Experiences with non-techies

[vanished]

1 minute ago, ScootsMcgoots said:

Also mods have posted on r/thedonald ( I know ..I know)  pictures of reddit admins ( EMPLOYEES of reddit !!) telling the donald trump mods to not let anyone post threads on their subreddit talking about the  censorship on various subreddits... I thought reddit was about free speech and sharing ideas etc...

Apparently not.  I guess it's gone the way of twitter.  

[daniellearmouth]

1 hour ago, ScootsMcgoots said:

Ahh here it is.  That guy is a mod for one of the biggest subreddits 

This is basically why I avoid Reddit like the plague, unless there are a few useful tips someone's written on there beforehand.

 

My experience with Reddit on the whole is...eh.

[Fgtfv567]

On 6/11/2016 at 10:26 PM, J. Hammond said:

The effects of /k/, last night's barbecue, the engineer in me, and a bit of alcohol made this thought possible.

 

If I loaded a charged capacitor in a shotgun shell and fired it, could I make a long range tazer? Could I make a single-use cattle prod by taping a capacitor on the end of a stick? Could I take a M18 Claymore and replace the steel balls with capacitors that will shock anyone in the area of effect?

 

I should probably go to sleep.

You fucking genius.

On 6/12/2016 at 1:40 AM, Sors said:

All of them are possible.  But, most capacitors only stay charged for a brief period, hours or so.  It wouldn't be easy to keep them charged for those uses, and someone already made a taser shell for shotguns:

 

What if there was a belt-held capacitor recharger that ran off a battery? That'd keep the capacitors recharged at all times. Only problem that firing capacitors could get expensive...

On 6/12/2016 at 6:23 AM, AllRoundGamer said:

My Best Friend's Mother Bought A $2000+ Macbook Pro To Play Farmville On Facebook.

 

My Friend Does Not Know How To Redeem A Google Play Gift Card.

 

My Younger Brother's Account With Some Money Got Hacked Because He "Shared" Passwords With His "Friend" Online In Return For More Money(Scam)

 

Laptop With GT 710M For $1K And A Rep Claimed It Was "Blazing Fast"

 

Younger Brother Planned To Buy A $300 Laptop With An Intel Celeron Processor JUST To Play Demanding Games.Luckily I Stopped Him.(No Dedicated GPU At All)

Also Claimed Can Play Games On ____p Ultra.

 

Apple Phones Are The Best And Android Sucks.(WTF?)

 

Being Called To Help With Installing Minecraft On The Macbook Pro.(Seriously?)

 

No One In My Family And Relatives Know What Specs Their Phone Runs At And Claims It Is Fast.

God I feel bad for those people who overpaid for a computer (not just Macs mind you!) that's meant for someone here on the forum and just uses it to play casual games that an APU could have easily run. She should have gotten a chromebook. More so in fact, since Google Play is on a load of CBs now. Mix a liquidsky subscription in there, you got a half-decent gaming laptop

 

It's like a lotto ticket! You scratch off the bit and punch the code into "Redeem Code". If he's never done it before there should be instructions. Don't tell me he got too lazy to read the instructions and went "Aw fuck this, microtransactions suck ass anyway"

 

Cue guy from Reddit saying "Welp he deserved it, it's his own fault"

 

Yeah, probably as "Blazing Fast" as the 1990 Honda Accord that sales guy drives

 

Well he can probably play on Ultra. Just minimum resolution, and renames "Low" to "Ultra" in his head. But for real, how did he not know any better? I bet that laptop shows tons of signs of age, and I'm sure he can at least put the pieces together...

 

Ow. This hurt me on a personal level. This could have me starting a whole rant, but instead I'm just going to direct you over to like r/androidmasterrace or something.

 

If he's never downloaded and installed a program before, then I can't blame him, but it's not that hard. Go to mojang, pay for it, download, spam next until it's installed!

 

No average joe cares about specs. Just period. No one. You say the words "i7-6960X", and they'll think you strung together a whole bunch of random letters and numbers together. Speaking of random numbers, benchmarks. You could show them an AnTuTu benchmark, tell them "higher number is better" and they'll still shrug at you. All they're feeling is how snappy the phone is just scrolling back and forth between homescreens. Also see point about woman buying 2 grand PC for casual flash-based games

On 6/12/2016 at 10:15 AM, wkdpaul said:

Poor kid bought a GT740 for $165 CAD ($130 USD) and thinks it's the best GPU for the money... had to break his heart and showed him how wrong he was!!!

