Experiences with non-techies

[NunoLava1998]

6 hours ago, IAmAndre said:

That's what they call the 8400. But they still can't tell what a "gaming" CPU is. I did ask though.

Ask if they know about AMD Ryzen

 

Can't wait for

'AMD runs hot and is the bad and is the uncool fortnite epic gaming processing unit!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! banned from grOup'

[Bananasplit_00]

10 hours ago, IAmAndre said:

It is. It's the worst choice when you're on a budget. It's essentially an overclockable 8100, for which you need to spend more on a mother board and cooling if you plan on overclocking. You're better off sticking with the 8100 or get the 8400 (the "non-gaming" CPU).

Oh I was sure we were talking about the FX chip lmao

[SenKa]

Just had a rich one with my parents the other night. Tried to talk them into Google Fi, since it seems to have better reliable coverage in the areas I travel to (I'm the only one with a long commute ATM). Currently they're overpaying for Verizon, and 12GB is NOT enough for 3 people when 2 of us have online businesses to run while simultaneously doing other stuff.

 

My father does not listen well. He's a stubborn italian man with hearing loss.

 

5 minutes in and he was convinced beyond convincing that Google Fi required all of us to purchase a Pixel 3/Pixel 3XL, for $800 (I didn't catch which.)

 

No, we not would need new phones. None of us purchased unlocked phones, but my father will continue to babble on about how unlocking your phones yourself never works after dealing with some crackhead shopping mall phone companies in the mall he used to manage.

 

So yep. You heard it here first people. You cant carrier-unlock phones and Google Fi requires Pixel 3's!

[soldier_ph]

Oh gosh, we had the topic climate change in the German lesson again today:

 

This Random Dude is like:  "Y'all should switch from PCs to Notebooks", because those apparently don't need power and run forever cause they have batteries.

 

*Epic facepalm* 

 

 

[Jtalk4456]

3 hours ago, SenpaiKaplan said:

Just had a rich one with my parents the other night. Tried to talk them into Google Fi, since it seems to have better reliable coverage in the areas I travel to (I'm the only one with a long commute ATM). Currently they're overpaying for Verizon, and 12GB is NOT enough for 3 people when 2 of us have online businesses to run while simultaneously doing other stuff.

 

My father does not listen well. He's a stubborn italian man with hearing loss.

 

5 minutes in and he was convinced beyond convincing that Google Fi required all of us to purchase a Pixel 3/Pixel 3XL, for $800 (I didn't catch which.)

 

No, we not would need new phones. None of us purchased unlocked phones, but my father will continue to babble on about how unlocking your phones yourself never works after dealing with some crackhead shopping mall phone companies in the mall he used to manage.

 

So yep. You heard it here first people. You cant carrier-unlock phones and Google Fi requires Pixel 3's!

being frank though if you use that much data, you're better off not having fi. It's cheaper for people who use less data, but for 12 gb you'd be better off finding an unlimited plan in your area

[SenKa]

2 hours ago, Jtalk4456 said:

being frank though if you use that much data, you're better off not having fi. It's cheaper for people who use less data, but for 12 gb you'd be better off finding an unlimited plan in your area

My options are Verizon or Fi, as no other carrier has service in my house (which is in the middle of nowhere). I worked out the math, and Verizon true unlimited for 3 lines is far more expensive than 3 lines of Fi at max data usage.

[Guest]

Wow @Schnoz you have a lot of stories to tell. They're pretty good tho.

[Jtalk4456]

18 hours ago, SenpaiKaplan said:

My options are Verizon or Fi, as no other carrier has service in my house (which is in the middle of nowhere). I worked out the math, and Verizon true unlimited for 3 lines is far more expensive than 3 lines of Fi at max data usage.

ouch. That's not a lot of options. Well good luck with convincing the family. Maybe show them the LTT video for it?

[SenKa]

4 hours ago, Jtalk4456 said:

ouch. That's not a lot of options. Well good luck with convincing the family. Maybe show them the LTT video for it?

