Experiences with non-techies

[HEXiT]

"Will this mouse pad be compatible with my computer?"

this isnt a strange question and sometimes a pretty prudent 1. i have a razor destructor mat, a lachesis and a rat 7. the rat 7 glides like its on glass across the destructor mat. but the lachesis, the mouse the mat was designed for felt like it was beeing dragged across sandpaper.

so yeah it may sound a daft question but there is something behind it...

[Snickerzz]

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"...

O: Dims your real name? Thats awesome! X3

[Snickerzz]

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.

Chrome* I hate when people refer to Google Chrome as just "google" >_>

[Snickerzz]

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.

Maybe a console is better for him...

[rainbrodash666]

oh, oh I have a good one, my sisters "tech master" boyfriend said that minecraft is a huge virus and that it is a problem on their laptop, (it is installed so my niece can play on my server) he says that the connection to my server in installing viruses and keeps uninstalling minecraft, but he never even looks twice at the limewire they use to get music and videos. and they don't even run any antivirus, they uninstalled the free version of avg I put on their laptop because it was a virus too according to him.

yeah, he is also under the assumption that you can install windows 7 off of a disc and be done with it, without getting any system specific drivers at all. then calling the computer a piece of s*** when it does not run perfectly.

[TechTheWorld]

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.

Just had that happen to me a few months ago....Not fun....

[TechTheWorld]

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.

Not a bad idea....I do have a freezer pretty close. Maybe I should just put the whole pc inside...

[greenroost1445]

My whole family is pretty non-tech savvy. Whenever a computer problem arises, they wait until i come back from college for a weekend or break so that I can fix it. My dad needs help sending email. Luckily he doesn't have to that often. He still can't tell the difference between internet browser tabs and open programs shown in the taskbar. My mom and sister were shocked when I told them I put together my first DIY built rig in a few hours one night.

My sister’s old laptop had 3 free antiviruses installed on it for years. She never treated it right, always jostling it around, laying it on her bed sheets for hours at a time. While I had many hard drive problems with the exact same model of laptop, it almost always sat on a desk elevated from the surface, she never had any problems with her hard drive. I had to be the one to point out to her that her charger cable needed to be replaced when the rubber coating had worn away and the metal cable was exposed and fraying.

Man am I glad that both my parents studied IT in collage and know how to treat computer right, but then there's the younger brother. -sigh-

[greenroost1445]

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...^^

wait how old was he?

[Carter]

Once, my mum connected her phone to her friends laptop, but due to other complications it didn't show up as a removable disk. Anyway, I went into my. Computer and she pointed to the c:/ drive and said 'is that it? I don't remember seeing that one before'. I found myself in another faceplam situation...

[striker1553]

One of the worst things is walking into a Best Buy and being told that the salesman don't make commission off products (flat-out lie), then they recommend "gaming" hardware to me (me knowing better), like gts650's at ridiculous prices. Then (since I'm messing with them), when I tell them that I can get a gtx670 that's way better for the same price online, they get mad and try to tell me that their warranties are better! The only thing I like about those stores is being able to return parts that are defective, without an RMA.

Oh and there's this public shop called Gibraltar Trade Center in Michigan here and among a bunch of useless junk, there's a few computer shops. I looked at some of the garbage these small-timers try to sell, then ask them why they don't have any new hardware. They get mad, tell me I don't know what I'm talking about, and try to explain to me why their old Pentium 4 setups tear through games.

I know why they do it, they do it because they have a bunch of old crap they couldn't sell and are now stuck with it. Never going to make money off the parts. Technology moves too fast for the mom and pop computer shops. That's why so many are build on-demand.

[DLM_012]

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."

Nobody has a right to complain about anything if it's in their power to fix it which in her particular case, buy a new computer.

[DLM_012]

One time a guy asked me "If you know so much about computers - what is the electrical resistance to a intel processor? I you don't know the answer you don't know anything." I laughed so hard. :DDD

Then someone asked me: "Put android on my nokia 5320 xpressmusic please."

My teacher uses Windows Media Player - she shows us a video of bees then to close it she presses go to library and then only closes the window.

My grandma didn't shut her monitor off before the pc had turned off - she thought if she powered off the monitor the pc wouldn't work again next time. :D At least i explained how things work to her.

My dad used to be that way. When I was a lot younger and knew nothing about computers, my dad demanded that I always power the monitor off only after the computer turned off lol. And that the desktop (or tower as he calls it) be turned on before I turn the monitor on.

If I did any of that out of order, he made it sound like the computer would self-destruct lmao. Got curious one day and didn't do it in the right order. That's when I realized my dad knew nothing about computers. 10 years later and I'm the one in the house serving as everyone's IT support person -_-

[DLM_012]

hmm experiences with non techies?

well i helped my grandmother find a new laptop for her. When we got the new computer home to her i helped her setting it up and showed her the most important stuff. Later that week she ,called me and told me to "come fix the cup holder" on her computer and then hang up. I figured she was just confused or something considering that she is 76. So i walked to her, when i came in and she showed me her computer, it turned out that she had been using her cd drive for a cup holder for her coffee, she had then managed to spill the coffee over the laptop.

long story short, don't buy your grandmother a computer with a cd drive, it can end badly.

lmfao! CD drive as a cup holder roflolol.

