Experiences with non-techies

[ZombifiedPyro]

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

It might be.

Nope.

Nope.

Nope.

Nope.

Depends.

Nope. Unless you have 10 servers with quad 680s.

If it is cheap, otherwise, Nope.

[mvitkun]

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

the asrock extreme 4 is a good motherboard lol.

[Enderman]

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!!!

you can use controllers on a pc...

[Enderman]

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.

google is a search engine...

[CoffeeBlack]

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.

Best Buy sales people do not make a commission. However, they do have quotas and are usually harassed or receive threats about losing their job if they don't meet them.

[Fetzie]

My parents are of the impression that I can "fix the internet" when it stops working.

[Huyster]

A women and her two daughters came into the phone repair shop I worked in. Both the daughters had ipod touch's and said that they couldn't install any apps because ios firmware was out of date and asked us to fix it for them. We simply updated the ipods through itunes. We charged them 40 dollars each.

[Fetzie]

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

But it it a good motherboard. It has all the features that you pay 30 dollars more for with Asus et al, it will overclock your 2500k/3570k to 4.5-4.6GHz (how many people actually push the CPU further?) and it doesn't look too bad either.

http://valid.canardpc.com/2754405

See there. 3570K @4.9GHz, P95 stable on a Z77E4

[SubTract]

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.

I seriously don't know. Either she is an excellent troll or she should really re-consider her friends....

[HEXiT]

Must read.... I borrowed this from a friends post..

Recently, when I went to McDonald's I saw on the menu that you could have an order of 6, 9 or 12 Chicken McNuggets.

I asked for a half dozen nuggets.

'We don't have half dozen nuggets,' said the teenager at the counter.

'You don't?' I replied.

'We only have six, nine, or twelve,' was the reply.

'So I can't order a half dozen nuggets, but I can order six?'

'That's right.'

So I shook my head and ordered six McNuggets

(Unbelievable but sadly true...)

(Must have been the same one I asked for sweetener,

and she said they didn't have any, only Splenda and sugar.)

TWO

I was checking out at the local Wal-Mart with just a few items and the lady behind me put her things on the belt close to mine. I picked up one of those 'dividers' that they keep by the cash register and placed it between our things so they wouldn't get mixed.

After the girl had scanned all of my items, she picked up the

'divider', looking it all over for the bar code so she could scan it.

Not finding the bar code, she said to me, 'Do you know how much this is?'

I said to her 'I've changed my mind; I don't think I'll buy that today.'

She said 'OK,' and I paid her for the things and left.

She had no clue to what had just happened.

( But the lady behind me had a big smirk on her face as I left)

THREE

A woman at work was seen putting a credit card into her floppy drive and pulling it out very quickly.

When I inquired as to what she was doing, she said she was shopping on the Internet and they kept asking for a credit card number, so she was using the ATM 'thingy.'

(Keep shuddering!!)

FOUR

I recently saw a distraught young lady weeping beside her car. 'Do you need some help?' I asked. She replied, 'I knew I should have replaced the battery to this remote door unlocker. Now I can't get into my car. Do you think they (pointing to a distant convenience store) would have a battery to fit this?'

'Hmmm, I don't know. Do you have an alarm, too?' I asked.

'No, just this remote thingy,' she answered,

handing it and the car keys to me. As I

took the key and manually unlocked the door, I

replied, 'Why don't you drive over there and

check about the batteries. It's a long walk....'

PLEASE just lay down before you hurt yourself !!!

FIVE

Several years ago, we had an Intern who was none too swift. One day she was typing and turned to a secretary and said, 'I'm almost out of typing paper. What do I do?' 'Just use paper from the photocopier', the secretary told her. With that, the intern took her last remaining blank piece of paper, put it on the photocopier and proceeded to make five 'blank' copies.

Brunette, by the way!!

SIX

A mother calls 911 very worried asking the dispatcher if she needs to take her kid to the emergency room, the kid had eaten ants. The dispatcher tells her to give the kid some Benadryl and he should be fine, the mother says, 'I just gave him some ant killer......'

Dispatcher: 'Rush him in to emergency right away'

Life is tough. It's even tougher if you're Stupid!!!!

Someone had to remind me, so I'm reminding you too.

Don't laugh....it is all true...

my nephew just posted this on his facebook, so i thought i could share it here... number 3 is typical tech noob...

[ExDreamer]

I laugh hard at the last story.

[SubTract]

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.

As long as you can keep the moisture out.

[Sardis]

Oh man that last story just scared me! How... what... why... lucky thing she told the 911 operator that she had given him the ant killer, who knows what would have happened if she didn't! :eek:

[LOLPhilips]

This guy right here

This worked perfectly for me I had a 50 down 6 up connection now I enjoy the double =)

[chingyg]

This guy right here

I'm more impressed on how the guy can keep a straight face and give a somewhat legit explaination using physics.

[ZombifiedPyro]

A women and her two daughters came into the phone repair shop I worked in. Both the daughters had ipod touch's and said that they couldn't install any apps because ios firmware was out of date and asked us to fix it for them. We simply updated the ipods through itunes. We charged them 40 dollars each.

My apple store does stuff for free. Install updates, fix itunes, replace cords, etc. I hate apple/itunes so I never learn how to use it.

[GTX590]

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

This is incorrect. Molex>6/8pin is fine if the PSU is decent quality with a strong 12V rail. I ran a GTX 480 on a 450W 80+ Gold PSU running a molex>8pin and a 6pin from the PSU for 4 years on a mild OC. Has more to do with the PSU than the connector.

[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

The extreme4 has D-pak MOSFETs. It is terrible if you want to overclock.

[Crion]

Oh I could go on and on about this since I was a tech for a while and now am a sysadmin.

1. We saw an increase in phishing spam sent to our users wanting them to "confirm their accounts" to "keep them open". We send out an official announcement saying that we've noticed an increase in spam asking for users passwords and to not give out passwords in an email if asked. We end up getting about 20 users reply to the announcement with their username and password... fail...

2. Probably the funniest moment I've ever had in tech support was when someone walked into the place I was working holding an ethernet cable by both ends. He claimed that his machine had gotten infected with a virus and that he reinstalled Windows and it came back so he was convinced that the virus was "stuck in his ethernet cable" and was holding the ends up because he didn't want it to "fall out".

[rainbrodash666]

Oh I could go on and on about this since I was a tech for a while and now am a sysadmin.

1. We saw an increase in phishing spam sent to our users wanting them to "confirm their accounts" to "keep them open". We send out an official announcement saying that we've noticed an increase in spam asking for users passwords and to not give out passwords in an email if asked. We end up getting about 20 users reply to the announcement with their username and password... fail...

2. Probably the funniest moment I've ever had in tech support was when someone walked into the place I was working holding an ethernet cable by both ends. He claimed that his machine had gotten infected with a virus and that he reinstalled Windows and it came back so he was convinced that the virus was "stuck in his ethernet cable" and was holding the ends up because he didn't want it to "fall out".

oh my gosh, how please tell me how. I don't even.

[colonel_mortis]

This is a great thread but it seems to have dropped of the first page so bump.

[mozoa]

Luckily people started taking my advice for granted, but now i get called on a bit to much

[DLM_012]

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.

Where I live, Craigslist is filled with people claiming that Pentium 4's are capable machines.

[DLM_012]

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! ;)

Tablets and smartphones are making them stupid. Soon nobody in my generation or younger will know how to use a desktop.

[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! ;)

your right mobile computing is great but we should never forget how to use a desktop