My mom is on board with it, and my father is the type to stick to an opinion till his grave even if he knows damn well its wrong one. So, Im just gonna go fi with my mom and let my dad overpay for verizon and the 12GB he doesn't use (his data usage consists of browsing craigslist while waiting outside thrift shops for me and my mother who both run online resale shops. He insists on going despite having 0 reason to.)

[Juniiii]

When people ask me what brand of laptop is best, I usually answer brand isn’t the main thing to look for on a computer, it’s mainly the hardware.  This one time I was at lunch and doing my usual thing, and then my friend asked me this “What brand should I get for my laptop”, I replied “ Brand doesn’t matter it’s the hardwa....” this other kid comes in and starts saying buy a toshiba, they are the best and are the fastest, they have more storage and are faster, unlike asus they’re basically a iPhone 6 running windows 10, and dell isn’t good because they mainly make the big desktops so you’d be big clunky slow laptops.”, I replied with this “ as I was saying brand doesn’t matter it’s the hardware and the amount of money you’re willing to spend” he said 1000 and I told him to get ASUS FX502VM (after a little research) and the kid flipped the fuck out and said that it’s a horrible choice and it would lag on everything and that the WiFi range is horrible and it’s as slow as a pc from 2005. We continued to ignore him and I’m happy to say that’s what he went with and has been using it for 3 months.

[CarlBar]

On 12/31/2018 at 2:41 PM, Lathlaer said:

So here is one for you, about audio tech - a situation literally from yesterday. No bashing, just humorous accidental disrespect

 

Quick background: my girlfriend is very casual about tech. It's just not her thing. She has no idea what hardware sits in a computer, what is considered high quality and more importantly, how much stuff costs. Now, I don't lie to her about the cost of my hobby but I never volunteer the information. She just never asks and doesn't seem to care. It's fine since I have no idea how much the stuff she buys costs as well.

 

Main event: the evening. I'm playing with some music while she goes to the bathroom and suddenly she opens the door and says this to me:

 

"You know, your headphones leak sound so much that not only did I hear your music from the bathroom, I was also able to tell that you were listening to Lindsey Stirling"

 

I look at her sheepishly and turn the volume knob down - admittedly, she was out of town for a couple of days for holidays so being the only one in the apartment, I was listening to my music liberally and perhaps on the louder side. It's entirely possible that it was too loud. Also, I started the track before I put my headphones on so it's possibly she picked it up louder than it really was supposed to be.

 

But she is not done.

 

"Maybe you should consider changing those crappy headphones for something better that will not leak sound?"

 

And there I was, mouth ajar, looking at my $4000 MSRP Focals, looking at my GF, torn between telling her the truth about what kind of gear this is and just suffering in silence. Ultimately, she didn't give me any chance to respond because she went back to the bathroom and later we didn't bring that up at all

 

Apparently I will have to explain the difference between closed and open headphones because she is genuinely convinced that because she can hear my music it must mean that my headphones are poor quality.

 

NOTE: Apologies for ancient quotes, came to post somthing and found this in the editor, a quick search seems to indicate i never posted it, guessing it was from back when i had a crash around christmas. 

 

To be fair i only recently discovered about this and i consider myself quite tech literate. Rule 1 of tech support. There will be dumby simple shit you don't know.

 

On 12/31/2018 at 3:54 PM, Godlygamer23 said:

I've had Phenom II CPUs and one Core i5 750 CPU.

 

P4 era Celeron 1.7Ghz was the oldest i owned, and early pentium 3 was the oldest in the household.

 

On 12/31/2018 at 5:50 PM, NIneEyeRon said:

I recall helping a guy (with two PHDs) with an issue where his PC was only typing weird characters.

 

I went up to his desk, moved his textbook off the shift and CTRL keys and fixed his issue.

 

I think we've all made a similar "fail basic look for silly stuff" test before.