[Whiskers]

This guy right here

His videos are almost all intended as comedy. He says so in his channel description. :P

[Snickerzz]

Some guy at school: Xbox has such better graphics and stuff than pc.

Me: then why is a pc usually more expensive?

guy: i dunno... A controller is better for fps anyway.

me: but it's less accurate and turning is slower, among other things.

guy: yeah but it levels the playing field for everybody. Multiplayer games are more fair then.

me: and some pc gamers don't use a keyboard and mouse?

guy: well, no but...

Some other guy: I built my own computer for 2000$. It can play crysis 1 on maximum.

Me: so can my $700 laptop.

I recently overheard a best buy geek squad guy tell some dude he should use vga on his pc for best results.

NOOOOOOOO!!!

gosh i've heard so much bash about the geek squad XD like honestly from everything i've heard i think they are train in a 30 minute class about computers

[Snickerzz]

One of the new kids last year, in the same year level as me (9), had done a research project and presented it to the class.

The project was on why consoles are better than pc's.

During his brief presentation, the outline for consoles being better was that the consoles had faster internets, which made "call of duty" run faster.

Then he went on to say that the internets on pc were so slow that it couldn't even handle "call of duty" and just plain didn't work.

I laughed at him so hard I was given detention

+1 to Minjons comment XDD

[Snickerzz]

Mom dropped an ancient external drive (which had all my valued SNES ROM Hacks I made) which turned out to be alive even after dropping from 1.5m height to wooden floor. And guess what she did? She plugged in to her pc, clicked some buttons randomly as windows showed up (as she says..) and that just reformatted the whole drive and I was like 'NOOOO WHYYY'

LOL Wauthar

[kiril.zh]

Dad: Why doesn't my keyboard work anymore?

Me: Because you constantly spill water on it

Dad: Oh is that bad for the keyboard?

Me: ........

lol i actually laughted soo hard :D :D :D

[ZombifiedPyro]

I had an old lady (about 70ish) come in looking for a new laptop.

She started to tell me that she was going to overclock her laptop like she had done with her current Vista laptop.

She "Has a friend overseas that showed her how to do it" Apparently its "Really easy and all you have to do it open the root of your computer and change the administrator file"

It has a "little box that asks you how fast you want your CPU" her vista laptop is running at 15GHz.

I literally face-palmed in front of her. I had to get someone else to finish serving her as I couldn't keep my composure.

What do you think she was trying to do?

[Bicko96]

more than once i have had a few people i know ring me saying that there computer is broke can i fix it and the first question i ask them is "did you press the power button?" theres a long pause and then i hear oh its fixed thanks

another thing that always happens is someone gets me to show them something on the computer and as im half way through showing them they say this is to confussing do it for me but i never do i always tell them "Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day, Teach a man to fish and he will eat for a lifetime"

​am i the only one who finds it frustrating when someone who clearly does not know about computers contradics you and just wont admit there wrong and when people just do stupid stuff like ask me why google chrome wont start when they are only doing 1 click not 2

p.s everybody that i talk about in this reply is in the age group of 14-20 in no way are any of these people old

Rant Over! ;)

[Bicko96]

A young friend of mine, who doesn't have much money, is slowly upgrading his rig so I decided that I would give him my old 8800GTX, which is still a beast for how old it is, until he could afford a new card. Anyway I ran this card in a few different systems over the years and it's been a champion and a couple of months after I gave it to him I asked him how it was going and he said that it doesn't work anymore... I remembered that he had a low watt PSU, around 450 watts and he eventually revealed that the PSU only had one six pin PCI-e power cable so he used a single molex to PCI-e adaptor... I told him that was why it broke because molex is never designed to handle the kind of load like PCI-e but he still insists that I gave him a dodgy graphics card. :/

Also I know a lot of people have horror stories with trying to teach their mothers various things on the computer. I'm a very patient person and not very emotional at all but I've been almost frustrated to the point of tears just trying to explain some of the simplest things to her. I don't know whether it's just because she's from an older generation but she finds it impossible to just sit quietly and watch what I do and copy what I do, she has to start drama over how she doesn't understand and we never explain it properly... in the middle of me explaining it to her... sigh thank goodness I've moved to a different city but I feel bad for my dad now hahaha

i know how you feel trying to explain something to your mother it just goes in one ear and out the other i am them same after about 20 mins i just feel like breaking down in tears its so frustrating

[James_AJ]

Mom dropped an ancient external drive (which had all my valued SNES ROM Hacks I made) which turned out to be alive even after dropping from 1.5m height to wooden floor. And guess what she did? She plugged in to her pc, clicked some buttons randomly as windows showed up (as she says..) and that just reformatted the whole drive and I was like 'NOOOO WHYYY'

@Wauthar LOL, even Linus' baby knows how to plug things into the right shaped hole :)

[sniksder16]

LOL this is honestly the funniest forum i have read ever. i have alot of the same experiences as you all and it is so fun to troll the shit out of non tech-savy people, especially the ones who act like they are.

[Art Vandelay]

I've had people try to argue that: you need to let lithium batteries drain fully because it's good for them

macs are good

AMD's processors are faster because they have more GHz

You need a 750 watt PSU for a single graphics card

seagate hard drives are unreliable

western digital hard drives are unreliable

80+ platinum power supplies are worth it in Ontario (6 cents per KWH here)

the Asrock extreme4 is a good motherboard lol