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Experiences with non-techies

I also made the mistake to start doing computer stuff for my friends and family. Everyone i've ever helped now thinks that i'm their personal support guy for everything. My top 5:

5)

Friend bought a SSD and installed it (he's not that of a noob). Still asked me why it wasn't reading with 450MB/s as promised, so i asked him if he used the fast sata-port on his board (labeled blue). He told me that he used the blue one, so i drove over to him, just to see that be had his HDD in the fast port and his SSD in the slow one.

4)

My mother told me that she wants a new computer, so i asked her if i should build her one. She said no and went to "Saturn" (like best-buy but in germany) and got a complete system there. She payed about 800$ for a system with an i3, a gtx 540, 4 gigs of ram and 500 gigs of harddrive space....

3)

A friend of mine made a steam account with a fake e-mail-adress. After buying 3 games with his pay-pal-account for ~120$ he restarted his computer, just to realize that he couldn't play the games because his mail was fake and he couldn't get into his steam-account anymore.

2)

After i built a computer for a friend of mine, he started complaining about the system bluescreening all the time. While checking his rig, i realized that he had removed the cpu-cooler (out of curiousity) and cleaned off the thermal paste because he thought it was dirty. So obviously his cpu got too hot and made his pc crash every time he booted up. Because he tried to boot up his system uncountable times, his 300$ i7 was broken too. Good job on that.

1)

My ex-girlfriend got a macbook pro. She turned it on for the first time and played around a while, after about 10 minutes she asked me where the Internet Explorer is because she wanted to surf the interwebz. I lol'd.

Oh the steam one rofl, that silly silly dude

CPU- I7 7700K @ 4.4Ghz, RAM- 32 Gig Hyper X @ 2800 mhz , GPU - GTX 1080ti Strix 11gb , MOBO- Asrock Fatality Z270 , SSD :Kingston Hyper X SSD Fury and Samsung 500gig

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My little brother used to think that the more data you store on an HDD, the heavier the component gets. He also thought that if you pivot the monitor clockwise during a transfer of files or an installation, is would go faster because the gravity would help the loading bar fill faster...^^
Not really, A HDD read and writes from a magnetic plate so it's not getting heavier with more data as it does not add more mass to the platters.
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A really old man (worst example EVER), was comming to our pc store because he bought a pc that didn't work.

he plugged it in, and nothing worked.

...

he didn't push the power button...

that said, he came back. the screen is still black.

same freaking reason. he did not turn the darn thing on, we had to draw out the symbol of a on/off switch, i walked to the back and laughed reeeaaally hard i allmost cried, 3 times in a row (first for the not working pc, second for the not working monitor and third for the actual drawing) XD

this has really happened :P but the guy was old (75?) and probably has never used an electrical device in his whole life (country side).

that was the least tech savvy person i have ever encountered.

I'm dealing with an older man who in his boredom has decided to become a "Computer Wiz". He is REALLY mechanically inclined and with his DIY attitude and problem solving skills probably would have been a "Computer Wiz" in another life. Anyway, he has been hitting me up to help him with sorting things out. I have been helping as much as I can, but I fear it will be a lost cause in the end. He is just bringing too many preconceptions to table for me to tutor our of him.

"Practice static safety, hack naked." - Mega Tokyo

i7-3770K, 16GB, Samsung 840PRO, R9-290X, Corsair 650D

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I have an IT friend who bought an EVGA GTX 550 superclocked and had his brother install it for him. By the way, he is running a prebulit dell computer. After several weeks, he opened his computer to clean it and decided to take the heat sink off without realizing what it was and he put the stock heat sink back on the CPU after he was done (he didn't reapply thermal paste). Another chunk of time passed by and he heard sounds comming from his computer. Turns out the fan blades (from the gtx 550) snapped off. I think it might had something to do with him cleaning out his system. Anyway, he RMA'ed it, and asked me to come over to put the old graphics card back in because he was too scared he would break something. I gave him the biggest face palm ever.

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people asking why there computer isnt turning on. "power cord wasnt plugged in"

people asking you for there wifi password, i dont know either reset your router or call your internet company

email issues, trying to figure out for them what there incoming and outgoing server info is.

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when your mom asks you how to attach a file to the email and after wards asks where the attachment is on the email expecting it to have the picture right on the text box instead of the attachment thingy. and also forgetting your password every time you use a computer

Space Journal #1: So Apparently i  was dropped on the moon like i'm a mars rover, in a matter of hours i have found the transformers on the dark side of the moon. Turns out its not that dark since dem robots are filled with lights, i waved hi to the Russians on the space station, turns out all those stories about space finding humans instead of the other way around is true(soviet Russia joke). They threw me some Heineken beer and I've been sitting staring at the people of this forum and earth since. 

