Experiences with non-techies

[DirtyDane]

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....

see i do something similar. i like to walk into best buys etc and let the salesmen try to sell me things. and i just keep adding requirements. then when we narrow it down to one machine i open device manager and tell them about the components in it. they get defensive, and i walk away laughing silently to myself

[Oberon.Smite]

One time we were doing a tech-based project in English back in 7th grade ('12-13'). I was working with this dude and at the time I had basically no knowledge of PC parts and whatnot, I just knew some of the basics after watching a few videos and whatnot. I don't exactly remember how it went but I was talking about resoutions over 1080p and he said that there were none.

 

'Dude, there's no resolutions over 1080p. I would know, I'm a techie.'

 

Anyways I started to argue with him but the teacher started talking so we had to STFU and I forgot about the whole thing. One valuable lesson: You won't win someone over by arguing with them. People are stubborn by nature, agree with them, ask them a few questions, and expose them. They will then come back to you begging for assistance.

[BurgerBum]

ew, why would you want just that case?  It seems to me it's the perfect pairing for the rest of that machine

probably the same reason i want an INWIN q2000 and this keybaord http://www.pckeyboard.com/page/product/UNI0476

gorgeous case. gorgeous keyboard.

[DirtyDane]

I am just gonna throw this out there. if you take the time to have the theme song from the Mighty Morphin power rangers in the background it just makes reading all these stories that much more epic. in fact it makes me imagine us as IT guys just running into a clients office in full spandex power ranger costumes and fighting off the "viruses" they say they have. wouldnt IT be epic if that was our job

[DigitalHermit]

I am just gonna throw this out there. if you take the time to have the theme song from the Mighty Morphin power rangers in the background it just makes reading all these stories that much more epic. in fact it makes me imagine us as IT guys just running into a clients office in full spandex power ranger costumes and fighting off the "viruses" they say they have. wouldnt IT be epic if that was our job

I did half the rewiring (a dirty job) for our computer lab at school in a suit... I guess that's something...

[DirtyDane]

I did half the rewiring (a dirty job) for our computer lab at school in a suit... I guess that's something...

GO GO SCHOOL IT STAFFFFFFF!!!!!!!!! (guitar solo continues)

[soup]

http://downloadmoreram.com/

 

I thought it would be but I wasn't sure .

I HATE THAT SITE AND ALL IT STANDS FOR.  I WISH IT WOULD JUST GO UP IN FLAMES.  <- Does that look like green crayon?   All decent rant/hate  letters are written in green crayon?

[vanished]

I thought it would be but I wasn't sure .

I HATE THAT SITE AND ALL IT STANDS FOR.  I WISH IT WOULD JUST GO UP IN FLAMES.  <- Does that look like green crayon?   All decent rant/hate  letters are written in green crayon?

Other people have to have the font you chose as well for it to look that way

[DigitalHermit]

I thought it would be but I wasn't sure .

I HATE THAT SITE AND ALL IT STANDS FOR.  I WISH IT WOULD JUST GO UP IN FLAMES.  <- Does that look like green crayon?   All decent rant/hate  letters are written in green crayon?

 

slightly fixed...

[Minetex]

Lol, today we were recording some sounds for a video, and my father asked me about how we did the last one. I told him something like "I recorded it from the piano to the computer."

(his job is technically being a techie, he fixes stuff, builds computers and administrates several company networks)

And then I added "Via the front panel." (cuz it has a difference between the FP and the sound card) a and my brother replies:

"No, not via front panel, but via Audacity."

:facepalm: Bro do u eevan computers?

[soup]

slightly fixed...

