Experiences with non-techies

[APersonWithABrokenChair]

Buys 900D, goes with stock cooling, GT640, Pentium G3258, and an ITX board. Pretty sure I saw someone post a picture of their rig and it had a 900D and ITX motherboard.

No, this: http://pcpartpicker.com/p/WqxQgs

[WinNut]

Me too lol.  My school computers take like 3 minutes to log in on a good day

The school laptops take about 45 seconds from hitting the power button to the desktop. It's not that bad but it's annoying.

[deVIZtation]

I love this thread. So my dad found out that I built a system for my cousin last year and that he spent 1200 bucks on it. It had a 4570K, Z87 mobo, gtx 670, 128ssd.

My dad then starts talking to me;

Dad - "Wow, that's an expensive computer you built for him."

Me - "It's alright, my computer was more expensive"

Dad - "How much did you spend on yours?"

Me - "1500"

Dad - "....what???? How much would it have cost if you bought it at Bestbuy?"

Me - "I don't think you can buy that type of computer at Bestbuy"

Dad - "Or any store?"

Me - "Probably over 2000 if you bought it online from a company that puts together computers"

Dad - "................."

 

LOL, meanwhile I bought him an 800 dollar laptop just for browsing the internet.

[PotatOS - Andrew]

oh, stand corrected.lol

 

can you spot me some of those ddr4 rams you got? that website is blocked here in the office.. 

Seriously?  Surprising they know of the site.  Anyways, what's your IP?  I can beam you up some dimms through the intertube   

[Fgtfv567]

No, this: http://pcpartpicker.com/p/WqxQgs

Where's your fancy lighting?! It has to look BRIGHT

[APersonWithABrokenChair]

Where's your fancy lighting?! It has to look BRIGHT

YOU'RE RIGHT! 10 Af120's will due

[max_n_cheese11]

I also see a shit ton of people at school using IE and complaining about the school internet being so slow. It's a 15/10 connection.

 

I also hate the boot times on school computers after having used an SSD.

Ok, quick question, do you measure boot time from pc all the way off to start screen (for windows 8) or once the orbs and shit start spinning. I finally got around to getting an os on my computer, and it is my first time with a non-Mac computer since a dell dimension 8200 with xp on it (three year old me was impressed with the way it tore through the Lego website flash games, those were my life) and the time seems pretty fast, I need to time it again because the first time I timed it, it was 37 seconds, all the way off to start screen, but it seems like it is faster now.

[lopj245]

A guy in my class was interested in a gaming computer, he had a budget of 600 bucks and So I went on Newegg and some other sites and worked my magic. A few day's later he tells me he bought a laptop.. from Walmart... because he wanted a 1440p panel to play games on with his 300 dollar Toshiba Satellite. 

[Beskamir]

A guy in my class was interested in a gaming computer, he had a budget of 600 bucks and So I went on Newegg and some other sites and worked my magic. A few day's later he tells me he bought a laptop.. from Walmart... because he wanted a 1440p panel to play games on with his 300 dollar Toshiba Satellite. 

Guess some people just like playing games for the slideshow experience. (Ubisoft if you use slideshow experience in any why to explain why your games run at less than 15 frames I want royalties)

 

As for an experiences with nontechies story. It's somewhat cringe worthy watching my mom email pictures individually to herself because she wants to get them from her phone to her pc when I have a home sever she can upload the picture to whenever she is connected to our home network and almost instantly be able to access them from her pc. Not to mention bittorrent sync or syncthing which would allow for automatic syncing of pictures from one device to another. Also I'm trying to teach my mom how to use Windows Explorer so that she can start using all of the tech that I put in place to make my own life easier. Thankfully she's getting it although it's certainly taking time.

[Rune]

I had a customer call in and tell me that their television wasn't working. Asked what the source of the signal they were using was and they made a noise that sounded like they were getting strangled by an alien before asking what I meant. Guess they just turned the TV on and expected pictures to be sucked in from the void.

[pspfreak]

Guess some people just like playing games for the slideshow experience. (Ubisoft if you use slideshow experience in any why to explain why your games run at less than 15 frames I want royalties)

 

As for an experiences with nontechies story. It's somewhat cringe worthy watching my mom email pictures individually to herself because she wants to get them from her phone to her pc when I have a home sever she can upload the picture to whenever she is connected to our home network and almost instantly be able to access them from her pc. Not to mention bittorrent sync or syncthing which would allow for automatic syncing of pictures from one device to another. Also I'm trying to teach my mom how to use Windows Explorer so that she can start using all of the tech that I put in place to make my own life easier. Thankfully she's getting it although it's certainly taking time.

I do that if im sending one or two pics even though i have my own windows server 2012. Just easier,

[NerdNinja]

Hmm...

 

What?

