Experiences with non-techies

[Bitter]

Does that mean a Tesla is just a 360 camera?

[mamamia88]

I was recently bored and watching YouTube videos about building cheap gaming pcs. So bought a dell optiplex and rx 470 mining card on ebay for like $150 total. Found a logitech g213 at goodwill for $4 and got a cheap aliexpress rgb mouse to match it. Thought I would sell a complete setup with the 1080p dvi only monitor I had lying around for like $250 and get someone a pretty good gaming setup for a pretty affordable price. Well they didn't want the monitor and all they seemed to care about is how to add more rgb. Sold it for cost and the money is still sitting in my lockbox just in case it blows up.   Then I get a message later saying "windows is too big for my monitor"  Their resolution is less than 1080p doh!. I should have pulled the 1050ti out of this computer I'm writing on and sold the system with that

[mamamia88]

On 11/4/2019 at 10:59 PM, NumLock21 said:

Officemate is more techie than the Tech?

Too be fair who calls it VGA?

[FloRolf]

GF's sister sent me this saying 

"DO I HAVE A VIRUS? O.O"

 

You guys tell me ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Spoiler

 

Well, better safe than sorry I guess

[imreloadin]

22 minutes ago, FloRolf said:

-le snip-

Gotta tell her it has HP, the worst kind of virus

[Bitter]

Oi what a day Friday it was I tell ya.

Office PC has this ancient bit of software for doing the business on it that was made for DOS and just kept getting pushed forward into Windows so it's kind of dodgy and difficult to use. It kept crashing out whenever anything was printed and never printed anything. Check the printer list and only windows default is listed instead of the usual options. Try to print from anything else and just nothing happens. Check the print que and there's a traffic jam of documents waiting on one that says printing but isn't printing. Ok print que is jammed solid, cancel them all, the one is hanging, restart PC, que is clear everything works again.

 

Later near close it happens again and I need to clear it via command prompt stopping print spooler, deleting a file, restarting print spooler, all the while dealing with boss pointing fingers and making conjecture and wowing at me knowing how to google how to clear the print que lol.

 

The annoying part is the secretary is gone a bit daft and anytime anything comes up on her screen she stops and comes to get me now because she's afraid she's going to break it. EVERY TIME. Low ink popup, come get me, windows wants to reboot to update, come get me, program crash pop up, come get me. Listen mate, I got a job to do OUT HERE not in there, just reboot the PC and if it happens again THEN come get me!

 

Good news is boss authorized me to order a 'new' office PC so I grabbed a SFF HP Prodesk that'll fit on the shelf instead of sitting on the floor getting choked up with dust. 8GB, i5 6500, 256GB SSD, Win10 Pro, pretty basic office PC but leaps and bounds ahead of the AMD APU with 6GB, HDD, and Win7, it's something socket FM2 and super low end. I might take it and upgrade the CPU, pop in a SSD, and toss Windows 10 on it so we have a spare PC for the office or shop if we need one. FM2 CPU's are so cheap now.

 

 

 

 

 

Also saw my dad a bit ago for a wedding and he mentioned he took his PC into a shop for repair cause it wasn't booting and now he has 2GB of RAM and was pretty sure he had 4 before and I'm pretty sure he had 4 before because I built the thing about a decade ago so I'm going to pop a SSD and low profile video card in the ProDesk I have here and mail it down to him so he's got a decent PC again. Again, not a stunner but I'm thinking low profile 1050 or 1650 and a 512GB SSD, it's got a 4590S and 8GB RAM already. Not amazing but it has to be better than what I assume is a Core2Duo and a GT730.

[Bitter]

Deploying a new office PC to replace an old one at the shop, windows 10 instead of windows 7, libreoffice instead of Office 2007. Hilarity will ensue!

 

Ok, redid the desktop icons from the old PC (made a  backup and then restored it onto the new PC) to point to the LibreOffice counterparts and made sure random things open smoothly. I need to install printers and re-share some stuff on the office network and then sign into Chrome for sync when it's at work because 2fa on the account.

 

PC runs smoothly, current office PC is an A4 3400 with 6GB RAM (how does that even work!?) and some hard drive. It's super slow, it was slow when it was new, it's terrible now.  I don't know what we'll do with it, might talk my boss into letting me throw $15 at it to put in an A8 3820 (if it's a possible upgrade) and keeping it as a backup PC. It's got a valid Windows 7 install so in theory 10 should install on it, right?