 

Mmm about the only proper use I can think of for comic sans

[DirtyDane]

Hey Guys,

 

I'm not that knowledgeable in respect to Hardware components but I can say atleast I have decent enough knowledge to help out my friends in buying some decent parts, I'm more knowledgeable in terms of Software and Networking, but since my friends don't really have the patience to actually go to tech forums like this and read reviews and stuff they all come to me for help, I always try and choose the best components according to the best of my knowledge and pick out the best components, they will all be like oh awesome bro and end up going to some retailer and buying cheap shit for an expensive amount! Really pisses me off. All listen to me blabber on for like an hour or so and then completely ignore everything! Thankfully my Dad is a proper tech savvy guy and knows his stuff. It's great coming on to forums like this and expanding your knowledge, I really learnt a lot here, more people should take the time to sit and go through these forums. 

im the same in some ways. honestly you say 680Ti or something like that it means nothing to me. i know my stuff i know networking rather well. but then again im younger and not as experienced. ... anyway what my point is is that sure i could probably build a great computer and know what im doing i just wont know a part when you say its name. because i dont really care to much about each little part out there and what is records are. now when im building a computer yes i will care and yes i will do something about it, but if its not affecting me at the moment i really wont care what the heat output of card A is compared to card B or know how good motherboard A is to motherboard B.

 

Then again im still in school so ive got alot of things to learn still and im okay with that. I will pick it up eventually i hope. 

Thats kinda why i read these forums so i can build up extra knowledge on things like new hardware etc. i dont think i will ever bother to know off the top of my head the specs of a hardware item but hey i can always google it. once i do usually i know exactly what im looking at and understand it much better. 

 

just wish grammar worked like that for me... then again im pretty lazy with typing in forums

 

Anyone else kinda get what im trying to say. Its not that im not knowledgeable, its that im 1 still learning alot of this stuff (going to a voactional school for it)  2 i lack experience im sure as time goes by (because ive only had any sort of noteable certifications for 2 years now) i will improve and understand much more what it is im working with

[WinNut]

Wow, um...

 

Today I was at the Apple Store looking at some stuff, and I overheard the rep saying "This MacBook has a 2.4 processor that can go up to 3.1!"

 

I also saw a kid type in "funny fails" into the search box within the settings program.

[SmashyThePenguin]

I was reinstalling Windows XP for my neighbor, an elderly woman. Her installation mysteriously started bluescreening every time she booted the PC. So, I get everything done, all of the drivers back, all of the programs she uses, and shut down the PC. It starts to install a few updates that the first reboot didn't get, and she says, "oh, it does this sometimes," and unplugs it to get it to turn off. Before I can get out, "d-dont!" she's smiling at me with the power cord in her hand. 

 

... Mystery solved.

[vanished]

I was reinstalling Windows XP for my neighbor, an elderly woman. Her installation mysteriously started bluescreening every time she booted the PC. So, I get everything done, all of the drivers back, all of the programs she uses, and shut down the PC. It starts to install a few updates that the first reboot didn't get, and she says, "oh, it does this sometimes," and unplugs it to get it to turn off. Before I can get out, "d-dont!" she's smiling at me with the power cord in her hand. 

 

... Mystery solved.

Can she read?  If I recall correctly, there is a very clear message on the screen while it's updating that says something to the effect of "do not power off your computer"

[DirtyDane]

I glance through the instructions since more often then not there is something that I didn't know or I could just watch a youtube video on the topic...

when i get bored i dig out the manuals to things and read them like books. im telling you every time i do that i learn some new thing about my machine that i had no idea it could do. i normally only do this for consoles though or stuff. no point in reading a monitor manual or something

[SmashyThePenguin]

Can she read?  If I recall correctly, there is a very clear message on the screen while it's updating that says something to the effect of "do not power off your computer"

Oh no, you're entirely right. I have no idea. My best guess is that it looked like scary computer text and she didn't read it. Either that or she had a habit of turning off the monitor immediately after powering off the PC, and again, just didn't look long enough to read it. I told her that was what it was and she said she didn't know and that never saw that message.

[WkdPaul]

Can she read? If I recall correctly, there is a very clear message on the screen while it's updating that says something to the effect of "do not power off your computer"

that's typical end user behavior, they don't need to read messages; they know better than the machine!

You'd be surprised to see how much tech support is about talking to complete idiots!

