Sadness for non-technical users.

[Gat Pelsinger]

I am kind of depressed in the modern computing for the non enthusiast people. I can't resist opening task manager once every minute but there are those who have their task manager on Windows still showing the simplified UI of the current programs running (basically never opened). The non technical people around me think I am a weirdo using a command line like it is the 90s, and others don't even know what a command prompt is. Of course, it is not their fault that they are not technical with computers. I can only imagine a medical student yelling at my diet, but I don't even know and that also isn't my fault.

 

What I am ranting about is how modern computing handle the non enthusiasts. What I mean is that there are so many instances where something is wrong and the average consumer is getting a worse experience without him/her realizing at all that anything is wrong. I can give so many examples.

 

One would be that I have experienced Discord not closing properly and actually hogging a single core completely after closing. This is a bug, and I have to realize it after opening task manager. The worst part is, if this happens to the average Joe, which it probably does, they might not even know their system is running slower and keep on with it.

 

Another example would be if your CPU suddenly is running at a way slower clock speed (sometimes happens with a faulty BD PROCHOT sensor), you might be losing a lot of performance, but yet not realizing much.

 

One thing that I hate about the average Joes not realizing is that every type of machine has some kind of maintenance. In a PC, it is a good thing to replace thermal paste, but of course people around me use laptops 10 years old (just because they have it) with absolutely terrible thermals. When I got my laptop first cleaned by the fins, I couldn't believe the temperature drop I got. The average Joe who at least knows cleanliness will go wiping the body and the screen and say "oh, my PC is such in a good condition" will having their CPU screaming with power and thermal throttling and their OS completely filled with bloat and inner errors.

 

And of course I am talking about laptops, because wait, who buys desktops? Aren't they an older technology? My dad replied that lol. And I asked my mom give me one reason a desktop is better than a laptop and she guessed "uh I dunno, maybe it is more sturdy?". That time I realized how less the very average Joe knows about computers and how EASY it is to manipulate them. 

 

What do they know how much better a desktop is over a laptop? What do they know how better a custom PC is over a prebuilt? I bet 90% Joes don't even know what a custom PC is and when they are asked to buy a PC, they will give a call to Dell of course. And also can't forget the antivirus that a Joe blindly spends their hard earned money just to manually slow down their PC, or worse, install a malware with their own hands.

 

And when they do go to an OEM, this is first checklist at the hands of the seller - 

1) Single channel RAM only. Dual channel is illegal.

2) Mathematical system power usage - 300 W. PSU rating - 300 W. That too fire hazardous.

3) 80mm cooling fan to precisely run the CPU at 97 C. See, it ain't thermal throttling!

4) Take away all BIOS controls for a better and simpler experience for the user.

5) GEN 5 NVME SSD without cache for cost cutting.

 

This all gets even worse when the average Joe does actually find a problem and sends their PC to a repair shop. They do charge quite a bit, and all they manage to do is a Windows re-install, something I can do for free. I remember when I was a kid and knew nothing about computers, my dad gave my laptop to a repair center to make it faster because it was getting slower because of the 215 chrome extensions I had downloaded thinking they were the correct download button to the free game I wanted to download lol . I remember they asked to backup any data as everything would be erased. Today I realized that all they did was re-installed Windows (of course without any deep optimizations) and they actually took a lot for what they did. That's how easy it is to manipulate the average joe. I can give many more examples but the post is already too long.

 

Idk the aim of this post, I just wanted to share what I feel, but maybe fixing this won't be that bad of an idea. 

 

Your BIOS could notify if XMP/DOCP is not enabled. It maybe can give tips to improve performance like increasing the power limit. Windows or anything else can report a problem if your CPU is running on a lower clock speed for too long or if it is thermal throttling heavily. Yeah I know Microsoft isn't that generous but still. Windows can suggest actually helpful tips like for basic optimization of the system and maintenance. OEM can have better maintenance tips on manual or better show it after the OOBE so people will actually read them. And have some, I mean just a little bit, of honesty (or maybe like a law or something) and sell people a system with dual channel RAM, a PSU that is not a fire cracker, and a CPU that doesn't burn.

[Levent]

If TLDR is correct, then I agree.

 

[goatedpenguin]

Thats life too, not everybody knows how to go about it and need help from others, everyone should know how technology works if they are going to be using it just like they would know how to make an egg or how to do their job. Going off the chatGPT tldr in the post above here.