 

On 1/1/2019 at 12:58 PM, Lathlaer said:

I haven't seen it, it's very nice. I really like the "Take Flight" track beause it has some parts where you feel like the music is drilling into your skull, esp. on good headphones,

 

Keep meaning to look into more of her stuff, only thing i have ATM is a ripped from youtube copy of her Dragon Age Inquisition cover. Would happily pay for a clean copy with no sound effects from the dragon or a crowd in the background but can;t seem to find it anywhere. And yes i know i'm probably busy committing a perfect example of the story type of this thread.

 

On 1/2/2019 at 5:18 AM, Schnoz said:

I wonder if SSDs are popular for a reason?

 

Also, anyone who searched up "HDD vs SSD" for 3.14159265359793238462643383279 seconds would know.

 

"I has an iphon i very techy"

 

 

On 1/2/2019 at 9:00 PM, iLostMyXbox21 said:

I can relate, one of my friends asked me to come look at his new pc he built because his CPU wouldn’t fit right, so I looked at it and he was trying to put an AMD cpu in an INTEL motherboard

 

he also tried to use laptop ram on the desktop motherboard 

 

I've got a cousin i recently built a computer for, and he was just as clueless, but at least he knew he was clueless and asked me to spec out and put together for him, (did the assembly with him there. He had some fun reactions to things).

 

On 1/2/2019 at 10:29 PM, thachad098 said:

this conversation happened between my mom and me just before christmas. she was doing some last minute shopping and asked me for a recommendation for my uncle. he like to take pictures and goes on a trip at least once every 3 months and already has a dslr so i told my mom to get him the ryze tello as it is relatively cheap that captures fairly decent pictures/videos. i then told her that he would only need a mobile phone to connect with it via wifi. then my mom thought it was a great idea because they will have a trip back to the philippines and would be perfect to capture aerial shots but she is worried that it might not work there because the place they are going to does not have wifi. i then told my mom that it does not matter because the phone will directly connect to the drone via wifi. she then reiterated that the place is a bit remote with no/poor internet. this went on for probably 5-10mins before my mom understood that wifi and internet are totally different things. i had to use a bluetooth pairing analogy which thank god i had just explained to her a few weeks before.

 

My stepdad is kinda the reverse, he has a lot of trouble understanding when somthing is stored internet side. Like his e-mail. He tends to think everything is a program running on his hardware. That said even if he dosen;t remember what you told him, if you go "it'll be fine [insert more talk here]" he accepts the expert opinion, he's also ok when he throws me a curveball i can;t figure the answer out to, (a lot of it is ipad stuff and i'm not super great with those).

 

 

 

 

Also a story about me that will probably both amuse and infuriate everyone. When i first started using a PC i had no idea what Ctrl on the key stood for so i took to calling it Central. I did that for so long before i discovered he real name that i can't stop. I still say things liek "press Central alt delete to bring up task manager". Drives every other techie i'v ever met utterly nuts.

[GeoSquigg]

went over to a mates place to help him with some basic computer maintenance, cable management and rebuilding (see below)

 

my girlfriend came along to hang with my mates girl. She looked at what we were doing and asked "is that what over clocking is?" we both just looked at her for a few seconds before face palming and the showing her later what overclocking is lol

 

 

~~guy that helped my mate build it was a knob as far a i can tell. 

 

-plugged fans direct to PSU via molex

-had every cable of a semi modular psu plugged in and just stuffed in the case

-had a dual channel kit running in single channel.

-Said only the 4 corner mobo screws needed screwed in

-Told buddy that the prongs on the io shield needed to fold into the port to keep it steady

-Only 3 PSU screws were in

-had the front usb pluged into both 2.0 and 3.0 headers causing the 3.0 not to work

 

 Idk who this guy is but needs to stay away from "helping" others build thier first PC~~

[Bananasplit_00]

2 minutes ago, GeoSquigg said:

went over to a mates place to help him with some basic computer maintenance, cable management and rebuilding (see below)

 

my girlfriend came along to hang with my mates girl. She looked at what we were doing and asked "is that what over clocking is?" we both just looked at her for a few seconds before face palming and the showing her later what overclocking is lol

 

 

~~guy that helped my mate build it was a knob as far a i can tell. 

