Experiences with non-techies

[Ruostunut kokis]

I love Kaspersky, its my favourite (Don't tell AVG I said that )  But, you can buy a single 3 year license of Kaspersky... 

You goddamn traitor... :lol:

[Beskamir]

I love Kaspersky, its my favourite (Don't tell AVG I said that )  But, you can buy a single 3 year license of Kaspersky... 

Indeed Kaspersky is my favorite too and although it also gives me a few false positives it does it's job well.

[Kherm]

Indeed Kaspersky is my favorite too and although it also gives me a few false positives it does it's job well.

Well that's relieving considering I installed the second license on my PC. I wasn't sure if they were on the same level as McAfee because they deserve a Jimmy Fallon style EW!! GROSS.

Sent from my Nokia Lumia icon with Windows phone

[Akolyte]

You goddamn traitor... :lol:

you better not tell them... lol  

 

Seriously...  you better not...

[Akolyte]

Well that's relieving considering I installed the second license on my PC. I wasn't sure if they were on the same level as McAfee because they deserve a Jimmy Fallon style EW!! GROSS.

Sent from my Nokia Lumia icon with Windows phone

lol.  Kaspersky is my favourite.  Its like a freaking tank.  AVG is good, but I secretly use Kaspersky, and its not like everyone in AVG uses AVG.  Most of them don't.  

 

But Kaspersky has application control, an automatic Host Intrusion Detection System, Network intrusion detection and prevention, Kaspersky Security Network Realtime Cloud Network, Kaspersky Signatures, Advanced Disinfection Technology, Advanced Rootkit Detection, Safe money as well as Vulnerbility Scanning and protection.  And in the 2015 version they added Exploitation protection.  

 

AVG is the best free one, but the Internet Security has a bit more to go yet. The free protection has decent rootkit detection, good detection, disinfection and everything you need to be secure.  But Kaspersky takes it to a whole new level.   

 

Also, most of us at AVG hate Avast.  Not because its a competitor, but because of under the hood, its heuristics are garbage, its deep screen sandboxes for the first 20 seconds (useless) its hardend mode is default deny with no middle ground (problematic)

[Akolyte]

Indeed Kaspersky is my favorite too and although it also gives me a few false positives it does it's job well.

false positives are expected with everything.  Though kaspersky has nothing compared to Avast, Avast I think even scored pretty low in an AV comparitives test due to false positives.  Avast like flags everything and then starts removing the ones that are safe.  Though for most average users you won't notice a thing.  

[vt3c]

Okay, so my dad has been a network admin at various companies for over 10 years now and he knows his way around software and networking like nobody else but he barely understands computer hardware. Here are some tales of his exploits.

 

We have two computers in our basement that serve as routers and website hosts; one is 7 years old and the other is nearing a decade of 24/7 service. Long overdue for an upgrade, right? Well he thought so too so he bought an Asus x79 motherboard with plans to buy a new processor (he thought the older DDR2 RAM would fit in the newer board). However, the processor he planned on buying was the i7 extreme edition (the one with the fancy X on the end) for an extra $500 over it's little brother that gave nearly the same performance. When I suggested he buy the other processor and let me overclock it a little bit he responded "No, overclocking is an experiment and I don't want an experiment, I want a processor." *sighs* To this day he hasn't dropped the money on a new processor and the motherboard itself has remained in its box.

 

Oh, it only gets better from there. About 1.5 years ago he bought himself an Acer C7 chromebook. After about 8 months I noticed he had stopped using it and I asked why. He told me that it was in his room and that it was broken, if I could fix it it could be mine. I powered it up and *lo' and behold* chrome os was simply damaged. A quick recovery later and I had a perfectly functional chromebook of my own which I proceeded to install Ubuntu on. Noticing that I was using the chromebook for school he gave me a little gift: a Samsung 840 Pro (512GB) and an 8GB memory stick to upgrade my chromebook. Hrmm, guess what pops? Chromebooks have a weak processor that can't run enough programs to utilize 10GB of memory or process data as fast as an 840 Pro can spit it out. Rest assured that both parts now have a home in my current laptop so they are no longer going to waste. 

 

Stay tuned for more dad tales including but not limited to: the story of my laptop, apple fanboyism, and Microsoft hate! (Also a potential story that might happen today when I suggest a legitimate solution to our slow internet)

My dad worked at intel in the late 90's and has 3 degrees in computer hardware which he never used in his life. We came into a small amount of cash and figured it was time to retire our old dell to my sister, and get a family computer.