[goatedpenguin]

Afaik you can’t get notifications from the bios while using the OS since its not even running you would only know if it were told at boot time, its not a simple task to do.

[Levent]

2 minutes ago, goatedpenguin said:

Afaik you can’t get notifications from the bios while using the OS since

Yeah I somehow missed that part while reading. lmao.

Yeah that begs to wonder, why would you even need to lol? Every single thing is exposed to user if they are running as root in their operating system. Only those are not user accessible are hidden, just like they dont appear in bios .

[RONOTHAN##]

6 minutes ago, goatedpenguin said:

Afaik you can’t get notifications from the bios while using the OS since its not even running you would only know if it were told at boot time, its not a simple task to do.

I mean, getting it to show up at boot time wouldn't be too difficult, MSI boards have already done something like that where they'll yell at you on start up if you put the memory sticks in the wrong slots. It shouldn't be that much more effort to convert a system like that into saying "hey, enable XMP pls"

 

Whether or not that's a good thing is up for debate. XMP isn't 100% reliable, and since a lot of the "Average Joes" that OP is talking about aren't going to want or even know how to troubleshoot a non-functional XMP and wondering why their system is just randomly blue screening, not having a message like that will likely save them quite a bit of customer service requests. 

[Gat Pelsinger]

31 minutes ago, Levent said:

If TLDR is correct, then I agree.

 

I would have been very amazed to know how you made ChatGPT do that, but just today I found out that you can ask the summary of a video on Gemini. I thought ChatGPT can't do it because I heard it cannot access the actual internet, but now it can? What is more amazing is how fast it parses the whole post and answers so quickly like damn this opened a new may to use AI for me lol.

[Gat Pelsinger]

@Levent

 

Wait a sec, ChatGPT can't parse videos. But Gemini can! Wait this is actually really cool lol now that I am finding this. Google did a great job with the functionality but yeah there are some allegations. 

[da na]

I am envious of non-technical users' ability to treat computers as mundane tools, the same way one would use a spoon or pair of scissors - that is, expecting it to work without wondering how it does so. 

[Alex Atkin UK]

I'm a technical user, and I've never bothered to replace thermal paste on my laptop.  I feel the importance of this is grossly overblown and people who see huge improvements are very niche cases.

 

As for enabling XMP, considering the type of user you are talking about, you already pointed out that they are more likely to buy a laptop so this point is redundant.  This kind of person buying a pre-built, you'd hope the manufacturer already enabled XMP and would they even notice the performance difference in using JEDEC timings in the first place?

 

I mean sure, a novice user is paying through the nose for simple fixes - the same as any other tool.  I know that if I maintain my bicycle myself I can save a fortune, but I'd rather just pay someone else to do it.  A lot of people don't WANT to know how to fix their own things, they have better things to do with their time.

 

Quite frankly as I'm getting older, I'd rather things "just work" than the stress of trying to fix problems.

 

My bigger concern with the average user is them trusting their device manufacturer.  For example I tried to offer my services to backup my cousins photos and her response was "its okay, I use iCloud".  Plus the sheer number of security issues people are blissfully unaware of.

 

This is not going to change sadly, most people aren't problem solvers or technically minded in general, they just want to get on with their lives and not have to think about how any of the tech works.

[Caroline]

The enshittification is everywhere. It's not about getting a decent product but one that's "good enough".

 

1 hour ago, Gat Pelsinger said:

a repair shop. They do charge quite a bit, and all they manage to do is a Windows re-install, something I can do for free.

This is capitalism baby, you don't simply go through life doing things for free, even if it's something as easy as reinstalling a horrible operating system. It's not about being greedy but about knowing your time and knowledge are worth a reasonable amount of legal tender. Do something for free and they'll use it as an excuse to get MORE things done for free, and if you refuse you get a tantrum or "oh, I thought you were better than that" crap. It's not "manipulating" anyone, it's simply having a reward for your abilities.

Quote

A fair day's pay after a fair day's work.

[da na]

38 minutes ago, Alex Atkin UK said:

I'm a technical user, and I've never bothered to replace thermal paste on my laptop.  I feel the importance of this is grossly overblown and people who see huge improvements are very niche cases.

