Experiences with non-techies

[PianoPlayer88Key]

21 hours ago, whm1974 said:

I use Passphrases so it is easy for me to remember. And yes always use numbers and special symbols.

I'd do that too, if sites never had existed that limit your password to like 8 or 12 or 16 characters, or that only allowed alphanumeric characters. (Once I first learn a way of doing something, I keep doing it that way for decades. Frequent change is hard for me.)

[da na]

My friend who says his i3 is better than my Xeon because his core clock is 3.1 and mine is 2.9... Mind you, his quad core i3 turbos to like 3.6 and my dual 8 core xeons turbo to 3.8...

[WhitetailAni]

2 minutes ago, wat3rmelon_man2 said:

My friend who says his i3 is better than my Xeon because his core clock is 3.1 and mine is 2.9... Mind you, his quad core i3 turbos to like 3.6 and my dual 8 core xeons turbo to 3.8...

Do a Cinebench-off.

That should convince him.

[Drama Lama]

8 hours ago, Schnoz said:

It's like saying a 5 GHz FX-9590 is better than a Ryzen 9 5950X...it's surprising how many people believe that clockspeed is everything.

Bigger numba bedda numba

[PianoPlayer88Key]

 

15 hours ago, wat3rmelon_man2 said:

My friend who says his i3 is better than my Xeon because his core clock is 3.1 and mine is 2.9... Mind you, his quad core i3 turbos to like 3.6 and my dual 8 core xeons turbo to 3.8...

 

15 hours ago, FakeKGB said:

Do a Cinebench-off.

That should convince him.

Something like this, perhaps?

 

 

I nerfed the 4790K for this one, to give it the same core / thread counts and clock speeds as the T7250.

 

I'd like to see someone do a similar comparison - using one of the first dual-socket motherboards ever made, like Pentium (1 / Pro) or Pentium II (Xeon), and a modern Ryzen 5000-series or Intel 10th-gen CPU set to the same core / thread count and clockspeed.
 

Spoiler

Would have to be a different version of Cinebench, or a different benchmark entirely cause those older CPUs probably don't support WIndows 10, and are 32-bit not 64; also I'm not sure how to run a modern CPU at like 150 or 200 MHz clocks.  (good thing I proofread, a key on this keyboard must not have registered the keypress right and it looked like a reference to .... I blame it on the keyboard not supporting (unlimited) NKRO...)

 

I've seen the "low" in HWInfo64 on my 4790K or 6700K at like 50 MHz, but I think that might have been when it was going into or coming out of sleep / hibernation.

 

I have a screenshot of Cinebench R20 on a 6700K doing only 9 multi-core, and R15 on a 4790K doing 4 multi-core score - those were in a virtual machine with the CPU capped at 800 MHz in the host, and VirtualBox limiting the VM to like 10% execution cap or less.

 

I'd like to see the comparison I mentioned outside the spoiler NOT be done in a VM.

 

 

 

 

15 hours ago, Schnoz said:

It's like saying a 5 GHz FX-9590 is better than a Ryzen 9 5950X...it's surprising how many people believe that clockspeed is everything.

 

6 hours ago, Drama Lama said:

Bigger numba bedda numba

I like to see bigga IPC number, as in, bigga Cinebench score (or other benchmark) at the same clock speed, assuming the same core / thread count.   (I miss the days when single generations could have like a 100% jump in IPC, like 8086 -> 286, or 486 -> Pentium.  I think there was a sizeable jump involving the 386 as well, too.)

 

[da na]

our school laptops until a few year back were those white macbooks, before there was an Air or Pro. they were like late '09 or so. They were single core <2ghz, the ram was the problem though. They all had different ram capacities. mine had a 2g stick and a 512m stick, and my friend had 2 2g sticks. There was the kid with dual 512mb who hated life cause he couldn't run Word

[da na]

Another one bout my school, all of the speakers are in the ceiling. Not too bad, right? Well, you can hear what the class 4 rooms away are doing because the speakers are so poorly designed plus the teachers don't know how to change the vol of the amp... Those replaced a single pair of Logitech speakers on every teachers desk that was supposed to be audible through the whole room.

[Sweet Pea]

10 minutes ago, wat3rmelon_man2 said:

Another one bout my school, all of the speakers are in the ceiling. Not too bad, right? Well, you can hear what the class 4 rooms away are doing because the speakers are so poorly designed plus the teachers don't know how to change the vol of the amp... Those replaced a single pair of Logitech speakers on every teachers desk that was supposed to be audible through the whole room.

This seems to be common in the US. I remember hearing teachers far down the hall (like 6 or 7 class rooms away) talking to the administrators who would call in. It's really funny to see how education uses technology, and instead of learning about options, just get whatever is cheap as possible. 

[Donut417]

51 minutes ago, Science Officer Spock said:

instead of learning about options, just get whatever is cheap as possible. 

How do you think they fund education? It’s thru tax dollars. In Michigan school funding is on the ballot. When ever they need an increase they have to put it to a vote. These rarely pass where I live. 

[CT854]

1 minute ago, Donut417 said:

How do you think they fund education? It’s thru tax dollars. In Michigan school funding is on the ballot. When ever they need an increase they have to put it to a vote. These rarely pass where I live. 

 

I was about to say... it's not like it's entirely the faults of IT departments in school boards across the country that they end up with crappy tech. Part of it is incompetence, sure, but it's hard to weigh options when your district is dangerously cash-strapped.