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Kids in the locker room by my friends and I... "Hey, do you guys play Xbox?"

Me "No I play PC, but my friend here plays PS3"

[Apparently they only heard the last half of the sentence.]

My good friend "Yeah, I play PS3 but I'm saving for a gaming PC"

Them "We took down the PS3 (they didn't even call it the PSN) that's why you guy's couldn't play games for 2 weeks"

[note: these guys are jackasses and I fear that they would actually fight me if I really confronted them about their idiocy]

Them "We're in a leet hacking clan, and we fucking destroyed that thing"

Me "Actually the Hacking group Lulzsec we're the ones who were responsible for that, they were all arrested and lived in Sweden. There is no way it was you."

Them "Course it was us! We just framed 'em"

Me "What is HTML?"

[They stop talking to us and start talking to each other in Spanish]

Final note: They were asses in general: throwing stuff at people, tying lockers with others gym pants strings. At this school I'm becoming ever slightly prejudice against Latinos AND I fucking hate racism.

Please quote me if you want me to see your post about my post, otherwise I may lose track of the thread and never see it.


I'd love to help, but I'm probably gonna' have to ask for more info before we can get anything done.


Have a wonderful day.

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When your dad asks where the "on" button is on a desktop computer....

Life is pain. Anyone who says any different is either selling something or the government.

 

----CPU: FX-6300 @ 4.2ghz----COOLER: Hyper 212 EVO----MOBO: MSI 970A-G46----PSU: OCZ 600watt----CASE: Black Corsair C70----GPU: Sapphire 7870 dual fan ghz edtion----2 random HDD'S----A couple fans here and there. Mouse: Gigabyte M6900-------Keyboard: Logitech G105-----Mousepad: Steel series something something.

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  • 2 months later...

A girl is asking me to help her film some stopmotion animation. I linked her a program to download, she didn't know how to download it. Next she asked if it would slow down her computer. Later I asked her if she has a mac or pc and she didn't know, and she didn't know how to check (I said to look for an apple sign, it was a toshiba btw). Ahh, god bless these people.

He who dies with the most tools wins.

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I was talking with my friend about computers. he doesn't know much about them but is still a bit interested. Then he asks me: Can a computer have 8 ram's. (roughly translated)

i lol'd so hard.

I can't think of anything to write here.

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This guy right here
Yeah this guy is awfull, he got an other video where he says that you can have more ram for free, all he does is making the computer think some of the HDD space is RAM.

CPU : Intel Core i7 3960X, Mobo : X79-UD3, Memory : 4x4GB Vengeance Black Memory 1600MHz, GPU : Asus GTX 970 Strix, Case : Switch 810 Matte Black, Storage : 256GB Samsung 830 SSD, Seagate Barracuda 1TB, PSU : Thermaltake 750W 80+ Bronze, Displays : 3x Asus 1080p Screens, Cooling : Corsair H100i, Keyboard : Logitech G710+, Mouse : Madcat Cyborg R.A.T.7, Sound : Sennheiser HD598, V-Moda Crossfade LP, Logitech Z-5500, HMD : Oculus Rift CV1

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occasionally i like going into my local pc world and watch there sales team sell low end pc's at inflated prices and listen to the patter they use to sell em...

then when they go to get there payment plans or some other bits and bobs, i walk over and tell em to look on the web for better hardware at the same or lesser price...

reason?... because it sickens me to see people deliberately being ripped of because they dont know the difference between a gts 450 and a gtx 680. 1 guy was gonna pay £145 for a cheap end gfx card which retailed elsewhere for £79.99 (gts 650) thinking it was cool because he had just been told it had 2 gigs of vram. i pointed out that the vram has little to do with overall performance and he needs to know how many cuda cores the card has. i then pointed him to a cheaper 660 gtx from ebuyer only 1 gig. he walked away happy but the salesman wasnt. i got escorted out the shop and told not to return lol....

Or when I go to futureshop, their ''GAMING'' PC's have like a core i7 (not specified more) 12 gigs of RAM and a gts 450... Yeah gaming my ass...

CPU : Intel Core i7 3960X, Mobo : X79-UD3, Memory : 4x4GB Vengeance Black Memory 1600MHz, GPU : Asus GTX 970 Strix, Case : Switch 810 Matte Black, Storage : 256GB Samsung 830 SSD, Seagate Barracuda 1TB, PSU : Thermaltake 750W 80+ Bronze, Displays : 3x Asus 1080p Screens, Cooling : Corsair H100i, Keyboard : Logitech G710+, Mouse : Madcat Cyborg R.A.T.7, Sound : Sennheiser HD598, V-Moda Crossfade LP, Logitech Z-5500, HMD : Oculus Rift CV1

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