About 1/2 of the laptops I work on absolutely require thermal maintenance - dusting heatsink/fan and repasting processor + graphics + chipset - because after 15-20 years, fans get clogged and paste wears out. There's often a 30 degree improvement. Some of them run in the high 70s under full load, I still do work on them to quiet down the fan but it's not strictly needed. Keep in mind these are 35-watt Core 2 Duo and Turion 64 x2 processors too, so higher wattages than you'd see now.

 

But with most people keeping laptops for like 2-4 years, paste will not degrade anywhere near that fast. 

[Avocado Diaboli]

 

Some people don't have the time or interest in maintaining their PCs. They expect them to just work and if something doesn't, they hand it of to a friend who knows what they're doing or to an expert. Same thing with cars. If you can't be bothered to deal with maintenance and repairs yourself, you hand it off to someone else or just deal with the fact that it'll eventually deteriorate to the point of not being usable anymore. You have to realize that not everything you are interested in is as interesting to everybody else. People aren't a hivemind. For every person you find who is enthusiastic about the same thing as you, you'll find a dozen who couldn't care less. So why bother lamenting other people's inabilities to care for something? They don't care. Why should you? Use your time better than that.

[goatedpenguin]

2 hours ago, RONOTHAN## said:

I mean, getting it to show up at boot time wouldn't be too difficult, MSI boards have already done something like that where they'll yell at you on start up if you put the memory sticks in the wrong slots. It shouldn't be that much more effort to convert a system like that into saying "hey, enable XMP pls"

 

Agreed but its not possible while the OS is running though, the only way it would be possible is through a CLI tool like dmesg. However, that is not friendly for the average Joe which is what OP is trying to say.

[goatedpenguin]

1 hour ago, da na said:

About 1/2 of the laptops I work on absolutely require thermal maintenance - dusting heatsink/fan and repasting processor + graphics + chipset - because after 15-20 years, fans get clogged and paste wears out. There's often a 30 degree improvement. Some of them run in the high 70s under full load, I still do work on them to quiet down the fan but it's not strictly needed. Keep in mind these are 35-watt Core 2 Duo and Turion 64 x2 processors too, so higher wattages than you'd see now.

 

But with most people keeping laptops for like 2-4 years, paste will not degrade anywhere near that fast. 

Realistically speaking though nobody is going to be using a laptop that is from 10-20 years ago. 

[da na]

8 minutes ago, goatedpenguin said:

Realistically speaking though nobody is going to be using a laptop that is from 10-20 years ago. 

 

Spoiler

Hi, I'm that nobody.

 

I'm definitely on the left side of the bell curve but I exclusively use Core 2 Duo era laptops, with the occasional first-gen i5. 

The cutoff could still reasonably be placed around the 4th gen CPUs for laptops, it's pretty remarkable what Ivy Bridge can still do and there are people who really love those machines, those are nearing the era where repasting is starting to be necessary.

But yeah your 2 year old Ryzen 3 laptop does not need a repaste.

[Alex Atkin UK]

12 minutes ago, goatedpenguin said:

Realistically speaking though nobody is going to be using a laptop that is from 10-20 years ago. 

I'd replace that with "should be" rather than "is", because sadly people very much do.  You'd be amazed how many people will put up with a terrible experience day to day, because they don't think its worth the cost to get something newer.

 

I have a friend in Texas I have completely failed to convince to get an SSD because its "too expensive for 2TB" and every time he boots up his laptop he complains that Windows takes 2-3 minutes to boot.

 

He did however want me to send my old Ryzen laptop to him with Linux on it - then I saw the shipping cost for UK to US is more than the value of the darn laptop.  I'd have bought a darn 2TB SSD and sent it to him in that.

[goatedpenguin]

Haha that is very true I used to have a 2015 macbook pro which still works like a charm(I don't use it that much anymore tho). 9 years old and a core i7 haswell cpu, chef's kiss, a very reliable computer. 

[goatedpenguin]

2 minutes ago, Alex Atkin UK said:

I'd replace that with "should be" rather than "is", because sadly people very much do.  You'd be amazed how many people will put with a terrible experience day to day, because they don't think its worth the cost to get something newer.

This is my point, sometimes the user is not getting to work or something is failing simply because their hardware is too old and their expectations are too high. I get that not everybody can afford it but the average would probably be 5-7 year old laptops. 

[da na]

12 minutes ago, Alex Atkin UK said:

I'd replace that with "should be" rather than "is", because sadly people very much do.  You'd be amazed how many people will put up with a terrible experience day to day, because they don't think its worth the cost to get something newer.