[pythonmegapixel]

My school bought new all-in-one systems every 2 years. They could probably have saved a substantial amount by (a) replacing the computers half as often (the previous gen machines still being perfectly adequate when they were replaced) and (b) buying desktops with separate monitors; given the kind of work they're being used for (predominantly word documents, web browsing and introductory programming) there is no reason why the monitors couldn't have been satisfactory for upwards of 5-6 years (and so didn't really need replacing in conjunction with the rest of the system)

[Sweet Pea]

On 3/11/2021 at 3:07 PM, Donut417 said:

How do you think they fund education? It’s thru tax dollars. In Michigan school funding is on the ballot. When ever they need an increase they have to put it to a vote. These rarely pass where I live. 

Honestly, I had no idea about that. I thought that some of it was through tax, and the other was directly from the local government. I live in the west coast, but with cousins in the east coast, they have iMacs in their library

[soldier_ph]

I over heard a girl and boy talking about random crap in the Hallway at school the other day and suddenly they changed the subject to Smartphones all of a sudden and she was like "I'll literally smash my iPhone into the ground should it have "problems" again".

I full body cringed when I heard that...

[whm1974]

1 hour ago, soldier_ph said:

I over heard a girl and boy talking about random crap in the Hallway at school the other day and suddenly they changed the subject to Smartphones all of a sudden and she was like "I'll literally smash my iPhone into the ground should it have "problems" again".

I full body cringed when I heard that...

Must have Parents with lot's of Money... Even the lower end ones are pricey.

[whm1974]

I heard this back in 94/95: A woman calls the Vendor's service department and says her Coffee Cup Holder on her computer is broke, and wants a replacement. The SD Employee ask her to describe the Model of Computer of computer she has....

 

Turns out that the Coffee Cup Holder is the CD Tray of the CD-ROM... She was using that to hold her coffee while on the computer...

 

Is this actually true, or an Urban Legend?

 

[Bitter]

34 minutes ago, whm1974 said:

I heard this back in 94/95: A woman calls the Vendor's service department and says her Coffee Cup Holder on her computer is broke, and wants a replacement. The SD Employee ask her to describe the Model of Computer of computer she has....

 

Turns out that the Coffee Cup Holder is the CD Tray of the CD-ROM... She was using that to hold her coffee while on the computer...

 

Is this actually true, or an Urban Legend?

 

1991 faxed, they want their computer joke back.

[whm1974]

3 minutes ago, Bitter said:

1991 faxed, they want their computer joke back.

I merely want to know if anyone actually put a mug of coffee on the CD-ROM Tray.

[Ankh Tech]

On 3/11/2021 at 11:58 PM, pythonmegapixel said:

My school bought new all-in-one systems every 2 years. They could probably have saved a substantial amount by (a) replacing the computers half as often (the previous gen machines still being perfectly adequate when they were replaced) and (b) buying desktops with separate monitors; given the kind of work they're being used for (predominantly word documents, web browsing and introductory programming) there is no reason why the monitors couldn't have been satisfactory for upwards of 5-6 years (and so didn't really need replacing in conjunction with the rest of the system)

Our schools have dell optiplexes that have been there for probably a decade. The only new thing id that they give ech new generation the newest acer r11 chromebook in year 7

[whm1974]

5 minutes ago, Ankh Tech said:

Our schools have dell optiplexes that have been there for probably a decade. The only new thing id that they give ech new generation the newest acer r11 chromebook in year 7

The cheapest ones?

[Ankh Tech]

29 minutes ago, whm1974 said:

The cheapest ones?

No quite decent ones, dual core celeron, touch screen, 360 hinge, and a stylus, on the two most recent models

[Ankh Tech]

31 minutes ago, whm1974 said:

The cheapest ones?

oh and the optiplexes, probably like the 2nd gen i5 ones, gets 20 fps in kodu, lol

[sub68]

some teacher in the school

the alumnium scratched bare

assumed feet were missing

[whm1974]

On 3/13/2021 at 10:35 PM, Bitter said:

1991 faxed, they want their computer joke back.

As I can recall, during the very early 90's. very few PCs had CD-ROM drives as Standard.

[tkitch]

On 3/5/2021 at 4:35 PM, whm1974 said:

Well calling the Desktop/Tower a CPU came from the Mainframe and Minicomputer Era. Referring to Memory/RAM and Storage Devices as "Primary Storage" and "Secondary Storage" also came from the same point in Time as well.

 

This drove me nuts when I went to Community College and took a few computer courses. To my Knowledge those Terms were never used with Microcomputers/PCs at all.

When I worked retail and anyone said "I need a new hard drive"

I showed them hard drives.  Clearly labeled as such on the retail boxes.  

 

"That's not what I need!" said about half of them.

We'd walk past the computer department on the way back and they'd point at a tower "I need that kind of hard drive!"  

[whm1974]

59 minutes ago, tkitch said:

When I worked retail and anyone said "I need a new hard drive"

I showed them hard drives.  Clearly labeled as such on the retail boxes.  

 

"That's not what I need!" said about half of them.

We'd walk past the computer department on the way back and they'd point at a tower "I need that kind of hard drive!"  

I first encountered this with a Coworker back say 2000 or maybe even 2001. He kept arguing with me that my Display is a Computer and the Tower is the hard Drive. Nevermind that I built the thing. Also been upgrading older Systems well before that.

 

I could have simply show him a website that explains Computers well enough for non techs to understand.