Experiences with non-techies

[canadianultra]

Trying to teach my grandpa to right-click on his macbook pro over the phone...

[Delaser]

When I was younger I would always get blamed when something went wrong with the computer, saying my games broke it. I'm pretty sure If a game is being released to thousands of people, it will be stable and not cause the BSOD for no reason.

 

You obviously haven't played anything from Bethesda.

[Guest]

You obviously haven't played anything from Bethesda.

Morrowind for me is actually pretty stable.. 

[crystal6tak]

I was helping a friend choose pc parts. He was worried about gpu length and this is what he actually messaged me no joke:

"oh okay. what if ur gpu is too short? i know too long, just don't buy it, but if it's too short, can u extend it?"

I facepalmed so hard...

[Night]

I had a couple come into my store today. They wanted help getting emails on their iPhone 5. They didnt know their password and asked me why they would need to know it since its always logged in on their computer.

I really dont like having to deal with these kinds of people. I always feel like anything I say, they will take ofense to because of the complete lack of knowledge they have and the general nature of technology.

[iAsuno]

a friend told me he was gonna buy a pc. he was like "its an amd quad core motherboard! its faster than an i7!" i was like "wut?" then i told him to give me a budget so i can help him do a build. he refused an it turns to be a 5800k or whatever that apu is. i asked him what gpu he has and he said "i dunno they took care of it." gosh.

[Scia]

There's two sorts of non-techies.

The ones that are aware of their lack of knowledge and gladly take advise

and the ones that have no clue what so ever, but think they do, and will yell at you if something doesn't work, because you were watching youtube or something ^^

[Calavera]

I had a couple come into my store today. They wanted help getting emails on their iPhone 5. They didnt know their password and asked me why they would need to know it since its always logged in on their computer.

I really dont like having to deal with these kinds of people. I always feel like anything I say, they will take ofense to because of the complete lack of knowledge they have and the general nature of technology.

 

Technically they think you're a nerd because it's basic knowledge to you - while it's not to them.

Yes people are weird :P

[Calavera]

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' 

 

That... made me lose faith in humanity lol.

[JupiteL]

My friend want me to build his gaming pc.. So one day we go to the store and the guy told me the shipment is screwed, but he still want the computer just right now. We ended up buying the wrong motherboard, because his mini itx one is out of stock. We degrade the gpu from 7950 to 7850 because the they're also out of stock. And his Bitfenix prodigy is not even available there, so we need to wait until the stock came.

 

In the end, we don't build the rig until we have the casing and the motherboard to be stocked, he doesn't want any other thing other than that, so there you go buddy.. Enjoy your rig..

[Orian]

My mum is completely useless with tech, so every time she needs to print off a word document or even write one she offers me £10 and begs me to do it. Obviously I don't take the money but she's even signed up to a course on how to send emails, bless her. 

[DigiKing]

My sister, upon buying her first laptop, spent a good 5 minutes getting increasingly annoyed. Apparently it was broken, because it wouldn't turn on... ..... turns out she thought the spacebar was the power button. Not the massive big green button with the power symbol on it.

please tell me she was young and wouldn't know better.

[david cassar]

My friend bought a pc not so long ago and said that when he bought the seller told him that it would run any game on ultra. He began gloating about his 16 gb ram and when i asked him the specs, he bought a pc with an fx 4100 and an hd 6670 for around 500 euro. Massive facepalm.

[nicholaswillems]

Pretty much every electronics store that are crowded with employees that know nothing about their stuff and say that an i7 is a must-have and that you can't live without having an i7 >_>

[Shrubpig]

Pretty much every electronics store that are crowded with employees that know nothing about their stuff and say that an i7 is a must-have and that you can't live without having an i7 >_>

Or when they recommend the most expensive mac pro or whatever...

[nicholaswillems]

Or when they recommend the most expensive mac pro or whatever...

As a facebookmachine ;D

[Vitalius]

Sweet merciful Jesus,

If people want to spend $1500 on a computer that's only worth $500, that's fine. Just give me all the money and I'll buy and build it myself, taking the extra as payment.

Seriously. I read every post in this thread so far, and omg, the ... ugh. I think I want to climb a mountain, find the end of a rainbow, and choke the innocence out of leprechaun to get rid of my sheer anger and stress at the thought of so many dumb people doing so many dumb things, all the time.

On a more serious note, I am the tech support for my entire family. They trust me so much, they just say "fix it", and I fix it. Then I explain what the problem is and what not to do so that it doesn't happen again. 