[Xizerz]

People thinking they have to "safely remove" their usb flash drive

[PotatOS - Andrew]

My dad thinking that the antivirus saying that it found a virus on my grandparent's computer is a scam to get you to buy more protection, when in reality that computer is RIDDLED with viruses.  Also my grandparents clicking every "Shop online!  Do your banking here!  Speed up your interwebz!" ad they see.  And to think, I only just installed AdBlock yesterday...

[christianled59]

Guess some people just like playing games for the slideshow experience. (Ubisoft if you use slideshow experience in any why to explain why your games run at less than 15 frames I want royalties)

 

As for an experiences with nontechies story. It's somewhat cringe worthy watching my mom email pictures individually to herself because she wants to get them from her phone to her pc when I have a home sever she can upload the picture to whenever she is connected to our home network and almost instantly be able to access them from her pc. Not to mention bittorrent sync or syncthing which would allow for automatic syncing of pictures from one device to another. Also I'm trying to teach my mom how to use Windows Explorer so that she can start using all of the tech that I put in place to make my own life easier. Thankfully she's getting it although it's certainly taking time.

Tbh, I email myself pictures all the time. Not because I'm ignorant, just because it's practical. I can't be arsed to set anything up. I might some day but I really do not prefer synced pics.

[soup]

People thinking they have to "safely remove" their usb flash drive

Oh but they do!

[DildorTheDecent]

My dad thinking that the antivirus saying that it found a virus on my grandparent's computer is a scam to get you to buy more protection, when in reality that computer is RIDDLED with viruses.  Also my grandparents clicking every "Shop online!  Do your banking here!  Speed up your interwebz!" ad they see.  And to think, I only just installed AdBlock yesterday...

I've blocked 29030 ads with adblock so far. 

 

I feel that tally will be smashed when adblock functions on your grandparents pc

[EmeraldFlame]

So I have a bachelors in Computer Science and have been building computers since I was 10 (now 22). My family know this and as such I have become the family IT guy.

 

So my aunt brought me her laptop to work on the other day because 'it wouldn't turn on'. To my surprise it actually wouldn't turn on. So I pulled the battery and put it back in. Booted fine, the battery was just loose. So then while I had it, I figured I would run some diagnostics on it just to make sure other things were ok... and oh my god. This thing was absolutely riddled with viruses and rootkits. Their anti-virus software had been disabled, and the viruses were blocking it from being re-enabled. Windows itself was altered enough by the mass of viruses that it couldn't install new anti-virus programs. I couldn't even get Malware Bytes Chameleon to run.

 

So I booted to AVG's rescue CD and had it run a scan. It found and removed some 500+ infections, and then I rebooted to windows. While those 500+ infections were fixed, there were still so many that things were royally f***ed. I called her up explained the situation told her to change passwords for everything immediately, and then told her I was going to just nuke the hard drive and reinstall everything, because at this point even if I did get it acting normal, stuff was embedded so deep that I couldn't be 100% sure I removed it all. So I backed up all of her 'My Documents' type stuff onto a flash drive and plugged that into another computer to scan that stuff, which came out surprisingly clean.

So then, booted to DBAN off of a USB drive and just wiped it. The rebooted off another USB to the Windows 7 installer to reinstall her copy of windows. Lo and behold, despite this thing being relatively new, it just wasn't compatible at all with booting up the WIndows 7 Installer from USB, something I have done hundreds of times, and knew the USB drive itself was fine. The installer just threw out errors when you attempted to partition.

 

So I burned a Windows 7 installer DVD, because I got rid of those a while ago and popped it in. Their DVD drive was broken. When attempting to boot to it, the BIOS just threw out hardware failure errors. So I had to take the DVD drive out of their laptop and swap it with the DVD drive in my laptop, Install windows, and then swap them back.

It was a freaking nightmare. Plus they really don't have any money so I know I am never gonna get paid for the effort.

[Frankie]

So I have a bachelors in Computer Science and have been building computers since I was 10 (now 22). My family know this and as such I have become the family IT guy.

 

So my aunt brought me her laptop to work on the other day because 'it wouldn't turn on'. To my surprise it actually wouldn't turn on. So I pulled the batter and put it back in. Booted fine, the battery was just loose. So then while I had it, I figured I would run some diagnostics on it just to make sure other things were ok... and oh my god. This thing was absolutely riddled with viruses and rootkits. Their anti-virus software had been disabled, and the viruses were blocking it from being re-enabled. Windows itself was altered enough by the mass of viruses that it couldn't install new anti-virus programs. I couldn't even get Malware Bytes Chameleon to run.

 

So I booted to AVG's rescue CD and had it run a scan. It found and removed some 500+ infections, and then I rebooted to windows. While those 500+ infections were fixed, there were still so many that things were royally f***ed. I called her up explained the situation told her to change passwords for everything immediately, and then told her I was going to just nuke the hard drive and reinstall everything, because at this point even if I did get it acting normal, stuff was embedded so deep that I couldn't be 100% sure I removed it all. So I backed up all of her 'My Documents' type stuff onto a flash drive and plugged that into another computer to scan that stuff, which came out surprisingly clean.

