Experiences with non-techies

[smokefest]

Also,

Maybe ~14 Years ago approx. when I was in high school ( 16 yo ) we had old computers, like pentium 2. I really wanted to have new computers at school , I remember the Pentium 4 was brand new at that time, and was a BEAST.

Because each students had their static places ( each students uses the same computer every day ) an idea came to my mind on how me and my other 3 friends could get a new Pentium 4. I didnt know if it would works but I knew i could go on some Warez site ( yea back in early 2000s there was no torrents, no google, no facebook, back in that time when you wanted to download "illegal" stuff you had to go on Gamez or Warez sites !!! Wich were most of the time full of viruses and stuff but if you know ur shit you could avoid it easily by not downloading or clickin the wrong stuff..

So i went to a warez site, when i was home on my own computer, where you could download tons of viruses and other stuff. I downloaded a virus ( windows killer was its name ) and I saved it on a floppy disc ( cd-rom didnt exist or were totally new at that time so I used a Floppy disc, anyway our computers didnt have cd-roms reader )

When i came back to school the next day, i ran the floppy disc virus on my computer and my 3 other friends computer and it did crash windows and we couldnt even reboot or get to the OS anymore !!

I remember the IT of the school said it was probably due to broken hardware, and that these computers needed to be changed. The next week we came at school we had 4 brand new Pentium 4 with basic graphics card and since then we could play Counter-strike 1.5  ( yes 1.5 oldschool ) during the class !!

LOL ! We all know all he needed to do was format + reinstall but i believe this guy didnt know shit about computers, as he didnt do that or even tryed to. He just looked at the BSOD and sayd, yep, these computers have died.

No need to say all the other students were kinda jealous about our new computers but never asked for anything or tryed to steal our computers because they knew they wud be in trouble ( me and my friends wudnt let sum1 steal our pentium 4 we NEEDED to play Counter-strike during the class, not listenin to that dumb useless teacher whos tryin to show other students how to open a Doc file.)

That said, I suggest you dont try this trick as you could get into trouble with ur school policies loll but back in early 2000s, my IT teacher was ignorant and i knew i wouldnt get caught even tho i wasnt sure it was gonna work ( the virus, nor if the teacher was gonna be able to repair it)  so... we enjoyd the new pentium 4

[themctipers]

3 minutes ago, smokefest said:

Also,

Maybe ~14 Years ago approx. when I was in high school ( 16 yo ) we had old computers, like pentium 2. I really wanted to have new computers at school , I remember the Pentium 4 was brand new at that time, and was a BEAST.

Because each students had their static places ( each students uses the same computer every day ) an idea came to my mind on how me and my other 3 friends could get a new Pentium 4. I didnt know if it would works but I knew i could go on some Warez site ( yea back in early 2000s there was no torrents, no google, no facebook, back in that time when you wanted to download "illegal" stuff you had to go on Gamez or Warez sites !!! Wich were most of the time full of viruses and stuff but if you know ur shit you could avoid it easily by not downloading or clickin the wrong stuff..

So i went to a warez site, when i was home on my own computer, where you could download tons of viruses and other stuff. I downloaded a virus ( windows killer was its name ) and I saved it on a floppy disc ( cd-rom didnt exist or were totally new at that time so I used a Floppy disc, anyway our computers didnt have cd-roms reader )

When i came back to school the next day, i ran the floppy disc virus on my computer and my 3 other friends computer and it did crash windows and we couldnt even reboot or get to the OS anymore !!

I remember the IT of the school said it was probably due to broken hardware, and that these computers needed to be changed. The next week we came at school we had 4 brand new Pentium 4 with basic graphics card and since then we could play Counter-strike 1.5  ( yes 1.5 oldschool ) during the class !!

LOL ! We all know all he needed to do was format + reinstall but i believe this guy didnt know shit about computers, as he didnt do that or even tryed to. He just looked at the BSOD and sayd, yep, these computers have died.

No need to say all the other students were kinda jealous about our new computers but never asked for anything or tryed to steal our computers because they knew they wud be in trouble ( me and my friends wudnt let sum1 steal our pentium 4 we NEEDED to play Counter-strike during the class, not listenin to that dumb useless teacher whos tryin to show other students how to open a Doc file.)

That said, I suggest you dont try this trick as you could get into trouble with ur school policies loll but back in early 2000s, my IT teacher was ignorant and i knew i wouldnt get caught even tho i wasnt sure it was gonna work ( the virus, nor if the teacher was gonna be able to repair it)  so... we enjoyd the new pentium 4

We have macs

 

[smokefest]

In early 2000s, Apple computers were only used in Video editing. Like you wudnt see sum1 use a mac for anything else than that

P.S. -- > Im sorry for you havin to deal with Macs during ur school time

Ironically : Ive studied IT recently and I had to deal with Macs at my school, i know ur pain. friend.