You can get a Zotac 750 Ti for 100 bucks, so he seriously got ripped off

 

9 hours ago, wkdpaul said:

no wireless, $40 of mail-in rebates (I personally was always lucky but it's not the case for everyone) and no Windows (don't know why you put $20 for Windows 10)

 

Also, this was done in Canada, we unfortunately have a premium on just about anything here, you could try again using ca.pcpartpicker.com instead.

 

EDIT: I just transfered that part list into the Canadian partpicker ;

 

http://ca.pcpartpicker.com/list/y4MmGf

I think he grabbed it off this

3 hours ago, daniellearmouth said:

This is basically why I avoid Reddit like the plague, unless there are a few useful tips someone's written on there beforehand.

 

My experience with Reddit on the whole is...eh.

It's kind of like walking into a ginormous animal shelter. Sometimes you see something cute. Sometimes you see something really funny. Sometimes you'll meet someone super smart and learn a thing or two. Other times you step in crap. Just literal, literal crap.

[deWaardt]

I was in a discussion with someone who claimed that a Q6600 was just as powerful as an i5 and the i5 was thus not worth it. When I told him wrong people got mad at me and someone said he was gonna get 2 xeons (probably to match i5 performance or whatever?)

 

Something else people don't seem to understand: if you get 2 quadcore xeons with very poor single core performance, you now have 8 slow cores. Congratulations! Games are gonna run just as shit as they did before!

 

Maybe a little bit better...

 

If you're gonna buy 2 slow dualcores you will be entirely out of luck.

[cantalOPe]

On January 16, 2013 at 3:12 PM, nillas12 said:

Thought it would be fun to make a topic about, all of our experiences with all the people, who doesn't really understand all the tech.

Note: Don't make this too harsh on them. You need to help them, not yell at them.

I'll go first:

So my mom has a daycare. And one day I am sitting on the floor with my laptop. And one of the kids, with real dirty hands come and put his hand on the screen. Guess he thought it was a touch screen. Still haven't gotten it off, and it was 3 months ago.

My grandmother is scared of getting rid of the computer, because she thinks it will cut the power to her house.

Back when my friend wasn't so bright, he tried to download the drivers for the GTX 970 on his Macbook Air, and thought that he just downloaded the GTX 970.

[cantalOPe]

On January 16, 2013 at 5:16 PM, RobbieX27 said:

People thinking they can download RAM....

downloadmoreram.com

[MatazaNZ]

On 13/04/2016 at 9:20 AM, DirtyDane said:

 

-snip-

 

and does anyone know a good way to go about learning C# im a really good hands on learner but when you make me sit there and read a book neither of us are learning anything. 

I know this post is a couple months old, but if you're still trying to learn C#, and you're not good with reading, video tutorials go a long way. Use the tutorials to teach you the language, and make sure you also learn the basics of the Object Oriented programming paradigm. I would highly suggest Lynda.com if you don't mind paying for it, else YouTube should have a good many tutorial series worth their salt. Most will use console applications or WinForms applications to teach you, but once you learn the language, I would urge you to go on to learn WPF to program in C#, as that's the newer technology. I digress though, spend time looking at Lynda and YouTube, and googling anything else you want help with. Also, don't be afraid to PM me if you have questions, I've been using C# for a couple years now. 

[arch_linuxos]

On 4/16/2013 at 3:54 AM, Fetzie said:

My parents are of the impression that I can "fix the internet" when it stops working.

Just unplug the router, wait a few seconds, then plug it back in

[Misunderstood Wookie]

On 1/17/2013 at 2:23 PM, Boosted_i6 said:

Them - "hey I need advice on buying a computer"

Me - "sure id be happy to help you pick something out or ill build a great computer for you"

*week later*

Them - "yeah, i just decided to buy a computer from Best Buy"

Me "......................."

#MyParents

Every time dude every time. I pick one out or I tell them what specs to look for, they go off and get the one that is cheap and way under what I said was best value.

[WkdPaul]

11 minutes ago, Misunderstood Wookie said:

#MyParents

Every time dude every time. I pick one out or I tell them what specs to look for, they go off and get the one that is cheap and way under what I said was best value.

I fixed that by buying it for them and then showing up with the PC

 

[BingoFishy]

2 minutes ago, wkdpaul said:

I fixed that by buying it for them and then showing up with the PC

 

But then they haven't paid for it

[CandleJakk]

"The next Xbox will play games in 4k 60FPS."