He took me to a local sams club, where I looked at a decent AMD quad core desktop pre-built for $450. It was really decent, 4GB of RAM, Radeon HD 7450... perfect. A little overkill but for the price it's perfect. Even had a 1TB hard drive. You know what he says?

"There's a laptop for $860 dollars over there."

I giggled and said, "Why would we need a laptop for a family computer." 

He shrugged. 

"I dunno. Try and find the highest end laptop you can find." 

I felt like both a kid in a candy store, and like my dad was a dumbass. All the family computer would literally be used for is HD video streaming and documents.

So I found an HP Envy series laptop with a 750m, i7 3630QM, and 16GB of RAM for $1300. He then says, 

"What's the one just a bit slower than that." 

I looked at my dad and said, 

"Well... there's this acer with an A10-5757m, 8GB of RAM, and a touchscreen but I don't know why we'd want th-" Without me even finishing the sentence, he calls for a sales assistant. I flagged my dad down and said it was overkill. The sales assistant, screwing with my ever so naive father, said that this Acer was one of the fastest on the market, and spewing bullshit that as a hardware tech student I know is completely untrue. So my dad bought it for $~900. After removing the over 75GB of acer bloatware, he set it up. We have an HD TV, and my father figured we could hook it up through HDMI to our TV to stream netflix. Never happened.

 

Now my mom pretty much took it over, and my dad spent stupid amounts of money on a 64GB iPad (gen before the ipad air) and my mom uses this hardcore A10 laptop with an 8770m+8650G dual GPU system to play FACEBOOK GAMES AND READ E-MAILS. 

 

And a few weeks ago, that Acer's wireless card took a crap. Which my dad blamed me for. Fantastic.

 

*fast forward 10 months later*

 

I had no monitor but a really new freshly-built gaming PC (the one in my sig) and needed to see if it would boot, he said plugging in my desktop to the HD TV via HDMI would "break the TV" and I "shouldn't take any risks". 

I did anyway later that week when my mom was at work and he was asleep. He screamed at me when he found out saying I was ruining the family by using the TV when everyone was doing something else. And... somehow using the TV to see if my components worked would cause him to lose money and it was going to wire money from his account to some bullcrap. Then I just took my desktop and hooked it up to a friend's monitor to install the OS and drivers until I bought my own. 

I'm no idiot. And I can say if a TV has an HDMI port, something can be plugged into that HDMI port and it won't break it.

And if the TV has a VGA port, it means something is supposed to be plugged into the VGA port. It's not going to break anything.

[Fgtfv567]

My dad worked at intel in the late 90's and has 3 degrees in computer hardware which he never used in his life. We came into a small amount of cash and figured it was time to retire our old dell to my sister, and get a family computer.

He took me to a local sams club, where I looked at a decent AMD quad core desktop pre-built for $450. It was really decent, 4GB of RAM, Radeon HD 7450... perfect. A little overkill but for the price it's perfect. Even had a 1TB hard drive. You know what he says?

"There's a laptop for $860 dollars over there."

I giggled and said, "Why would we need a laptop for a family computer."

He shrugged.

"I dunno. Try and find the highest end laptop you can find."

I felt like both a kid in a candy store, and like my dad was a dumbass. All the family computer would literally be used for is HD video streaming and documents.

So I found an HP Envy series laptop with a 750m, i7 3630QM, and 16GB of RAM for $1300. He then says,

"What's the one just a bit slower than that."

I looked at my dad and said,

"Well... there's this acer with an A10-5757m, 8GB of RAM, and a touchscreen but I don't know why we'd want th-" Without me even finishing the sentence, he calls for a sales assistant. I flagged my dad down and said it was overkill. The sales assistant, screwing with my ever so naive father, said that this Acer was one of the fastest on the market, and spewing bullshit that as a hardware tech student I know is completely untrue. So my dad bought it for $~900. After removing the over 75GB of acer bloatware, he set it up. We have an HD TV, and my father figured we could hook it up through HDMI to our TV to stream netflix. Never happened.

Now my mom pretty much took it over, and my dad spent stupid amounts of money on a 64GB iPad (gen before the ipad air) and my mom uses this hardcore A10 laptop with an 8770m+8650G dual GPU system to play FACEBOOK GAMES AND READ E-MAILS.

And a few weeks ago, that Acer's wireless card took a crap. Which my dad blamed me for. Fantastic.

*fast forward 10 months later*

I had no monitor but a really new freshly-built gaming PC (the one in my sig) and needed to see if it would boot, he said plugging in my desktop to the HD TV via HDMI would "break the TV" and I "shouldn't take any risks".

