Experiences with non-techies

[iarejesus]

I built a PC for my younger brother. Worst mistake, he thinks I owe him a lifetimes worth of customer support or something.

[Tr3vor]

my aunt who is constantly complaining about her slow Pentium 4 computer, and when people tell her to buy a new one already, she says "no its fine."

@ionbasa: Hey! get a new computer ;P

[gasho]

I was working in a PC repair shop and a elderly guy comes to me and tells me he has a problem with his notebook. He doesn't have no Google on his computer and he asks me if I could install google on his NB. I was holding back not to break out in tears. But then I was thinking for a bit and I put in the browser "google as a home page" . So after that every time he opens his browser the first thing that he sees is google. Problem solved. Man that guy was happy !

[J3v400]

My little brother the other day came up to me while doing research on both YouTube and New Egg for my new build. This is the conversation that followed.

Him: What are you looking at.

Me: Computer stuff.

Him: Why?

Me: Because all the computers that I have now a slow (true, both my Mac's have huge bottlenecks)

Him: There slow, because you bloat them

Me: ......

I have no idea what he ment by that but still, when has the amount of data on a mechanical harddrive affect the speed of said drive?

[Guest]

When I was younger I would always get blamed when something went wrong with the computer, saying my games broke it. I'm pretty sure If a game is being released to thousands of people, it will be stable and not cause the BSOD for no reason.

[Benbass]

People thinking they can download RAM....

When I was kid, I thought you could download a new graphic card... :x I still feel bad about it.

[Salmiakbal]

My little brother the other day came up to me while doing research on both YouTube and New Egg for my new build. This is the conversation that followed. Him: What are you looking at. Me: Computer stuff. Him: Why? Me: Because all the computers that I have now a slow (true' date=' both my Mac's have huge bottlenecks) Him: There slow, because you bloat them Me: ...... I have no idea what he ment by that but still, when has the amount of data on a mechanical harddrive affect the speed of said drive? [/quote']

Bloat tends to run in the background, making your computer slow. I'm pretty sure he meant that.

[Dim]

When I was younger I would always get blamed when something went wrong with the computer' date=' saying my games broke it. I'm pretty sure If a game is being released to thousands of people, it will be stable and not cause the BSOD for no reason. [/quote']

To an extent this is true, but I have a cousin who uses the computer and installs all kinds of crap. More or less, stuff like add-ons (whatever Clownfish is, it sucks) and whatnot that automatically run on start-up. It might not seem like a lot, but when he has fifty silly bloatware apps running in the background, it makes me annoyed. Thankfully only he uses the computer now, but it's still annoying to me when he comes in and says "Dim the computer is slow"...

[Salmiakbal]

I actually do have a story now I'm thinking about it.. Let me sum it up

A coworker of mine (I work at a supermarket) sees himself as a tech fanatic. Once he was talking about a build he wanted to do.

He started talking about getting all top tier Asus ROG stuff, 7970's, H100 (at the time).. All massively overpriced stuff. And.. four 250GB harddrives in a Raid 0.

So I asked him why would you do that? Raid 0 is a stupid raid, just get one big fast drive and a SSD for boot and stuff, much more reliable that way. But he didn't move one bit.

Some time after that we we're having a break and we started talking computer again. I asked him why he wants to go AMD in stead if Nvidia for a GPU. He replied: ''No, Nvidia cards are made by Intel, and I dislike Intel!''. I told him Intel only makes integrated graphics and not discrete ones and that Nvidia and Intel are in no way affiliated, but he wouldn't change his mind.

After that he started talking about coolers. He said he had a H100 once before. ''Yeah, that thing is so nice the temps of my CPU we're lower than the temperature of my room!''

I tried to teach him a small lesson in physics on why that would be entirely impossible, but he kept yammering about.

One time after that he started talking about thermal compound and how he always spreads it over the entire CPU instead of a single blob in the mid. I tried to tell him why that method is shit, to which he replied ''I always do that and I have the lowest temps of all my friends!'' (Obviously made up).

Usually I don't care if people believe things that aren't optimal/true/good in any way, but this guy was so immensely dense it was unbelievable, and a complete tool too. Every word you tried to throw at him just bounced off.

[Nirmal]

This is basically a conversation that I had with my friend;

Me: Why are you using internet explorer? (IE 6)
Him: Because it is awsome!
Me: Why do you like it?
Him:Because it is fast!
Me: You do realize that firefox is a lot better in every way, right?
Him: No, firefox sucks I used it and it was slow. (keep in mind this is the guy who has a computer but no internet anywhere but the library...)
Me: I don't know how it was slow for you but it is definitely faster for almost everybody else.

After that the conversation pretty much ended, and he started to talk to another person trying to tell him that a core 2 duo is faster than an i7, but that is different story. (Saying that core 2 duo, meant that it had 2 CPUs or something.)

[nillas12]

The browser one is the most usual one.

Me: Grandpa, what browser do you use?

Grandpa: What is a browser?

Me: The program on the computer you use to access facebook.

Grandpa: OH. I use Facebook.

Me: Facebook isn't a browser. Its a webpage.

Grandpa: Oh. Well the thing I use to type in is called Explorer 7 on the desktop.

Me: OH NO IT AIN'T NO MORE!

I changed it to google.

Keep posting people.

[star102]

I got tree of my friends to switch from a console to a pc, the bought it and tried to assemble it. It didn't work so I went to help them, they forgot to connect the power cord of the psu. And they didn't know how to installl windows.

[Tigerbomb8]

My little brother used to think that the more data you store on an HDD, the heavier the component gets. He also thought that if you pivot the monitor clockwise during a transfer of files or an installation, is would go faster because the gravity would help the loading bar fill faster...^^

But he was right.... about the HDD getting heavier that is. The extra weight is so small you can't measure it, but it is there.

