Experiences with non-techies

[Dude]

This literally just happened to me...

 

So I am called to the dining room and am asked how to "photocopy" an image from an eBay listing on to an email. I say that's not what photocopying is and you should just copy the URL onto an email. She asks me how to do that (regardless of her doing it multiple times in the past) so I copy the URL for her. Later on, I have to paste the URL for her because she doesn't know how to paste (sarcasm). She is unsure of whether it will work so she asks to send the email with the URL to herself. Reluctantly I do so but when she finds out the link isn't clickable she gets angry and says "that's not how I want it, it's broken". I explain that the recipient can still just copy and paste the link themselves.

 

Seriously, I don't get it. Why do people attempt to challenge people who know their shit on whether they do when they themselves are one hundred percent fucking clueless? It's infuriating and pointless. Do they want to be posted on this thread? Gah!

[Litargirio]

When I ask a friend about their PC specs and they be like

 

uh... yeah, I have an Intel CPU, an Nvidia graphics card and eight gigs of RAM...

[Kawaii Besu]

@athesean1's mum just made him unplug his Blackwidow because "she says it might burn down the house with the power it pulls"

Tell his mom that her notebook/gadget/whatever power brick/charger consumes MOAR power than his mechanical keyboard, and will explode like a nuke...

[alby800]

Tell his mom that her notebook/gadget/whatever power brick/charger consumes MOAR power than his mechanical keyboard, and will explode like a nuke...

lol, apparently what happened wasn't the case, but I wouldn't be surprised if she was just covering up for her stupidity

[Chudynasty]

Recommending a friend a nice laptop for the specs and price and then friend going out and buying a laptop that is much slower and more expensive. Recommending another friend pc parts for his build. Spent a good amount of time choosing parts as he wanted a budget pc. At the end when I wrote down a bunch of choices he says he doesn't want to build a PC anymore.

[WinNut]

Watching other kids use school laptops (like now) is painful.

[Sauron]

I convinced a group I'm a part of to use linux on the 2 slow netbooks we use (they had to be cheap and ultraportable, at the time we didn't have much of a choice). Since the others had never used it (save on their phones of course, but go and explain the THAT if you can ^^) I included a printout of xkcd's tech support cheat sheet in the netbooks' boxes.

 

 

A couple of weeks ago some of us had to type a document. We have libreoffice on the netbooks. After they asked me for the Nth time how to do something trivial that they couldn't figure out because they're used to ms word (I had other stuff to do in the meanwhile so I wasn't in a very patient mood) I took the cheat sheet and showed it to them. They refused to use it and were like "come on, just do it already! It's not that simple and you know it!". So I went, did it for them. Took me about 15 seconds. They insisted I should have done that straight way isntead of being so annoying with that sheet.

 

They were mindblown when I told them I actually had no idea how to do that before, and I just mentally followed that exact pattern to find the solution.

 

The problem with "non-techies" is not that they are stupid, or that they are ignorant. They refuse to put in any effort into looking for a solution themselves. I did not get to know what I know now about computers (most of which I found out by myself) by asking someone else to do stuff for me and ignoring them when they tried to teach me how. Whenever I encountered a new problem I'd keep on going until I found a solution; sometimes I'd ask my father (who has an IT engineering degree but usually had more important stuff to do than solve every stupid problem I had) if I really couldn't find a solution in a reasonable time frame, but I always wanted him to explain exactly why that worked and how he figured it out. Whenever someone had to do something for me I always wanted them to teach me how to do it so next time I wouldn't need their help.

 

That's why whenever I get asked this kind of stuff I cringe inside. I want to tell them they're lazy assholes and they could find out what they need in 1 minute max with a simple google search, but at the same time I usually don't want to hurt their feelings. It's hard ^^

[Speedbird]

Have y'all tried explaining somebody what an operating system is?

[Gr8White_Bear]

Have y'all tried explaining somebody what an operating system is?

I tried to explain once, but I think they still believe Linux is some sort of virus.

[Guest andyysplash]

I tried to explain once, but I think they still believe Linux is some sort of virus.

 

You can thank the media for that one. Older people are more likely to give you the "isn't that the thing when you have to type code to do anything" (because clearly UI design hasn't moved past the original UNIX shell and command-typing - NOT TYPING CODE; BASH COMMANDS ARE NOT CODE - in the last 30 years), but younger people are full of misinformation about viruses and 'hackers'. If something doesn't work as expected or 'replaces' something then it's apparently a virus, and if someone knows your facebook password because you type with 2 fingers at 10wpm and they watched you search for each key then they're some kind of 1337 h4x0r from Anonymous or something.