 

-plugged fans direct to PSU via molex

-had every cable of a semi modular psu plugged in and just stuffed in the case

-had a dual channel kit running in single channel.

-Said only the 4 corner mobo screws needed screwed in

-Told buddy that the prongs on the io shield needed to fold into the port to keep it steady

-Only 3 PSU screws were in

-had the front usb pluged into both 2.0 and 3.0 headers causing the 3.0 not to work

 

 Idk who this guy is but needs to stay away from "helping" others build thier first PC~~

the screw ones are fine tbh, i often dont bother with all the screws for my PSUs, motherboards i do it just because i like building computers and that draws the building out longer

[GeoSquigg]

9 minutes ago, Bananasplit_00 said:

the screw ones are fine tbh, i often dont bother with all the screws for my PSUs, motherboards i do it just because i like building computers and that draws the building out longer

after this, im going to stick with all 9 going in .. the flex on the board when trying to remove the 24 pin and a few other cables was insane .. just left it plugged in till got all the other screws in 

[seon123]

2 hours ago, GeoSquigg said:

Idk who this guy is but needs to stay away from "helping" others build thier first PC~~

Sounds like the guy must have been Stefan Etienne

[Jtalk4456]

11 hours ago, Juniiii said:

When people ask me what brand of laptop is best, I usually answer brand isn’t the main thing to look for on a computer, it’s mainly the hardware.  This one time I was at lunch and doing my usual thing, and then my friend asked me this “What brand should I get for my laptop”, I replied “ Brand doesn’t matter it’s the hardwa....” this other kid comes in and starts saying buy a toshiba, they are the best and are the fastest, they have more storage and are faster, unlike asus they’re basically a iPhone 6 running windows 10, and dell isn’t good because they mainly make the big desktops so you’d be big clunky slow laptops.”, I replied with this “ as I was saying brand doesn’t matter it’s the hardware and the amount of money you’re willing to spend” he said 1000 and I told him to get ASUS FX502VM (after a little research) and the kid flipped the fuck out and said that it’s a horrible choice and it would lag on everything and that the WiFi range is horrible and it’s as slow as a pc from 2005. We continued to ignore him and I’m happy to say that’s what he went with and has been using it for 3 months.

funny thing it toshibas did a great job at longevity. I say DID because they no longer make laptops... XD

I worked retail computer sales once and a lady came in convinced she needed an i7 with 12-16 gb ram minimum because a friend told her that she needed those specs or higher. I asked what she did on the computer

email and word processing...

I tried to save her money, I really did. She left with an $800 laptop, no microsoft office, no warranty...

 

Side note since I mentioned warranty, I hear a lot of people diss extended warranties, so i'm gonna put my thoughts.

The people who don't buy them tend to be the ones that come back in having broken it a few months in and are pissed that we don't just give them a new one free. The people who happily get the coverage typically don't use it because they take care of their computers. So as a tech enthusiast, I don't get an extended warranty (assuming I buy prebuilt at all), but for people who are the opposite of tech savvy, I highly recommend it, depending on the warranty company used. The Asurion thing used by walmart is utter garbage. Staples uses Squaretrade, and they are very good from my experiences.

[D13H4RD]

This entire thread 

Guys, it's fine if you like Canon, but can we not make it overboard to the point where you have to justify some of their odd decisions? 

 

Also, there's a thing called hybrid shooters. Long story short is that while the EOS RP looks to be a fine stills camera, it's not going to cut it for a hybrid shooter, of which something like the Fujifilm X-T3 or the more expensive Sony A7iii (which, like the RP unlike the Fuji, is full-frame) will probably be more suited for the task. 

