Experiences with non-techies

[Tedstonegenious]

On 3/25/2020 at 10:26 AM, Pascal... said:

Did I post this here? Might have but I didn't find it.

 

As everyone is working from home we have a lot of users on VPN link. We use VPNs to access some remote systems that are not on site when we work from the office.

 

One morning I got a message from a user asking what was up with her laptop. The WiFi was working great on her personal laptop but the work laptop said something about a DNS error she did not understand.

 

I was preparing for the worst, troubleshooting VPN is a PAIN. I asked her what VPN she was using and she replied: I'm using VPN A and VPN B right now

 

 

Told her she could only use one at a time, she went quiet for a good while and then messaged me back that it was working now

I have two VPN's on my computer. One is a custom client I use to access my home network, and the other is a commercial VPN for privacy's sake. (mainly if I want to search something potentially weird. I'm a curious b*****d) It usually takes me a minute to realize that I forgot to turn PIA off when I want to do something at home. And I always feel like an idiot when I realize. 

[732]

On 4/22/2018 at 8:34 AM, themctipers said:

english pls

 

On 4/22/2018 at 9:37 AM, GilmourD said:

Agreed. lolwut?

fork bomb =

     o

    /  \

  o    o

 /  \  /  \

o  oo  o

 

and then it crashes the pc

 

Other than that i wouldn't see how youre confused

 

[artuc]

On 3/10/2020 at 5:47 AM, Dr Snazz said:

I am literally my math teacher's personal IT guy. The amount of times I have had to remind her to turn the TV on before connecting her laptop to it has been WAY to many.

To be fair, I don't have enough fingers to count how many times I've been like "Oh god, no ping, must be offline...  this is bad.

 

Wait, what's this cable over here   ahhh... errrrr.... think this ethernet needs to be plugged in"

 

 

[Gegger]

i just read through the entire thread...again

 

am i crazy?

[Bitter]

Yes, very.

 

I meant to post here but forgot...

My friend dropped me off her brothers PC unexpectedly at work because 'wares', he couldn't get system restore to work or system reset to work. Windows was boned, whatever, too much VR Yiff porn I guess.

 

PC is a HP Omen. i7 8700 with a single 16GB stick of RAM and a 2080 blower card in a case with a single 92mm exhaust all running from a 500W PSU. CPU heat sink is TINY and I figured out why, the CPU is completely hampered by the BIOS by HP for thermal and power reasons. You get a short term PL2 of about 30 seconds at 120-130W during which it will thermal throttle and the very very tiny heatsink-less VRM on the H370 board gets hot fast, after that it slams down to 65W! And that's all it'll do, 65W!  An 8700 at 65W runs an all core boost of about 3.2-3.4Ghz. I did him a favor once I was done with the wipe and Windows, I added a 120 fan to the case for air intake and used Intel XTU to bump the PL1 to a still safe 95W which lets it get to and hold nearly 4.0Ghz all core sustained, a small undervolt got a little more speed out of it too. HP, what are you doing? This is a $2,000 PC!?

[The King of the Undead]

1 hour ago, Kaloob said:

I tend to avoid HP, their products are usually shit. 

really? my only experience is my laptop and I put an ssd in it and the thing won't die.

[Godlygamer23]

5 minutes ago, Kaloob said:

My grandpa's old HP desktop was a peice of crap (to be fair, it was entry level), and my dads 2014 Envy x360 was built badly too. It's only two products, but they did not instill confidence in the brand. I'd probably get in trouble with my dad at this point if I bought HP (except their printers), lol.

Then you can't say they're usually shit. Your sample size is absurdly low. It's no different than the individuals who complain that drives from X or Y manufacturer are total garbage. Defects happen. It's just the way it is. People get unlucky, perhaps even having a streak from the same manufacturer or retailer. Lots of things can happen that cause defects. I work in manufacturing so this is also from experience.

[The King of the Undead]

36 minutes ago, Kaloob said:

My grandpa's old HP desktop was a peice of crap (to be fair, it was entry level), and my dads 2014 Envy x360 was built badly too. It's only two products, but they did not instill confidence in the brand. I'd probably get in trouble with my dad at this point if I bought HP (except their printers), lol.

Only problem is the locked down Bios. can't replace the wifi card.

[The King of the Undead]

1 minute ago, Kaloob said:

Really? That sucks big time. At least you can open it up (see: Surface Laptop 1 and 2), but that's still sucky of them.

open up the bios or laptop?

[Koeshi]

1 hour ago, Godlygamer23 said:

Then you can't say they're usually shit. Your sample size is absurdly low.

I've probably dealt with a dozen or two HP laptops and apart from their mobile workstations the build quality seems really poor.  Plus even on their nicer desktops the BIOS is a complete disaster.  Personally my experiences with their BIOS makes me want to avoid HP products in general (I am told their server BIOS is much better but I don't have personal experience with it).

