Experiences with non-techies

[Godlygamer23]

That reminds me, friend from UK asked me to help her pick out a laptop that can play games (Minecraft, RS HD, and some other slightly more demanding, most of which were processor intensive, but she also expected to play games that were GPU intensive like Farcry 3) for less than 400 GBP. I repeatedly told her that for the price, she wouldn't find anything that could perform fairly well (I mean, lowest settings would be the best I'd expect from it); pretty slim choices from local retailers too. She insisted, I found a pretty good option (re-iterating that it'll be crap), she bought it, 2 months later, she tells me she "wants a better laptop".

 

I didn't attempt to spend too much time convincing her that for the price, a custom-built desktop would be the best choice. Sadly, I doubt she'd be able to put it together herself, and I doubt she knows anyone who could help her.

You can video chat and help her.

[IronSoldier]

When a female friend was trying to play a Blu-ray in her DVD players and was trying to work out why it wasn't working.

 

A mates HDD broke. He insisted that he could only buy the exact same one or it wouldn't work in the PC.

[rashdanml]

You can video chat and help her.

In hindsight, yep. I ended up doing that for another friend who built his own PC, which I helped select parts for.

[TechTheWorld]

Its funny my friends think I am a genius just because I built my own computer...They have no clue. But im not complaining:)

[Godlygamer23]

Here's another one I forgot to throw in:

This lady I know bought a Blu-ray disc for her DVD player. She thought it would work because there was a blue light on the DVD player...<_<

[TheRetiredSlave]

I love it when people spend insane amounts of money of a gaming laptop, and then they complain that it runs games slowly.. And then you realize that they've been running their games on the Intel integrated GPU instead of the dedicated GPU...

[Guest]

Not an experience but it's related: http://xkcd.com/627/

that is actually brilliant.

[Guest]

friends lcd on his 'decent' laptop broke so he decided to break every component inside, including the 500gd wd blue drive, 8gb of corsair ddr3 laptop memory. his reasoning was 'it was broke anyway' 

[Godlygamer23]

friends lcd on his 'decent' laptop broke so he decided to break every component inside, including the 500gd wd blue drive, 8gb of corsair ddr3 laptop memory. his reasoning was 'it was broke anyway' 

What the?

[Guest]

What the?

i was so pissed off, i was trying to get the harddrive working for weeks in my pc. i thought it was my motherboard not recognizing it properly. turned out he threw it at the floor and didnt say anything.

[TheBrenz]

My grade brother's grade 8 teacher still thinks you have to put the entire http//: thingy in to access web pages. He thinks this because apparently it makes it faster and prevents hackers more getting on your computer. 

[Qpm5]

In my computer class this year (9th grade) Most of my class did not know what the f5 key does and were confused when they had to refresh a page for a document we had to type

[D3MON]

I've had way too many instances that if i try to remember one im going to end up in a deep depressive rage and end up spammin facebook with "I wish guns were legal" so instead ill post with how i treat such cases

Don't waste time giving advice to people who you know wont take it.
Only give so much advice for as long as the person is willing to learn.
Be nice to those who respect you and give them a reason to keep respecting you.
If someone turns around later proclaiming you know nothing and treats you like s***, if your not smiling when you get your revenge you're not getting the right revenge.
Make sure you actually know what you're about to say, you don't want to be the aforementioned guy who thinks he knows it all that we all hate because he doesnt know what hes talking about...
Ignorance is bliss, you can always spot someone who is ignorant when they're "in love" with something you know is overpriced or rubbish (here's looking at you apple, noctua and gaming laptops).
Try to find the most simple and easiest solution you can, when you can, IF doing the easier solution is okay to do so (not a bodge job).
Building someone a good pc isn't worth doing if they have bad habits and thier stuff is full of rubbish and dont do any form of file management and their old pc is full of millions of lolcats pictures, duplicated files, corrupted files that they never sort out, it'll only end up being slow or dying and you'll get the blame.
Read what the user is like, you might think rip off the rich people and help the poor but its not that simple.
If they're VERY poor they probably do weed, have a low work ethic dont maintain things well so they will treat their pc the same
If they're poor for other reasons (just lost his job) sure help them out!
If they're the average joe, treat them with respect, always be willing to help (bearing in mind what ive said before) and try and get rid of the bad name us tech guru's, mechanics etc have as "rip off merchants".
If they're wealthy don't take the p**s, you could rip them off once but if you give someone a good service they will come back for more.

Keep the faith, remember its YOUR love and YOUR hobby, unless its actually your job (in which case you're getting paid so you cant complain), take time out when you have to prevent stressing out, you should never hate the things you love doing...
B)
hello the people going through reading every post [salute]

[Alterlai]

My aunt installed something that changed her homepage from google.com to some other random website.

So she asked me why google was uninstalled from her computer and if i could reinstall it for her......

 

yea... 

[Conelton]

if its dark and you can not see the port it feels just the same. i have done that few times my self. cant blame her for that

 

I'll get my coat...

[Willson94]

Can I download more space for my iPod?...

[Langdon]

My friend constantly complains about how broken and slow his brand new laptop is, but when I tell him how to fix it he says "I'm too lazy." He won't even ask for a return or have the manufacturer fix it.

[UselessBread]

I was asked by a fellow student yesterday how to access Task Manager in Windows. I replied "Crtl+Shift+Esc". The person asking then asked which key shift was. I ended up having to show her, after my dumb response "The one that is not CAPS".

[Samdb]

I was asked by a fellow student yesterday how to access Task Manager in Windows. I replied "Crtl+Shift+Esc". The person asking then asked which key shift was. I ended up having to show her, after my dumb response "The one that is not CAPS".

Wow, I never knew you could do that.

[joelthezombie15]

Can I download more space for my iPod?...

My friend tried convincing me of that a few years back, we were on itunes for hours looking for it.

[Schammy]

People in my class last year thought that the more memory was in a computer, the more fps it would have while playing games..? They would always ask, "How many gigs of RAM does this have," whilst not having a clue what memory does.

[brownninja97]

Some person put chewing gum in the front usb ports on some of our computers. As the "computer guy" in my class they asked me. I put the usb in the back. They think im jesus. Firstly im a hindu(lol). Secondly HAHAHAHHAHAHAHAH.

[Beskamir]

I was asked by a fellow student yesterday how to access Task Manager in Windows. I replied "Crtl+Shift+Esc". The person asking then asked which key shift was. I ended up having to show her, after my dumb response "The one that is not CAPS".

wow I never knew ctrl+shift+esc opened Task Manager! I always used ctrl+alt+del or right clicking the taskbar... thanks I learned something!

[DigiKing]

The ones who should be flogged are the ones who sell a 3' cable for $50.

no, these ones should be burned alive.

[Aaanum1]

I don't really have an example except that when I go to the apple store with my gf, because her phone broke again, I would look around for the noobie and mess with him/her. I would also like to add that I do not think some of the employees should be called geniuses lol. Anyone else enjoy doing this?

I'm 99% sure I'm wrong but, didn't Aaron Swartz work at an Apple Store?