[BingoFishy]

At my summer camp, out room has 2 computers with 2 broken monitors (one had a dying inverter and I'm not sure what was wrong with the other monitor, it said it was set to the wrong screen resolution or something like that but you couldn't open the menu and if you switched the monitor with a different one it worked). I told the supervisor what was wrong and now they've taken away the 2 computers to fix them but left the monitors. 

[themctipers]

1 minute ago, smokefest said:

In early 2000s, Apple computers were only used in Video editing. Like you wudnt see sum1 use a mac for anything else than that

P.S. -- > Im sorry for you havin to deal with Macs during ur school time

Ironically : Ive studied IT recently and I had to deal with Macs at my school, i know ur pain. friend.

iMac G5 running leopard 

core 2 duo running slow leopard 

 

single core amd laptops running windows vista with 2gb ram

[WkdPaul]

13 minutes ago, smokefest said:

*snip*

reminds me of my tech school years ... at the time of 56k modems, we are given access to a room full of computers linked in a network! wow the dream!!!

 

Pretty early we realized the IT guy wasn't dumb, he had blocked ports, so we couldn't play most games, that's how we learned how to "hack" our games to use the 80 port ... the IT guy realized what was happening because the server would crash from time to time (apparently an old and cheap 286 that he was using as a router) had trouble keeping up with the bandwidth!

 

He ended up locking the software installation and would have to run cleanup routine during the weekend to remove the games we were able to copy on the HDD (some old games didn't need to be installed, copying the folders and changing a few of the game's *.ini was enough to make it work!)

 

ahh ... good times, though now I would probably hate "me" if I was the guy in charge of that network! loll

[NumLock21]

1 hour ago, smokefest said:

Spoiler

Also,

Maybe ~14 Years ago approx. when I was in high school ( 16 yo ) we had old computers, like pentium 2. I really wanted to have new computers at school , I remember the Pentium 4 was brand new at that time, and was a BEAST.

Because each students had their static places ( each students uses the same computer every day ) an idea came to my mind on how me and my other 3 friends could get a new Pentium 4. I didnt know if it would works but I knew i could go on some Warez site ( yea back in early 2000s there was no torrents, no google, no facebook, back in that time when you wanted to download "illegal" stuff you had to go on Gamez or Warez sites !!! Wich were most of the time full of viruses and stuff but if you know ur shit you could avoid it easily by not downloading or clickin the wrong stuff..

So i went to a warez site, when i was home on my own computer, where you could download tons of viruses and other stuff. I downloaded a virus ( windows killer was its name ) and I saved it on a floppy disc ( cd-rom didnt exist or were totally new at that time so I used a Floppy disc, anyway our computers didnt have cd-roms reader )

When i came back to school the next day, i ran the floppy disc virus on my computer and my 3 other friends computer and it did crash windows and we couldnt even reboot or get to the OS anymore !!

I remember the IT of the school said it was probably due to broken hardware, and that these computers needed to be changed. The next week we came at school we had 4 brand new Pentium 4 with basic graphics card and since then we could play Counter-strike 1.5  ( yes 1.5 oldschool ) during the class !!

LOL ! We all know all he needed to do was format + reinstall but i believe this guy didnt know shit about computers, as he didnt do that or even tryed to. He just looked at the BSOD and sayd, yep, these computers have died.

No need to say all the other students were kinda jealous about our new computers but never asked for anything or tryed to steal our computers because they knew they wud be in trouble ( me and my friends wudnt let sum1 steal our pentium 4 we NEEDED to play Counter-strike during the class, not listenin to that dumb useless teacher whos tryin to show other students how to open a Doc file.)

That said, I suggest you dont try this trick as you could get into trouble with ur school policies loll but back in early 2000s, my IT teacher was ignorant and i knew i wouldnt get caught even tho i wasnt sure it was gonna work ( the virus, nor if the teacher was gonna be able to repair it)  so... we enjoyd the new pentium 4

 

The IT DGAF about fixing cause it's so old and wants the school to get P4s just like you.

[DocSwag]

Just a small story that just happened to me  

 

So my mom needed to change the name of an email address to be her's (don't ask why I'd prefer not to answer and no it's not because of something bad or anything I just want to keep me and my mom's privacy on the matter) and she couldn't figure out how. She changed her name in the account info stuff on gmail but when she sent emails it still showed as the name of the previous person using the email. So she called me to help. She said she would pay me a dollar if I figured it out. Well I didn't figure it out so... I googled it! And low and behold, what Google told me to do worked! So now I get one dollar for only spending 2 or 3 minutes of time  I'm still a teen but I'm getting paid over double of minimum wage!  