[Glaith]

I used to work at a computer shop for IT support and service. Whenever something is wrong with the machine, they'll always ask if it's a virus or not. If the shortcut on the desktop is gone, they would think all of their data on the computer are gone.

My mum isn't non-techy but she just double clicks on EVERYTHING she wants to open. That includes links and buttons on the web browser. She would double click on the Google searches to open them too and I got really annoyed watching her using the computer at some point of my life.

I have another one but it's not really non-techies. My friend is a photographer but not much of a computer guy so he bought a netbook(yes, those 10-inches) and brought it to college. Apparently he actually used that netbook to edit photo and do his work. I remember him posting a comment which he thinks tiny computer are less powerful(true to some extent).

OR when they double click on the single click link, its not just a normal double click its a lift ur index finger perfectly straight the double click in a slow perfect motion. haha

[Glaith]

my aunt who is constantly complaining about her slow Pentium 4 computer, and when people tell her to buy a new one already, she says "no its fine."

Pentium D likes to eat the powers

[Glaith]

A really old man (worst example EVER), was comming to our pc store because he bought a pc that didn't work.

he plugged it in, and nothing worked.

...

he didn't push the power button...

that said, he came back. the screen is still black.

same freaking reason. he did not turn the darn thing on, we had to draw out the symbol of a on/off switch, i walked to the back and laughed reeeaaally hard i allmost cried, 3 times in a row (first for the not working pc, second for the not working monitor and third for the actual drawing) XD

this has really happened :P but the guy was old (75?) and probably has never used an electrical device in his whole life (country side).

that was the least tech savvy person i have ever encountered.

Poor guy he probably uses that pc as a door stop or somthing now haha

[Glaith]

so this one time I was hanging out with my friend who is the manager at a tech shop by where I live and a girl comes in and buys a 2tb hard drive. we let her know that we install hard drives for $1 (the cost of the sata cable we use) and she says "just because I am a woman does not mean I cant work on computers" and leaves in a huff.

two days later she comes back in saying that the HDD is not working so we take the computer in to look at it,

we open it and the HDD is nowhere to be seen,

so we ask her where it is. and it turns out that she scanned it and put the scanned image on her desktop to install the drive.

and to top that off she threw away the drive she paid almost $200 for and she wanted us to give her a new one.

Holy dooly thats just plain gold, scanned a piece of hardware tahts a first haha

[rhyseyness]

My mum feels the need to turn off my wireless network at night because she fears "The waves will affect her brain."

...apparently only when she's sleeping too

[Glaith]

To my good friends, I am God of computing.

My friend's mom actually paid me 50 bucks to fix their loose cable, thrice.

Many don't believe me when I told them I built a PC.

I should never have mentioned the term 'hardware porn' among them.

Some think I have no life and no future.

To most adults, I am a spoilt brat.

@Mystiq, lay all the components out needed to build a PC in front of your parents build it as quickly and nicely to your abiblty, set it up with windows or linux ect then ask ,ok now you do it?

[Glaith]

I have a non-techie friend who boasts of his "upgraded" computer. He said it's very fast now because he added 3TB of storage.

Or you ask how fast there PC is and they say, It has a 40 gig in it

[Glaith]

My father the only man who played a Playstation 1 up untill 2011 and i finaly gave up and gave him one of my modded xbox's talken xbox 1 as well, which he still uses today and probably will never upgrade to 360 or next gen haha. Has nearly everygame under the sun tho for playstation 1.

[Glaith]

The best one I've experienced is when people call any form of internet "wifi"

@Salmiakbal i have so many IT savvy friends who do this also, it annoys me so much grrrrr

[Glaith]

OH remembered the best one from ages ago when I was like 6 years old, My friends mum blamed me for blowing up there commadore 64 cause I shot a cap gun at it, But for the chances of the bang of my toy gun and that Commadore shutting down at the same time was incredible, and to this day they still believes it was my fault.

[Glaith]

I actually do have a story now I'm thinking about it.. Let me sum it up

A coworker of mine (I work at a supermarket) sees himself as a tech fanatic. Once he was talking about a build he wanted to do.

He started talking about getting all top tier Asus ROG stuff, 7970's, H100 (at the time).. All massively overpriced stuff. And.. four 250GB harddrives in a Raid 0.

So I asked him why would you do that? Raid 0 is a stupid raid, just get one big fast drive and a SSD for boot and stuff, much more reliable that way. But he didn't move one bit.

Some time after that we we're having a break and we started talking computer again. I asked him why he wants to go AMD in stead if Nvidia for a GPU. He replied: ''No, Nvidia cards are made by Intel, and I dislike Intel!''. I told him Intel only makes integrated graphics and not discrete ones and that Nvidia and Intel are in no way affiliated, but he wouldn't change his mind.

After that he started talking about coolers. He said he had a H100 once before. ''Yeah, that thing is so nice the temps of my CPU we're lower than the temperature of my room!''

I tried to teach him a small lesson in physics on why that would be entirely impossible, but he kept yammering about.

One time after that he started talking about thermal compound and how he always spreads it over the entire CPU instead of a single blob in the mid. I tried to tell him why that method is shit, to which he replied ''I always do that and I have the lowest temps of all my friends!'' (Obviously made up).

Usually I don't care if people believe things that aren't optimal/true/good in any way, but this guy was so immensely dense it was unbelievable, and a complete tool too. Every word you tried to throw at him just bounced off.

A yes ye old brick wall person, won't even take advice.

[Glaith]

My mum feels the need to turn off my wireless network at night because she fears "The waves will affect her brain."

...apparently only when she's sleeping too

Im assuming she is getting this from the old mobile phone next your head while you sleep is bad for you.