- my friends

 

*sigh*

[WkdPaul]

45 minutes ago, BingoFishy said:

But then they haven't paid for it

I'm the one having to fix my parent's computer mistake, I'm just removing one variable from the equation!

 

Also with the job I have I'm making way more money than they do, so I save myself a headache (when I have to fix something, I've build so I know where to start) and a heartache (I know what I paid for is worth it, seeing how they don't have much money I would be very angry to see them spend too much for that!)!

[Sauron]

On 13/6/2016 at 4:18 AM, daniellearmouth said:

Try building a computer with an i5 6400, 8GB of DDR4 RAM, A/C Wireless, USB 3.1 capability and an R9 370 for less than $900 CAD / $700 USD. It's actually pretty tough.

is it?

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel Core i5-6400 2.7GHz Quad-Core Processor  ($179.99 @ SuperBiiz) 
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-H110M-A Micro ATX LGA1151 Motherboard  ($47.98 @ Newegg) 
Memory: Crucial 8GB (1 x 8GB) DDR4-2133 Memory  ($26.99 @ SuperBiiz) 
Storage: Western Digital Caviar Blue 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive  ($47.49 @ OutletPC) 
Video Card: Sapphire Radeon R7 370 4GB Vapor-X Video Card  ($129.99 @ Newegg) 
Case: BitFenix Comrade ATX Mid Tower Case  ($22.99 @ NCIX US) 
Power Supply: EVGA 500W 80+ Bronze Certified ATX Power Supply  ($43.99 @ SuperBiiz) 
Operating System: Microsoft Windows 10 Home OEM 64-bit  ($84.99 @ NCIX US) 
Wireless Network Adapter: Edimax EW-7811UTC USB 2.0 802.11a/b/g/n/ac Wi-Fi Adapter  ($13.99 @ Amazon) 
Other: Gigabyte USB3.1 ($15.00)
Total: $613.40
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2016-06-16 17:03 EDT-0400

 

It's obviously much cheaper if you already have a windows copy or are fine with linux.

[BingoFishy]

23 minutes ago, Sauron said:

is it?

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel Core i5-6400 2.7GHz Quad-Core Processor  ($179.99 @ SuperBiiz) 
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-H110M-A Micro ATX LGA1151 Motherboard  ($47.98 @ Newegg) 
Memory: Crucial 8GB (1 x 8GB) DDR4-2133 Memory  ($26.99 @ SuperBiiz) 
Storage: Western Digital Caviar Blue 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive  ($47.49 @ OutletPC) 
Video Card: Sapphire Radeon R7 370 4GB Vapor-X Video Card  ($129.99 @ Newegg) 
Case: BitFenix Comrade ATX Mid Tower Case  ($22.99 @ NCIX US) 
Power Supply: EVGA 500W 80+ Bronze Certified ATX Power Supply  ($43.99 @ SuperBiiz) 
Operating System: Microsoft Windows 10 Home OEM 64-bit  ($84.99 @ NCIX US) 
Wireless Network Adapter: Edimax EW-7811UTC USB 2.0 802.11a/b/g/n/ac Wi-Fi Adapter  ($13.99 @ Amazon) 
Other: Gigabyte USB3.1 ($15.00)
Total: $613.40
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2016-06-16 17:03 EDT-0400

 

It's obviously much cheaper if you already have a windows copy or are fine with linux.

It's Canadian dollar, and I already made a part list. Don't worry about it.

[Sauron]

2 minutes ago, BingoFishy said:

It's Canadian dollar, and I already made a part list. Don't worry about it.

he did say 700USD as well

[daniellearmouth]

3 hours ago, Sauron said:

is it?

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel Core i5-6400 2.7GHz Quad-Core Processor  ($179.99 @ SuperBiiz) 
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-H110M-A Micro ATX LGA1151 Motherboard  ($47.98 @ Newegg) 
Memory: Crucial 8GB (1 x 8GB) DDR4-2133 Memory  ($26.99 @ SuperBiiz) 
Storage: Western Digital Caviar Blue 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive  ($47.49 @ OutletPC) 
Video Card: Sapphire Radeon R7 370 4GB Vapor-X Video Card  ($129.99 @ Newegg) 
Case: BitFenix Comrade ATX Mid Tower Case  ($22.99 @ NCIX US) 
Power Supply: EVGA 500W 80+ Bronze Certified ATX Power Supply  ($43.99 @ SuperBiiz) 
Operating System: Microsoft Windows 10 Home OEM 64-bit  ($84.99 @ NCIX US) 
Wireless Network Adapter: Edimax EW-7811UTC USB 2.0 802.11a/b/g/n/ac Wi-Fi Adapter  ($13.99 @ Amazon) 
Other: Gigabyte USB3.1 ($15.00)
Total: $613.40
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2016-06-16 17:03 EDT-0400

 

It's obviously much cheaper if you already have a windows copy or are fine with linux.