[Bitter]

2 hours ago, Kaloob said:

Yes.

Thanks, I'll get the model of PC to try to figure out if it's EUEFIEIEIO Bios or if i need to get the serial out of it, I'd just wipe it and do a clean install or toss a SSD in it, we don't NEED a 1TB drive in an office PC but boss is not a computer person at.all. "I thought I bought a good one with lots of a memory" I mean he's not wrong, 6GB was a good amount of RAM but I'm pretty sure that's a 5400 RPM drive in it and that CPU is on par with a Core2Duo Pentium E6800, I think there were better machines available at the time but whatever. I know it hasn't been dusted out in a long time, maybe I'll get some gory pictures of the insides of it.

[Bitter]

Going surpringly smoove. Only a few hiccups to do with printer shares and some really old documents with semi busted formatting.

[amdorintel]

19 hours ago, Kaloob said:

My friend, who wants either a Core i9 or Ryzen 9 is close to going with Intel because of Userbenchmark, etc. He's even eying the 9900KS.

why intel when ryzen is where its at right now

[Bitter]

My ghetto dust filters seem to have worked fairly well, that's 2 years on the office floor with a sheddy dog at an auto shop that's really great!

[thedangerine]

I work tech support for my school and it is painful sometimes. Some of the staff will purchase very nice and expensive laptops and have little to no idea how to use them. We remote in to peoples computers a lot and the software we use could not make it easier for them to let us in once we give them the website and the code they need to enter to begin the process. Yet still we get people who make it difficult, "how do I open a new tab?" 'Why can't you reset my password for me?" "How do I tell if I am using the outlook app or am signing in through the website?"

It hurts sometimes

[Bitter]

It's turning itself back on lol. Need to turn off WOL somewhere, I'll fix it Monday haha!

[Bitter]

Bullshit levels off the chart!

https://nordost.com/blog/what-is-cable-burn-in/

https://www.moon-audio.com/audio-cable-break-in-time

 

UH OH WE BETTER BURN IN OUR USB CABLES!

[Teddy07]

~14 years ago:

I went to a shop to build me a computer because I knew nothing at that time. I told them to include a modem in the pc because I wanted to connect to the internet. They never said anything and just sold it

[The King of the Undead]

6 minutes ago, OtherSchnoz said:

Our school Google Slides for world history:

 

 

WHY

 

[mcbaes72]

My mom-in-law, love her but let's just say she's not the most electronic savvy person. Here's a few:

 

#1

Her: My cell phone says 100% fully charged, but when I unplug it, doesn't respond, screen is blank.

 

Me: Did you press the Power button? 

 

Her: It's turning on, I forgot I turned it off, thank you. 

 

#2

Her: The laptop is low battery. Do we buy a new battery? 

 

Me: No need, just plug it in to charge. 

 

Her: The adapter is plugged in the wall outlet, but it's not charging. 

 

Me: Is it connected to back of the laptop? 

 

Her: It wasn't, but is now. Thank you. 

 

#3

Issue: Cable box remote was out of sync with TV (after she pressed several wrong buttons). 

 

Her: I turn on TV and cable box turns off. I press Power again on remote and now cable box is on, but TV turns off. 

 

Me: Okay, put remote control down, walk over to the TV, and manually turn it on. 

 

Her: Where is the Power button? 

 

Me: Right side of TV, towards the bottom corner. 

 

Her: Okay it's on. 

 

Me: Now, try Power button on remote control, should turn both off same time. 

 

Her: They both work now, thank you. 

 

There's other instances like right-click instead of left-click on the mouse and wonders why "a little window box" keeps showing up. Or somehow gets lost using Facebook on the laptop (instead of on her phone), opens up a new tab by mistake and wonders why Google search page appears, doesn't know how to get back to FB page. Calls me up and I explain that Facebook isn't deleted or broken, just click upper left corner tab with blue FB icon. 

 

Haha...we're definitely lucky that we know what we're doing when it comes to A/V equipment and computers. 

[wasab]

I remeber my third grade school teacher who does not know how to delete a file on windows xp. She was old....

[Teddy07]

I came across an ebay auction with the name "Intel Core i7 7700K IHS (Kaby Lake)" which shows the below picture and states in the description that you only bid on the IHS.

The auction currently has 8 bids with the highest being 101 € while a used 7700k goes for ~250 €. I assume non techies think they bid on a cpu because they no clue what an IHS is.