 

It's a different market, guys. In a world where a Fujifilm X-T30 that can do pretty good 4K30 at $899 exists, the EOS RP really could do better. It's not a terrible camera (really, nothing is) and for stills shooters, it's going to do its job pretty well. It's just that unless Canon addresses some weird video ommisions, it's not going to be as appealing to hybrid shooters.

 

And no, hybrid shooters aren't going to splurge $7000 on a C200. 

[SGBudgetGamer]

On 1/16/2013 at 3:12 PM, nillas12 said:

Thought it would be fun to make a topic about, all of our experiences with all the people, who doesn't really understand all the tech.

Note: Don't make this too harsh on them. You need to help them, not yell at them.

I'll go first:

So my mom has a daycare. And one day I am sitting on the floor with my laptop. And one of the kids, with real dirty hands come and put his hand on the screen. Guess he thought it was a touch screen. Still haven't gotten it off, and it was 3 months ago.

My grandmother is scared of getting rid of the computer, because she thinks it will cut the power to her house.

 

On 1/16/2013 at 5:16 PM, RobbieX27 said:

People thinking they can download RAM....

I was one of them. 

On 1/16/2013 at 5:30 PM, Tr3vor said:

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."

My brother asked me why his intel celeron can't play plants vs zombies and farm amulator, like a ke my new ryzen 2600 pc

 I had to build a 2400g pc for him. 

[PeterT]

When i help someone non techie, and just want to tell them what was the problem, and what's the solution, and they like:

"I don't understand tech."

"I don't care just make it work."

"Oh, it's loading slowly, nevermind i'm patient."

 

Or just looking at me in the eye, and i already know they will forget it in the next minute or so. 

Yeah, i get it, you're not a tech person but please, I will explain to you slowly and understably. Just please listen to that 2 sentence that i say, so I can sleep peacefully that i told you it .

 

[PeterT]

Another one that I came across quite often:

 

When i'm working on a gig / concert / festival, and people see that next to my laptop there's a router. And the first thing they ask, what's the wifi password, and I'm like, first, I use it to connect to other laptops, audio amplifiers, it's not connected to the internet. Second, if i would have mobile internet connection that's shared via wifi, why the hell would i give the password to any person. 

People assume that wifi = internet

[SenKa]

Thread got bumped, time for story time with Senpai!

 

 I haven't had much time with tech illiterates as I've moved schools and am in a much techier place now. But that doesn't mean I don't have any gold.

 

I was selling my buddy an AM3 PC for next to nothing since I literally had it sitting around, and couldn't sell it to anybody even at the next to nothing price I was asking. I had bought it for $20 only because it had an AIO in it I robbed for my main system. I had my buddy (who isn't very good at tech) look up how to install a Hyper 212 evo and do it, as I was busy and wouldn't have been able to do it for weeks if not months. He installs it, and the system stops posting.

 

He texts me saying that he did as the video said, and it wasn't posting. I'm like aight, his moms car is pretty bad and probably shook stuff around. I tell him to remove the RAM and CPU, and reseat both, and to watch videos on how to do both.

 

Still isn't posting. So I tell him to hold tight and i'd drive over when I get the chance.

 

Drive over, check the system out. All looks good, I pull the cooler off and the CPU falls off and on to my hand. I knew the socket on the board was a lil weak so I go to put it in thinking all is well, but it doesn't go in all the way.

 

I kid you not, every pin was bent. Every. Fucking. Pin.

 

I order a new CPU, offering to pay for it myself, and come back next week to install it.

Cpu comes in, board still isn't posting. Now, the board is dark as is his room, so I couldn't see this until I grabbed my phone's flashlight to check for fuckups.

 

The entire PCB around the mobo is cracked. Stress fractures everywhere. I just put the system down and took a walk. Came back and had to break the news that he fucked it bad.

 

Sadly I didn't have another AM3 board, so the sale fell through and I payed him back for the cooler since he couldn't return it.