Remind me of a woman who called the ISP one of my friend was working for, she was ranting about them spying on her (Snowden leaks and all that) and that they had to stop and unconnect her from the internet, etc ... Turns out she didn't have any account with any ISP, since she sounded crazy and wasn't a client, the call ended there. My friend tried to get the recording but he couldn't convince his manager! lol

[Fgtfv567]

Today I was at my local Fry's and we brought my dad's 6 year old PC for repairs as it won't boot and I don't have spare parts for testing.

 

The latter is besides the point, I went window shopping and eventually headed into the GPU sections. Now if you've read my sig or have known me long enough, you know I want an EVGA reference GTX 970 for my X51, as that's the only one that makes sense in my PC.

 

Now I know that neither of my two Fry's in my area has that card, but for shits and giggles, I asked the guy in there anyways just to make sure. I asked "Do you have any reference 970s?" or something along those lines. He didn't know what a reference cooler was. So I told him that it was a "blower card" with actual finger marks in the air. I did this as in the other location the quite good and knowledgeable employee (not today, at a separate time and location) just got confused and wasn't familiar with the "reference" term, so I thought this guy (today) might have been the same way. He told me to look in the components section, which I presume would be the CPU, RAM, Motherboard section. Quick sanity check, I was asking for a reference GTX 970. I told him a reference cooler is just a cooler that attaches to the card (didn't tell him it exhausts air out of the case instead of downwards, FYI). He still told me to look in the component section again. (There is nothing in the component section relating to GPUs except for Corsair's crappy HG10, I prefer NZXT's G10 instead)

[Coaxialgamer]

Also, the motherboard comes with a chipset

He probably meant the cpu, by chipset and used a random "tech savy-ish" word.

[comicsansms]

Mmm about the only proper use I can think of for comic sans

Hey! I am not that useless.

[Lewiscpullan]

My friend thought that his playstation 3 had better graphics than my £600 gaming pc lol

[Lewiscpullan]

The sales people in pc world are crap! Here's my story.

 

So my mum and I are looking for two cheap laptops in pc world for my mums company, we know what we want but a sales women comes up and asks us what we're looking for we tell we're alright but she insists so she starts pointing out the microsoft surface but they're way to expensive so she then tells us that she should get a netbook. So we tell that we want at least 4gb of ram and the netbook only had 2gb and so I say no we want a proper laptop with 4gb of ram with that she replied "How would you know you just play games and listen to music!" At that point my mum and I were furious and we just left! Goes to show you have to look after your customers and not offend them.

 

(She also had a foul breath!)

[Str_Mape]

Technically this doesn't belong in the thread as the people are techies but it's so bad I'll put it here anyway.

Class of 12x A+ Certified students and the lecturer (He taught me 3 years ago and is cool guy) bring in a computer that they can't get to boot and none of them knew why. A student was building it at home and brought it in to build in class.

I open it, unplug the floppy power from the system fan header and facepalm.
I got them sorted with a new board after testing the old one that ended up being dead and installed it for them,

 

[Str_Mape]

Second post because I just remembered it and am pretty sure I haven't posted it here

Before final exam of a course I'm doing, the most annoying guy of the 7 people who had lasted to now was going on about how you'd have to be an idiot to not pass the exam. Exam was to take apart and rebuild a computer, install windows and drivers then do some stuff other easy stuff. I guess he was right that you'd have to be an idiot not to pass.

Cut part way through the exam, I'm finishing up the windows install, and other people have just started windows except for two people, guy across the room and the annoying guy next to me. 
Guy next to me starts swearing at the computer while trying to solve the issue for around 10 minutes,guy across the room quietly works at it and eventually gets a post.

Guy next to me seeing he is the last one, starts crying and storms out of the room, I peek in his computer, jump the power connectors and laugh as it comes on.

TLDR: Guy says you have to be stupid not to be able to build a PC prior to an exam, he starts crying and leaves when he can't get it to turn on, turns out he forgot to connect the case switch / jumping the connectors with a screwdriver..