[The King of the Undead]

3 minutes ago, Kaloob said:

You have to destroy the Alcantara  on the Surface Laptop 1 and 2 to access the internals.

Alcantra?

[straight_stewie]

Setting up a new windows laptop for my brother to use to store business and tax documents.

 

"Do I have to have an account password?"

"yes"

"What if I forget it"

"Write it down"

[Godlygamer23]

1 hour ago, Koeshi said:

I've probably dealt with a dozen or two HP laptops and apart from their mobile workstations the build quality seems really poor.  Plus even on their nicer desktops the BIOS is a complete disaster.  Personally my experiences with their BIOS makes me want to avoid HP products in general (I am told their server BIOS is much better but I don't have personal experience with it).

Granted, I'm not saying their products are any good. I don't have enough experience with them. At the moment, it's limited to two printers, one which lasted around 10 years, and another that was given to me for free that I've had for a few months. I'm merely pointing out that the logic that was being used wasn't fair to the manufacturer with the very low sample size. 

[LurkerKing]

5 hours ago, Kaloob said:

I tend to avoid HP, my experiences with their products are usually shit. 

My experience with HP has been hit and miss. I've used a couple of HP laptops that weren't so good, but my HP laser printer has been delivering consistent, trouble-free results for me for over 12 years now. The similarly old HP Photosmart point-and-shoot camera I have sitting in a drawer somewhere was almost everything a cheap digital camera should be -- easy to operate, pretty good ergonomics, easy to transfer photos off of, good enough performance, compact, relatively robust build.

[The King of the Undead]

3 hours ago, Kaloob said:

The stuff on the palm rest.

 

Edit: After posting this, it came to light that you probably meant to correct me (I'm guessing I spelled it wrong).

wasn't correcting you I just learned something!

[Bitter]

The HP consumer products are pretty shit in my experience, their business desktop stuff is decent roughly on par with Dell for business and even Dell consumer line stuff. I'd have no qualms about suggesting a refurb Elite or Pro Desk system to someone who needed a small tower or SFF desktop on the cheap.

[Bitter]

10 hours ago, Bitter said:

Yes, very.

 

I meant to post here but forgot...

My friend dropped me off her brothers PC unexpectedly at work because 'wares', he couldn't get system restore to work or system reset to work. Windows was boned, whatever, too much VR Yiff porn I guess.

 

PC is a HP Omen. i7 8700 with a single 16GB stick of RAM and a 2080 blower card in a case with a single 92mm exhaust all running from a 500W PSU. CPU heat sink is TINY and I figured out why, the CPU is completely hampered by the BIOS by HP for thermal and power reasons. You get a short term PL2 of about 30 seconds at 120-130W during which it will thermal throttle and the very very tiny heatsink-less VRM on the H370 board gets hot fast, after that it slams down to 65W! And that's all it'll do, 65W!  An 8700 at 65W runs an all core boost of about 3.2-3.4Ghz. I did him a favor once I was done with the wipe and Windows, I added a 120 fan to the case for air intake and used Intel XTU to bump the PL1 to a still safe 95W which lets it get to and hold nearly 4.0Ghz all core sustained, a small undervolt got a little more speed out of it too. HP, what are you doing? This is a $2,000 PC!?

Quoting myself so I can add to this story.

 

Guy is in his early to mid 40's I think, lives at home mooching off his barely alive due to multiple health issues parents, in a house with a roof ready to fall off, and somehow gets this $2,000 'Gaming' PC because 'I'm a modder'. From what I saw scroll past during a couple virus scans it looks like mostly slavery mods for Skyrim and Yiffalicious furry porn for VR. I don't care to see 'fox dick girl' folder flagging hits for a virus.

 

Meanwhile his sister whom I've been friends with since we dated like 10 years ago is working 50-60 hours a week or more busting her ass supporting her parents, paying bills for everyone, etc. She asked me to build her a gaming PC with a $700 budget, I came in at $400 and gave her a loaner graphics card (GTX 950) and told her to save a couple hundred extra and wait till the end of the year so I can try to score her a deal on something good around Black Friday time. I scrounged and scavenged on eBay to get her some awesome deals.

 

And her brother can just waltz up to the parents and whine a little that he neeeeeds a gaming PC and then spends $2,000 of their money on that fucking HP turd? Makes me sick.

[Koeshi]

16 hours ago, Bitter said:

The HP consumer products are pretty shit in my experience, their business desktop stuff is decent roughly on par with Dell for business and even Dell consumer line stuff. I'd have no qualms about suggesting a refurb Elite or Pro Desk system to someone who needed a small tower or SFF desktop on the cheap.

My experience is mainly with their business units, their laptops are just painfully bad compared to Dell's Latitude line (the Precision 55 line has its own issues).  HP workstations on the other hand are pretty solidly built, can't comment on their lower end desktops though.

[Radium_Angel]

23 hours ago, LurkerKing said:

old HP

And that's the thing isn't it?