Bear in mind, you've got a heavily discounted case there. Had that not been on discount your thing would be closer to $650. Yes, it's still under the $700 mark, but you're not really saving all that much.

Having to buy a USB 3.1 add-in card feels like cheating to me, and considering that only has one of either Type-C and Type-A, it doesn't quite cut it, given the Best Buy machine had two Type-A USB 3.1 inputs. Yes, Type-C can be a bonus, but it's not nearly ubiquitous enough for it to be worth it right now.

 

Looking around will net you a bargain, but as my point states, pre-built computers have a place. Pre-builts are not necessarily always more expensive than they should be, and all things considered, the one that Linus showcased is good value for money, all things considered.

Basically, the people complaining about pre-builts existing can shush. If you want to build a computer rather than buy one ready built, go ahead - you do you. That's what I do. But if you want to go pre-built, that's fine too. Shop around; you're sure to find a bargain somewhere.

[vanished]

38 minutes ago, daniellearmouth said:

Bear in mind, you've got a heavily discounted case there. Had that not been on discount your thing would be closer to $650. Yes, it's still under the $700 mark, but you're not really saving all that much.

Not actually reading into this discussion or picking sides, but OEMs at places like best buy are sometimes on awesome sales, so to find parts on discount I think is a fair comparison, especially since it does happen in "the real world"

[RahulR]

I just got back from Costco and saw a $1299.99 HP mini-tower that according to the tag had:

 

Core i7 6700T

16GBs DDR3 RAM

and a damn GT 730.

 

It claimed to be a "Workstation PC"

[WkdPaul]

22 minutes ago, RahulR said:

I just got back from Costco and saw a $1299.99 HP mini-tower that according to the tag had:

 

Core i7 6700T

16GBs DDR3 RAM

and a damn GT 730.

 

It claimed to be a "Workstation PC"

I don't see a problem with that, the EliteDesk G2 is actually a workstation, it is sold and marketed as such. Also, $1300 CAD is only $100-$200 higher than some other online retailers.

 

So nothing wrong here.

[RahulR]

8 minutes ago, wkdpaul said:

I don't see a problem with that, the EliteDesk G2 is actually a workstation, it is sold and marketed as such. Also, $1300 CAD is only $100-$200 higher than some other online retailers.

 

So nothing wrong here.

It wasn't an EliteDesk, it was some Envy. Either way, isn't $1300 is too much for those specs? You can buy/build for a lot cheaper. It also had a single 2TB hard drive.

[vanished]

10 minutes ago, RahulR said:

It wasn't an EliteDesk, it was some Envy. Either way, isn't $1300 is too much for those specs? You can buy/build for a lot cheaper. It also had a single 2TB hard drive.

Sounds high to me but I haven't worked it out.  Then again, it could be just because of the canadian dollar

[WkdPaul]

43 minutes ago, RahulR said:

It wasn't an EliteDesk, it was some Envy. Either way, isn't $1300 is too much for those specs? You can buy/build for a lot cheaper. It also had a single 2TB hard drive.

 

33 minutes ago, Ryan_Vickers said:

Sounds high to me but I haven't worked it out.  Then again, it could be just because of the canadian dollar

either way, it's the usual price for an HP workstation in Canada ...

 

HP Envy 750-219 Desktop PC

[matrix07012]

2 hours ago, RahulR said:

I just got back from Costco and saw a $1299.99 HP mini-tower that according to the tag had:

 

Core i7 6700T

16GBs DDR3 RAM

and a damn GT 730.

 

It claimed to be a "Workstation PC"

it is not bad, but why did they put the GT 730 when it is equal to a Skylake iGPU

[BingoFishy]

1 minute ago, matrix07012 said:

it is not bad, but why did they put the GT 730 when it is equal to a Skylake iGPU

Probably worse tbh