 

Aaaand from that point on I never let a customer touch their own system before they pay for it.

[CarlBar]

9 hours ago, SenpaiKaplan said:

Thread got bumped, time for story time with Senpai!

 

 I haven't had much time with tech illiterates as I've moved schools and am in a much techier place now. But that doesn't mean I don't have any gold.

 

I was selling my buddy an AM3 PC for next to nothing since I literally had it sitting around, and couldn't sell it to anybody even at the next to nothing price I was asking. I had bought it for $20 only because it had an AIO in it I robbed for my main system. I had my buddy (who isn't very good at tech) look up how to install a Hyper 212 evo and do it, as I was busy and wouldn't have been able to do it for weeks if not months. He installs it, and the system stops posting.

 

He texts me saying that he did as the video said, and it wasn't posting. I'm like aight, his moms car is pretty bad and probably shook stuff around. I tell him to remove the RAM and CPU, and reseat both, and to watch videos on how to do both.

 

Still isn't posting. So I tell him to hold tight and i'd drive over when I get the chance.

 

Drive over, check the system out. All looks good, I pull the cooler off and the CPU falls off and on to my hand. I knew the socket on the board was a lil weak so I go to put it in thinking all is well, but it doesn't go in all the way.

 

I kid you not, every pin was bent. Every. Fucking. Pin.

 

I order a new CPU, offering to pay for it myself, and come back next week to install it.

Cpu comes in, board still isn't posting. Now, the board is dark as is his room, so I couldn't see this until I grabbed my phone's flashlight to check for fuckups.

 

The entire PCB around the mobo is cracked. Stress fractures everywhere. I just put the system down and took a walk. Came back and had to break the news that he fucked it bad.

 

Sadly I didn't have another AM3 board, so the sale fell through and I payed him back for the cooler since he couldn't return it.

 

Aaaand from that point on I never let a customer touch their own system before they pay for it.

 

How the actual frak?

 

Seriously MB's will stand a surprising, (often worryingly so), amount of pushing and pulling. How do you completely wreck somthing like that.... 

[SenKa]

5 hours ago, CarlBar said:

 

How the actual frak?

 

Seriously MB's will stand a surprising, (often worryingly so), amount of pushing and pulling. How do you completely wreck somthing like that.... 

I wish I knew...

[Emanbaird]

I've been on a call with a lady for an 1hr50 minutes, just trying to get her into her firmware on the modem, all she had was a fire tablet, her cellphone which she called an iphone but really ended up being some Walmart phone, and her TV, the tablet wouldn't let her enter in URL's either that or she couldn't type 192.168.1.1 correctly.

 

We ended up eventually getting the PPPoE credentials in her modem. BUT, during the initial setup she fucking forgot her wifi password. so we had to hard reset the modem and try all over again. she would also constantly go between her phone and tablet then she would say something about youtube, so it turned out she was trying to type 192.168.1.1 in youtube. 

[CarlBar]

5 hours ago, Emanbaird said:

I've been on a call with a lady for an 1hr50 minutes, just trying to get her into her firmware on the modem, all she had was a fire tablet, her cellphone which she called an iphone but really ended up being some Walmart phone, and her TV, the tablet wouldn't let her enter in URL's either that or she couldn't type 192.168.1.1 correctly.

 

We ended up eventually getting the PPPoE credentials in her modem. BUT, during the initial setup she fucking forgot her wifi password. so we had to hard reset the modem and try all over again. she would also constantly go between her phone and tablet then she would say something about youtube, so it turned out she was trying to type 192.168.1.1 in youtube. 

 

Unfortunately there's a tendency with some people to think anything thats online is a web browser. Sometimes thats true, often it isn't.

 

Honestly thats the biggest issue i see a lot of, people not understanding what is and is not online and the difference between an app for somthing and the webpage for somthing. They tend to conflate things together or think they're completely separated all the time.