class, one of which has been purely about digital electronics, he refuses to listen when I tell him that it really won't do anything, and even if it would it would be completely overridden by the copper wiring in the walls of his house. He kept insisting that "it helps the electrons line up better"
     
    And before you ask, no, he is not a science teacher, tech teacher, or engineering teacher. He is an english teacher.
  25. Funny
    Boink got a reaction from DocSwag in Experiences with non-techies   
    Very true, for example, Time Warner gives me 99% uptime and 10% problem free internet.
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