I did anyway later that week when my mom was at work and he was asleep. He screamed at me when he found out saying I was ruining the family by using the TV when everyone was doing something else. And... somehow using the TV to see if my components worked would cause him to lose money and it was going to wire money from his account to some bullcrap. Then I just took my desktop and hooked it up to a friend's monitor to install the OS and drivers until I bought my own.

I'm no idiot. And I can say if a TV has an HDMI port, something can be plugged into that HDMI port and it won't break it.

And if the TV has a VGA port, it means something is supposed to be plugged into the VGA port. It's not going to break anything.

HE WORKED AT INTEL. HE HAS COMPUTER HARDWARE DEGREES. HOW COULD HE POSSIBLY MAKE THESE KINDS OF FREAKING MISTAKES LIKE THIS?! PLUGGING THE PC INTO THE TV IS BAD?! WHAT THE SHIT?!

[Akolyte]

HE WORKED AT INTEL. HE HAS COMPUTER HARDWARE DEGREES. HOW COULD HE POSSIBLY MAKE THESE KINDS OF FREAKING MISTAKES LIKE THIS?! PLUGGING THE PC INTO THE TV IS BAD?! WHAT THE SHIT?!

TV = pretty much giant monitor... 

[NeatSquidYT]

TV = pretty much giant monitor...

TV = pretty crappy monitor

[ShadowCaptain]

But the worst part is that the moment you register the first license the second and third licences are also activated preventing you from daisy-chaining the licences together for a 3 year license. What a scam! 

 

What? All software is like this, not just Kaspersky, its not a scam, its not 3 licences, its 1 licence for 3 users for 1 year

[Akolyte]

What? All software is like this, not just Kaspersky, its not a scam, its not 3 licences, its 1 licence for 3 users for 1 year

yup.

 

There is a license for 1 year 3 computers or 3 years 1 computer or even 3 years 3 computers.  Simple!

[soup]

you better not tell them... lol  

 

Seriously...  you better not...

 

<on phone mode>

"Erm  AVG it's like this..."

<mode off>  

 

Admission time.  I run MSE mainly to shut up the 'reminder' about how you should install an anti-virus.

<pipe n slippers mode>

In all my time in computing have never had a virus.Touches wood.

<mode off>

but then I don't click on every link I see, don't visit dodgy sites Use WOT. ( http://www.mywot.com ) and have a system image just in case.

[juretrn]

HE WORKED AT INTEL. HE HAS COMPUTER HARDWARE DEGREES. HOW COULD HE POSSIBLY MAKE THESE KINDS OF FREAKING MISTAKES LIKE THIS?! PLUGGING THE PC INTO THE TV IS BAD?! WHAT THE SHIT?!

There is no such thing as "computer hardware degree". More likely an electronics degree, or system design. No school has a course that would be nothing but computer hardware, 99% sure. 

 

Also, hardware advances with such a speed it's unbeliveable. Ewven if you knew all about hardware 10, or even 5 years ago, that knowledge counts for nothing now. You would need to be into HW non-stop. You can't blame someone that doesn't follow the trends for not knowing, you really can't. 

 

 

Wonder how many cores you can fit on a CPU that's 17"*17".

 

An entire 300 mm wafer in one package. 

That would self-combust in 0,3 ms after turning it on. :D

[vt3c]

HE WORKED AT INTEL. HE HAS COMPUTER HARDWARE DEGREES. HOW COULD HE POSSIBLY MAKE THESE KINDS OF FREAKING MISTAKES LIKE THIS?! PLUGGING THE PC INTO THE TV IS BAD?! WHAT THE SHIT?!

Because he thinks he's the smartest man on earth. I kid you not.

[Beskamir]

Because he thinks he's the smartest man on earth. I kid you not.

In my opinion that's the worst kind of nontechie/techie possible.

[Speedbird]

<on phone mode>

"Erm  AVG it's like this..."

<mode off>  

 

Admission time.  I run MSE mainly to shut up the 'reminder' about how you should install an anti-virus.

<pipe n slippers mode>

In all my time in computing have never had a virus.Touches wood.

<mode off>

but then I don't click on every link I see, don't visit dodgy sites Use WOT. ( http://www.mywot.com ) and have a system image just in case.

That's exactly what I do. I started using MSE back when it was good and I'm too lazy to switch. I might install Malwarevytes too, just in case. I have actually never told anyone in my family that MSE is not secure, and everyone but me is running pirated Windows 7 Ultimate 32-bit versions on 64-bit laptops. And my dad is a huge pirate. One day he's gonna get an infection....