It just sucks when I can't fix it and either they have to spend money or gobs of time to fix it (by calling their ISP or something equivalent).

One thing I get bothered by is people asking me to suggest a computer for them, then once all the preliminary work is done and the idea is done/parts are picked, they get cold-feet and I wasted an hour of my time helping them. 

Bah. Humanity. It's a miracle we aren't extinct.

 

[Luc401]

Ok multiple storys

1) my fauther works for a large computer company across canada dont know if i can say the name.One of there severs went down for some reason so they sent a woman (not trying to be sexist) to the server room to take a look,she was on the verdge of being fired any ways.. So every one was therefor 2 days strait trying to get this server up and running again and every one was trying every thing .But that same chick is in the server room still waiting for orders.... Then my dad received a call from this chick saying that she fixed the problem..... IT WASNT PLUGGED IN !!!!!!!!!! Wtf!?!?!!? So the company lost alot of money during that down time ...

2) my friend wanted to buy a gaming pc , first he wanted a laptop.then he wanted a custom desktop the he was to lazy to learn how to build one so he was looking at future shops (best buy kindah) so he goes and comes to me telling me his specs i then i ask him what i7 he says a i7 i continue and ask him what gpu he says 660 3gb i said you should go for a 660ti and he says noooo the 660 3gb is so much better so i kept telling him that for a few days then he went out and bought it.oh and apparently he think he can run old crt monitors with vga over clocked to 4k i dont even think you can overclock a resolution...first pc he got from there the sound card apparently never worked then i told him did you installthe driver and of course he never did .And while this was going on he still thinks his pc is better than mine ( specs in my sig) second pc he got back from the it wont boot so back he goes.third one he finaly gets it working.Comes to school the next day "im trying to get my os off my ss and onto my hdd" i ask why he says he wants to put his games on his ssd i face palm.. And while he was tryingto do that he corrupted his os .. He got a forth pc and shcool ended befor i could hear the next story.. Thank god after he told me he wanted his games on his ssd i smashed my face agaisnt the table to hard i had a head ache for the rest of the day... Idiots..

3)not really that bad but another friend of mine had a external fan running on his pc.... Yep

4) heard some xbox one talk from across the room go over there and hear " i wonder if the xbox one will be quiet" lol - face palm a

5)another one was no one likes pc cause you cant play multiplayer on it lol.. Really? Really? Idiots...

6)"OMG GUESS WHAT XBOX 1 WILL HAVE SKYPE" i lol then say pc has had that since lauch.then apparently pc microphone qualitys suck so i try to defend pc again.. No wonder every one hates me now lol..

7)another one is my sister only wants a pink laptop.. I got a black one and put a wrap on it lol..

Thinks that all if i can think of any more

Ill share

[Samdb]

My mum is completely useless with tech, so every time she needs to print off a word document or even write one she offers me £10 and begs me to do it. Obviously I don't take the money but she's even signed up to a course on how to send emails, bless her. 

At least she is willing to learn.

[qwertywarrior]

wow 20 pages :)

 

ok for me i really didnt have problems with my family and relatives

 

taught my mother how to browse the net and told her what not to do

 

she uses it every day and its been years and she never got a single virus

---------

told my dad to buy an iphone and he got the hang of it in a week

---------

my big bro seems to believe that computers dont lie ( U GOT A VIRUS DOWNLOAD THIS)

but after telling him  to not trust computers its been 3 years since a big problem happened

 

thats about it

i guess its because they listen to me

[Loe]

I don't know if this counts but in one of the computing rooms at my school we noticed they were using dvi-vga adapters for the monitors, which makes no sense on multiple counts.

 

1. The monitors support dvi
2. There was a vgs port on the computer natively

[tom564]

I have had someone complain that their printer was not printing, they had not plugged it in via USB or AC. Parents also complain that the computer is slow so when i offer to upgrade it  they say it is fine.   

[Night]

Anyone who doesnt understand what PRE and POST mean. Pre-paid, Post-paid. They asure me they are pre-paid and then ill check and find out they are post-paid.

Its the worst. Start telling someone this and then find out they are stupid and thy needed to know that. Its dream-crusher central with this kind of person.

Wastes my time aswell explaining useless information.

[Night]

I have had someone complain that their printer was not printing, they had not plugged it in via USB or AC. Parents also complain that the computer is slow so when i offer to upgrade it they say it is fine.

Some people just need to have something to complain about like its a requirment that something anoys them.

[Elbstrand]

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

 

Story of my life...