So then, booted to DBAN off of a USB drive and just wiped it. The rebooted off another USB to the Windows 7 installer to reinstall her copy of windows. Lo and behold, despite this thing being relatively new, it just wasn't compatible at all with booting up the WIndows 7 Installer from USB, something I have done hundreds of times, and knew the USB drive itself was fine. The installer just threw out errors when you attempted to partition.

 

So I burned a Windows 7 installer DVD, because I got rid of those a while ago and popped it in. Their DVD drive was broken. When attempting to boot to it, the BIOS just threw out hardware failure errors. So I had to take the DVD drive out of their laptop and swap it with the DVD drive in my laptop, Install windows, and then swap them back.

It was a freaking nightmare. Plus they really don't have any money so I know I am never gonna get paid for the effort.

 

Been there, done that. Could not install from usb and since I was working on a eee laptop I could not use dvd. So I swaped HDD to my laptop instal win, put it back, done

[PotatOS - Andrew]

I've blocked 29030 ads with adblock so far. 

 

I feel that tally will be smashed when adblock functions on your grandparents pc

I have no doubts.  Seriously, I went to use their computer but my grandmother was on it, she said "just wait a minute, I'll be done soon" and then proceeded to navigate to optonline, then clicked a ton of ads telling her to "click to speed up your computer".  Also recently I went to install Linux on her computer, but the install was bugged so I went into windows to re-flash the iso.  As soon as windows booted, which took about 10 mins, avast let out a SPEW of "Avast has blocked this malicious URL".  The computer was under attack left and right, in the span of 5 seconds Avast had blocked 189 malicious URL's, and I wasn't even using a browser, just sitting at the desktop.

[DildorTheDecent]

I have no doubts.  Seriously, I went to use their computer but my grandmother was on it, she said "just wait a minute, I'll be done soon" and then proceeded to navigate to optonline, then clicked a ton of ads telling her to "click to speed up your computer".  Also recently I went to install Linux on her computer, but the install was bugged so I went into windows to re-flash the iso.  As soon as windows booted, which took about 10 mins, avast let out a SPEW of "Avast has blocked this malicious URL".  The computer was under attack left and right, in the span of 5 seconds Avast had blocked 189 malicious URL's, and I wasn't even using a browser, just sitting at the desktop.

That's the kind of PC security software fears. 

[PotatOS - Andrew]

That's the kind of PC security software fears. 

I've given up, I'm at school now but as soon as I get home I'm installing Linux.  I mean, for god's sake, they do their BANKING on that computer!

[Guest andyysplash]

I've given up, I'm at school now but as soon as I get home I'm installing Linux.  I mean, for god's sake, they do their BANKING on that computer!

 

I really struggle to understand why people fall for all kinds of obvious clickbait. With older people it's a little bit more understandable (as they may get really confused or may have grown up in a time when people were more trustworthy, though that's certainly not a stereotype) but when people see a computer as 'just another techno-machine' or 'a magical box full of rainbows and poni unicorns' and have no clue how it works why are they clicking things on random webpages that claim to 'fix all your viruses' or 'speed up your internetz'? Some of these ads are obviously ads as they appear multiple times on one page, are flashing all sorts of colours that have NOTHING in common with that site's CSS theme and are often inside a box that says 'ad' next to it.

 

They must be the sort of people who think they can take off their side panel and pull out physical copies of their emails from the 'Outlook' icon.

[Jambls]

I've never used an SSD but besides the fact that I can't FUCKING AFFORD ONE my 7200RPM wd blue seems to do the job pretty well.  It takes like 1-2 seconds on the windows loading screen, boots from cold in ~20-30 secs.

But if you have an SSD lying around I'll gladly take it off your hands...

 

EDIT:  I just booted it, takes approx. 15 secs to get to the login screen.

 I don't have an SSD. I have this slow hard drive and it takes me one and a half minutes to get to the login screen.

/compain

 

I told my friend about mech keyboards and how you can change the keycaps on the cherry ones (he was asking about it) and he was mindblown.

[IMPERIUS]

I have a 21:9 IPS monitor from LG. I cringe every time one of my parents points to something on the screen and almost touches it.

Omg me too haha. My sister came to me today, was showing some pics of her trip she made and pointing at stuff with her fingers, almost touches the screnn and im like yeah nice but could you please not touch the screen?

Also, because this is a 21:9 monitor (25in btw) my mom keeps on complaining that the screen is not tall enough and I cant get her to understand that this is a 21:9 ULTRAWIDE monitor not a 16:9 and because of this the height looks a bit smaller but isnt in reality