[Beskamir]

That's exactly what I do. I started using MSE back when it was good and I'm too lazy to switch. I might install Malwarevytes too, just in case. I have actually never told anyone in my family that MSE is not secure, and everyone but me is running pirated Windows 7 Ultimate 32-bit versions on 64-bit laptops. And my dad is a huge pirate. One day he's gonna get an infection....

Why someone would pirate a 32bit version when their hardware supports and they can just as easily get the 64bit version is beyond me :unsure:

[b45op]

Disaster waiting to happen...

 

But they do last long usually especially if it doesn't run all day, since mechanical drive...

 

you might be joking but the amount of mechanical drives I have had go wrong is huge. Drives can go for no apparent reason at any time. I have had drives last less than a week and others that are chugging along 8 years later.

 

 

So since its Friday I will share... I had a ticket pop up yesterday from a user, now this user was complaining about Outlook 2011 (yes its a mac) not showing his calendar entries, he does have a lot of meetings so naturally this is kind of important. Thank the lords he did (without prompting I might add) manage to make and attach a screenshot of outlook to the ticket.

 

Here is the catch... how do you reply to a ticket in a nice way explaining how to click on a calendar in the side panel. 

[Akolyte]

<on phone mode>

"Erm  AVG it's like this..."

<mode off>  

 

Admission time.  I run MSE mainly to shut up the 'reminder' about how you should install an anti-virus.

<pipe n slippers mode>

In all my time in computing have never had a virus.Touches wood.

<mode off>

but then I don't click on every link I see, don't visit dodgy sites Use WOT. ( http://www.mywot.com ) and have a system image just in case.

you can turn that off.

 

And MSE isn't bad, if you have safe online practices in all reality, theres no need for an antivirus (please don't tell AVG I'm saying this )  Because Chrome and Firefox block malicious downloads and websites, MSE is fine because it has no additional protection than just a database, which is fine.  

[Akolyte]

you might be joking but the amount of mechanical drives I have had go wrong is huge. Drives can go for no apparent reason at any time. I have had drives last less than a week and others that are chugging along 8 years later.

 

 

So since its Friday I will share... I had a ticket pop up yesterday from a user, now this user was complaining about Outlook 2011 (yes its a mac) not showing his calendar entries, he does have a lot of meetings so naturally this is kind of important. Thank the lords he did (without prompting I might add) manage to make and attach a screenshot of outlook to the ticket.

 

Here is the catch... how do you reply to a ticket in a nice way explaining how to click on a calendar in the side panel. 

I used to tell my mom to back up, she didn't... 

 

She had her old XP computer (1GB of RAM, single core, 200GB HDD) for a while 12 years.  And I ran Crystal disk info and it was STILL FINE!!!  But, she needed a new computer so I smashed it up. 

[Dude]

Charlie-Mcdonnell.gif

 

 

That kid is using the stock Apple accessories... Also... He's using a Mac... That is way more facedesk worthy.

[soup]

you can turn that off.

 

 

 

You can! How?

[juretrn]

I used to tell my mom to back up, she didn't... 

 

She had her old XP computer (1GB of RAM, single core, 200GB HDD) for a while 12 years.  And I ran Crystal disk info and it was STILL FINE!!!  But, she needed a new computer so I smashed it up. 

I guess that is quite lucky. My dad had an office computer which was so PAINFULLY slow. It turned out the drive was shot beyond belief. HD Tach showed read speeds of unbeliveable 2 MB/s, I kid you not. 

[Akolyte]

Because he thinks he's the smartest man on earth. I kid you not.

my step grandfather is an asshole-womanizer and thinks the same way, he only married my grandmother for her insane ammount of money...

 

Anyway, I go over to their mansion.  And they have antiques, gold plates everywhere, a diamond chandelier..   But...  an old $200 computer running XP...  its so slow they can't even read emails on it.  So, I go over and I'm like "well, I'll take a look at it" and I go and boot it up, after 20 minutes of booting im at the desktop.  I see their hard drive has I kid you not less than 1GB left.  So I decide to open up disk cleanup, but NO.  He says "thats a virus, it ruins your computer!  Don't open it!"  He bloody knows I work for AVG, so why the hell would I run a virus!?!?  Anyways, when he was out once.  I asked my grandmother if I could go on it, she said "sure" 

Oh, and I found he didn't want me to run cleanup because he kept his porn folder in the recycle bin so my grandmother couldn't find it. 

 

So I went on it, and I'm not kidding, theres a 20GB porn folder, and it turns out they CAN email, and I see emails to all these kinds of women.  I knew my step grandfather would beat me until I had more bruises than skin if I told her, so I didn't.  Hes a horrible, mean womanizer.