 

I have a friend in Texas I have completely failed to convince to get an SSD because its "too expensive for 2TB" and every time he boots up his laptop he complains that Windows takes 2-3 minutes to boot.

 

He did however want me to send my old Ryzen laptop to him with Linux on it - then I saw the shipping cost for UK to US is more than the value of the darn laptop.  I'd have bought a darn 2TB SSD and sent it to him in that.

It's not even the CPU/RAM/graphics that's the problem with old laptops, it is always the cheap 5400RPM SMR hard drive. It is truly astonishing how equally miserable a Ryzen 7 and Core 2 Duo can be from a laptop hard drive (and how fast the latter is when booting from half-decent solid state storage.)

[WiscoMetro]

2 hours ago, da na said:

About 1/2 of the laptops I work on absolutely require thermal maintenance - dusting heatsink/fan and repasting processor + graphics + chipset - because after 15-20 years, fans get clogged and paste wears out. There's often a 30 degree improvement.

I let mine get bad for years of constant full blast fan and high temps before repasting it... Both the CPU and GPU paste were basically fired ceramic, took like an hour of picking at it with a pen cap to get it off. Now it happily runs cool and quiet.

 

1 hour ago, goatedpenguin said:

Realistically speaking though nobody is going to be using a laptop that is from 10-20 years ago. 

I do, 2008 HP Elitebook 8530w represent! The beveled edge keys are just too good to give up, I can't stand modern laptop keys(or increasingly desktop keyboards that are taking that form). A high end Core2Duo and dedicated GPU from back then still suffice for light use, and if more power is needed fire up the desktop!

 

1 hour ago, Alex Atkin UK said:

I'd replace that with "should be" rather than "is", because sadly people very much do.  You'd be amazed how many people will put up with a terrible experience day to day, because they don't think its worth the cost to get something newer.

But there are pros too: 16:10 display, better keys, DVD drive, and it still has WiFi, HDMI, Bluetooth and an hour of battery life. I've had/have newer laptops, but the pros of the old outweigh the cons.

[da na]

12 minutes ago, WiscoMetro said:

But there are pros too: 16:10 display, better keys, DVD drive, and it still has WiFi, HDMI, Bluetooth and an hour of battery life. I've had/have newer laptops, but the pros of the old outweigh the cons.

Aye, someone gets it!

Many of the old CCFL screens look way better than early LED backlights, too. Much more natural colors, warmer light, better contrast. LED backlights on laptops were pretty much godawful until 2013 at the earliest.

[Alex Atkin UK]

6 minutes ago, WiscoMetro said:

I can't stand modern laptop keys(or increasingly desktop keyboards that are taking that form).

Oh that's so true.  I still have my first laptop, a Pentium 4 (desktop CPU, in a laptop chassis, its an absolute roasting noisy brick with literal ceramic inside to handle the heat) and the one good thing about it was the keyboard was terrific.

[da na]

2 minutes ago, Alex Atkin UK said:

Oh that's so true.  I still have my first laptop, a Pentium 4 (desktop CPU, in a laptop chassis, its an absolute roasting noisy brick with literal ceramic inside to handle the heat) and the one good thing about it was the keyboard was terrific.

Every Pentium 4 laptop is hot garbage. I have no clue why they were ever even sold.

Athlon XP laptops are 1000% the way to go for that era, shame AMD's K8/K9 laptop processors were about as hot and inefficient as the Pentium 4.

[Alex Atkin UK]

16 minutes ago, da na said:

Every Pentium 4 laptop is hot garbage. I have no clue why they were ever even sold.

Athlon XP laptops are 1000% the way to go for that era, shame AMD's K8/K9 laptop processors were about as hot and inefficient as the Pentium 4.

I was young and knew nothing about laptops at the time.  I got it because I had my first job and foolishly wanted a laptop with a GeForce GPU - which was hardly worth it as the laptop variants were pretty junk back then.  Plus you had to hack the desktop drivers as the laptop manufacturers never updated them.  So I was literally asking for hot garbage with that combination.

 

To be fair despite its mountain of flaws, the fact it still worked the last time I checked a few years back is impressive.  Was also baffled during the netbook craze, as those Atoms were only as fast as a high end P4, which was insanely slow for the time.