Old HP were great, but after the merger with Compaq, they went straight for the bottom of the PC world, they didn't pass go, they certain'y didn't collect 200 dollars.

What they did do, was wreck a once great company.

Their scientific instrument division was top notch.

That's gone.

Their calculators were the best, full stop. (HP-28S for the MFW)

Gone too.

Solid server line?

Poof history.

Knowledgeable techs?

Not any more.

Open firmware?

Forget about it.

 

There's a reason HP stands for Hardly Perfect. Has Problems. Haphazardly Produced. Horse Pucky. Horrible Product. 

 

(source: I was there when HP died. I've worked on countless HP systems, and seen 1sthand the slide into shit quality.)

 

[The King of the Undead]

3 hours ago, Radium_Angel said:

--snip--

 

when did they merge?

[shadow_ray]

On 3/25/2020 at 6:44 PM, Jae Tee said:

This isn't anything tragic, but it goes as follows. 

 

In the past few months my family has finally come around to the fact that I actually know about computers. What im trying to say is my older siblings finally started to take my word. But one of my older brothers was frustrated. It made no sense how a high end laptop would be so slow after just 1 year (some people believe that all electronics just BECOME slow over time, and in reality that is HARDLY the case). After a quick look I found out his one and only drive was a 2.5 in HDD.

 

As i said this isn't a huge problem but most consumers prioritize things like the cpu and AMOUNT of storage when basically the only thing they do is on the web, when something like an SSD (and a bit of ram) would be the single best thing for them in most scenarios. 

Here is your quote, and my opinion. I'm one of those people who believe that electronics just become slow over time.

 

SSD write speed goes down if you fill them up too much

HDD fragmantation

OS kernel security updates cuz intel chips

unnecessary apps are loaded at startup cuz user don't care,

unnecessary processes in the background

 

Another side of this is that programs are getting more and more demanding. Even if the device is performing just the same the perceived performance decreases. More js and css on websites, animations, fancy graphics.  People writing code make their "is that slow?" decision using current hardware and usually ease of development is just more important for them.

 

 

 

 

 

[Jae Tee]

On 4/29/2020 at 4:03 AM, shadow_ray said:

Here is your quote, and my opinion. 

*snip*

All of this is true, but it's nowhere near the logic used by most "non-techies". 

HDD'S could be defragmented, os can be cleaned up, built in apps can be removed. Most of these are the things that I do when someone I know complains. Even SSD'S take super long to notice any speed reduction. But the logic of "it's 3 year's old, better get a new pc" is pretty twisted, especially when non of them are used in pro applications. 

 

[shadow_ray]

4 hours ago, Jae Tee said:

All of this is true, but it's nowhere near the logic used by most "non-techies".

Thanks for shedding light upon the matter. I agree, my 4th gen Intel chip does reasonably well in what i do, but I'm not into gaming tough, so i don't know what 3 years of aging can do to a gaming pc.

[Teddy07]

disclaimer: non native english speaker

My father has a very high opinion of an electrician and praises him all the time for his knowledge and skill. He ignores the fact that he regularly screws up which leads to my father paying to solve his screw ups.

My father asked this guy to have a look at my sisters PC because she wants to connect it with her old TV through HDMI. The problem is that her new RX480 has HDMI 2.0 output and it only shows a black screen when connected with the TV because it has only HDMI 1.4. The electrician recommended that my sister swaps the power supply and replaces the GPU with a gtx 1050ti. She would have to pay a total of 210 € for having worse gaming performance and still having the same issue since the power supply is already good enough and the gtx 1050ti having also HDMI 2.0 output. I was honestly speechless but my fathers opinion of this guy hasn't changed one bit.

 

How did I solve it?

My sister connected the HDMI cable to the HDMI port on the motherboard. It however has to be connected with the HDMI port on the graphics card

 

[The King of the Undead]

3 hours ago, Teddy07 said:

disclaimer: non native english speaker

My father has a very high opinion of an electrician and praises him all the time for his knowledge and skill. He ignores the fact that he regularly screws up which leads to my father paying to solve his screw ups.

My father asked this guy to have a look at my sisters PC because she wants to connect it with her old TV through HDMI. The problem is that her new RX480 has HDMI 2.0 output and it only shows a black screen when connected with the TV because it has only HDMI 1.4. The electrician recommended that my sister swaps the power supply and replaces the GPU with a gtx 1050ti. She would have to pay a total of 210 € for having worse gaming performance and still having the same issue since the power supply is already good enough and the gtx 1050ti having also HDMI 2.0 output. I was honestly speechless but my fathers opinion of this guy hasn't changed one bit.

 

How did I solve it?

My sister connected the HDMI cable the HDMI port on the motherboard. It however has to be connected with the HDMI port on the graphics card

The electrician should be a techie but I think he qualifies as non techie for this thread.

 

isn't 2.0 back compatible?