 

Gets me every time. People crack security, not 'hack' it. Hacking is generally more positive or experimental.

[WinNut]

"Make sure you email it to yourself and save it to the drive!" -WinNut's English Teacher 2015

"HOW DO I OPEN MICROSOFT OFFICE? HALP PLS!!!!!1111" -WinNut's Classmate 2015

[Darkman]

"Make sure you email it to yourself and save it to the drive!" -WinNut's English Teacher 2015

"HOW DO I OPEN MICROSOFT OFFICE? HALP PLS!!!!!1111" -WinNut's Classmate 2015

Happens here all the time. qq

[WinNut]

Happens here all the time. qq

My English teacher had us save it to the computer (I was like 1 of 3 people smart enough to save it in GDrive) and then put the laptops back in the cart, it was madness when she took them back out and everybody was trying to find their laptop. I was like "fucking skrubs".

 

I also never understand why people sign into Chrome and into their email on school computers and then never sign out. I was able to read somebody's email when I was using a school laptop. That's why I always use Incognito mode on any computer that's not mine, since I don't want people to see my activity and it's hella convenient if you forget to log out of something.

[PotatOS - Andrew]

"Make sure you email it to yourself and save it to the drive!" -WinNut's English Teacher 2015

"HOW DO I OPEN MICROSOFT OFFICE? HALP PLS!!!!!1111" -WinNut's Classmate 2015

This sounds exactly like my "computers" class last year.  People were still asking how to save word docs IN MAY.

[pspfreak]

My school just recently got rid of, threw out 20+ Dell D630 Laptops. What a waste. They had the t7500 @2.2ghz and 2GB of ram (easily upgradeable to 4), dual band wifi, and extended batteries with 75% of the their original capacity. 

[Gr8White_Bear]

My school just recently got rid of, threw out 20+ Dell D630 Laptops. What a waste. They had the t7500 @2.2ghz and 2GB of ram (easily upgradeable to 4), dual band wifi, and extended batteries with 75% of the their original capacity. 

...why?

[Darkman]

My school just recently got rid of, threw out 20+ Dell D630 Laptops. What a waste. They had the t7500 @2.2ghz and 2GB of ram (easily upgradeable to 4), dual band wifi, and extended batteries with 75% of the their original capacity. 

Mine did that with HP Minis thinking most of them were completely destroyed. They were just idiots and overcharged most of the batteries...

[WinNut]

Mine did that with HP Minis thinking most of them were completely destroyed. They were just idiots and overcharged most of the batteries...

If you want to see truly destroyed computers, look into a cart sometime. Most of them are missing the little mouse dot on the keyboard and some kids grab the computer by the display hinge causing a dead spot in the display.

[Darkman]

If you want to see truly destroyed computers, look into a cart sometime. Most of them are missing the little mouse dot on the keyboard and some kids grab the computer by the display hinge causing a dead spot in the display.

Yeah... People in my school were using some as baseball bats at one point and punching the shit out of them just because a boot menu would come up since MemTest is installed on all of the machines with a cracked Windows 7 Professional.

[pspfreak]

If you want to see truly destroyed computers, look into a cart sometime. Most of them are missing the little mouse dot on the keyboard and some kids grab the computer by the display hinge causing a dead spot in the display.

Yeah thats one thing missing from all of ours are those nubs. Our school wised up when they got newer laptops and got ones that didn't have nubs. Then they started stealing the keys right off the keyboards. 

 

Mine did that with HP Minis thinking most of them were completely destroyed. They were just idiots and overcharged most of the batteries...

Because they sit in laptop carts their whole lives and only ever get discharged like 20% of the way. 

 

...why?

Cuz my school is SmArT!

 

I'll have to take a picture of the one i was able to save.

Its in almost perfect condition. 

[marat569]

Have y'all tried explaining somebody what an operating system is?

 

My grandma still thinks the linux mint i installed on her is windows.

[Speedbird]

My grandma still thinks the linux mint i installed on her is windows.

I know someone who hasn't heard of Windows.

[pspfreak]

Here is what that laptop's condition is: 

[marat569]

I see people getting treasure computer parts from company garbage's; where do I find some? Behind a highschool?

[pspfreak]

I see people getting treasure computer parts from company garbage's; where do I find some? Behind a highschool?

I just happened to see they were throwing it out and asked if I could have one.