 

EDIT: Seller noticed the high bids and wrote in big fat letters that he is not selling a cpu.

 

 

 

 

 

[redbread123]

boomers, every encounter (help I set my phone to mandarin chinese, and can't turn it off)

[The King of the Undead]

1 hour ago, Kaloob said:

I'm glad my grandparents aren't fully tech illiterate. They need help with some things, but they don't do crap like that.

mine to! the most rediculous thing I had to deal with was I got called downstairs because the monitor was off by mom. but she figured it out before I got there anyway.

[PianoPlayer88Key]

12 hours ago, redbread123 said:

boomers, every encounter (help I set my phone to mandarin chinese, and can't turn it off)

 

7 hours ago, Kaloob said:

I'm glad my grandparents aren't fully tech illiterate. They need help with some things, but they don't do crap like that.

 

5 hours ago, will4623 said:

mine to! the most rediculous thing I had to deal with was I got called downstairs because the monitor was off by mom. but she figured it out before I got there anyway.

 

5 hours ago, Kaloob said:

Only simple thing I had to help with was showing my grandpa how to change the view in File Explorer.

 

My grandparents have passed on now for several years, but I do sometimes get called on to help my parents with things on their computer.  They're able to do some things though, my dad (1946, early Boomer) somewhat more than my mom (1944, late Silent Generation). 

 

Spoiler

 

My grandparents were from "Greatest Generation" - mostly 1910s, and the one great grandma I knew was either early that generation or late Lost Generation, lived 1901-1999 so she just missed 2 turns-of-century - she was 14 when she was married - Italians did things differently back then, & my grandma (dad's mom) was born 1916, passed 2010; grandpa was 1915-2002.  I didn't know my mom's parents as well - grandpa not at all cause he died age 52 not long after my parents were married in 1970, and grandma (died I think late 1990s or so, before age 80) lived across the country in MA - I'm in CA.  My mom also had foster parents (lived with them northeast of L.A. for 12 years until she got married - foster grandpa was 1920-2010 & foster grandma was 1925-2017 or 2018 I think.  I knew them much better than mom's biological parents.

I'm early Millennial (1981), my other 3 siblings (1971, 73, 77) are all Gen X.  My brother (1973) is the most tech lliterate of the family, along with my boomer uncle (1950) - dad's brother - both are quite proficient in coding, among other things.

 

 

 

My parents have been using computers for at least a little while - I'd bet possibly before some LTT forum members' parents had even met each other.

 

 

 

(I wonder who else still has the invoice for their family's first computer, especially from when Intel was still calling them #86, or older?)

[Bitter]

So the new office PC is working fine, secretary can't stop bitching that her clipart is missing. I take the old PC home, pop the drive out into a dock and I can't find the clipart that's embedded in her documents ANYWHERE on the drive. I reassemble the PC and painfully boot it up to look, end up spending about 1/2 the day de-crapping it so it's semi-useful, I can't figure out where in Office 2007 the clipart is stored. Or rather I found where it's stored but it's NONE of the images I'm seeing embedded in the documents she has saved. I have no effing clue. I give up. She's out for 4 weeks for surgery and may not be coming back full time anyway. Her replacement is roughly my age and computer savvy, no dementia, all around pleasant person to work with.

[Yogi_DaBear221]

 I was a bit privileged, at a very young age, (I'm 22 now) to have access to a computer at my own home (A KMart Bluelight) and My grandmother's house (an HP Windows 98 Machine not sure the model.) if that tells you how long ago that was. So of course I was on them anytime I was allowed to, and of course when you're young and you've got this crazy cool technology at your tiny finger tips, you tend to explore things. Then as technology evolved, so did what could be done with it. So I learned how to use most of Microsoft Office (didn't mess much with Excel because it was boring as a kid) but I learned how to do cool formatting tricks with Word and do all kinds of things with PowerPoint before I ever needed to know that. Like I could add animations and everything in between, I could add the "3D" effects to images. Well when I got to High School, in my senior year (class of 2016 shout haha) I had to take a class that taught Word, PowerPoint, Excel, Dreamweaver, Flash Animation, and another program I can't remember. Well I was the go to kid for everyone who needed help because I did all this cool stuff, and I honestly showed it off with pride, but there were times I was worried I wouldn't get my own work done because I was helping all the other underclassmen. 

[Yogi_DaBear221]

I should add this is not me complaining about helping out or being asked to help but it was occasionally to a detriment haha.