[Bleedingyamato]

2 hours ago, smokefest said:

At the place i worked, my boss was pretty nice compared to other shop ive been. We do install a free anti-virus ( avira ) with no fees, and also install Dotnet chrome as browser, etc.etc.. we give free preconfig including anti virus. And yes i always tell the customer good advices about how to surf internet and avoid to getcaught by falsy ads..

I had workd in another shop for couple months, they would charge 150$ for a format + reinstall and wouldnt give any programs or any preconfig. If the people wanted an anti-virus, pdf viewer, open office or anything they had to pay for the install.
 

It's nice that not all pc repair shops gouge their customers.  ?

[Bleedingyamato]

10 hours ago, wkdpaul said:

It's actually 500+ expense because it's a "false-alarm". Pretty reasonable IMO, that's why you listen to IT and check twice.

I don't understand..  Why is $500 reasonable to fix a monitor?

[RahulR]

3 minutes ago, Bleedingyamato said:

I don't understand..  Why is $500 reasonable to fix a monitor?

Quote

It's actually 500+ expense because it's a "false-alarm".

it's in the same comment you quoted...

[Burz]

My cousin saw my PC with an RGB keyboard and was like "where can I get one!?"

 

She doesn't even have a PC.

[DocSwag]

48 minutes ago, Bleedingyamato said:

I don't understand..  Why is $500 reasonable to fix a monitor?

He's saying that 500 dollars is a reasonable price to charge under normal circumstances.

[Bleedingyamato]

14 minutes ago, DocSwag said:

He's saying that 500 dollars is a reasonable price to charge under normal circumstances.

But why would that be reasonable?  If it's to fix a monitor you could just buy multiple 1080p or a 4K monitor for $500.  

[NumLock21]

4 hours ago, BingoFishy said:

^MicroUSB^ ^Lightning^ ^USB type C^

 

Well they got one of them right.

Don't get how that's non techie.

[RahulR]

1 minute ago, Bleedingyamato said:

But why would that be reasonable?  If it's to fix a monitor you could just buy multiple 1080p or a 4K monitor for $500.  

Forget the monitor, the monitor didn't need any fixing. The 500 was charged because it was a false alarm.

[DocSwag]

3 minutes ago, Bleedingyamato said:

But why would that be reasonable?  If it's to fix a monitor you could just buy multiple 1080p or a 4K monitor for $500.  

My guess is it normally isn't for monitors but rather maybe a server issue or something in which case it could be quite reasonable.

[BingoFishy]

1 minute ago, NumLock21 said:

Don't get how that's non techie.

1st is regular microUSB, and the last is USB type C, not Micro USB (it says both)

[DocSwag]

Wow... I just found this saga and it's hilarious! The best part was the guy roasting him at the end  

https://www.reddit.com/r/talesfromtechsupport/comments/4wrje4/the_johnny_bluescreen_saga_part_3_do_not_touch/?st=irsdnqdg&sh=8450a260

 

P.S. Read part 2,1, and 0 too. It's not that necessary to read them in order but there's a few small things you wouldn't get unless you read them in order.

[DocSwag]

2 minutes ago, BingoFishy said:

1st is regular microUSB, and the last is USB type C, not Micro USB (it says both)

Oh. It still says Universal Type-C at the bottom though.

[NumLock21]

6 minutes ago, BingoFishy said:

1st is regular microUSB, and the last is USB type C, not Micro USB (it says both)

Its 3 different cables. 1st is, 2 in 1, they're legit. Its just a cable with 2 different plugs. 2nd is for apple, and 3rd for androids using type c.

[SLAYR]

51 minutes ago, Burz said:

My cousin saw my PC with an RGB keyboard and was like "where can I get one!?"

 

She doesn't even have a PC.

Maybe they just want to look at it.

[WkdPaul]

1 hour ago, Bleedingyamato said:

But why would that be reasonable?  If it's to fix a monitor you could just buy multiple 1080p or a 4K monitor for $500.  

it's reasonable under the circumstances, medical equipment is very expensive and "normal" troubleshooting is understandable, but in this case it was a simple cable that wasn't connected, the end-user (in this case a nurse) should've been able to fix it, it's a simple cable to plug after all, but the end-user was not cooperating at all and when asked to check the VGA cable she became aggressive.

 

The $500 is NOT to fix the cable, it's a "non-issue" fee the company charge (you should read the whole story). We also have similar fees at my workplace, we're expected to call only if it's a catastrophic failure, if it's the case they will not charge anything. If they have to come and it turns out it's a simple fix, they charge us $120/hour starting when the tech gets the call.

[Chaos_Sorcerer]

How do you guys handle it when people claim/think their hardware is good when it's not?

 

Like...I was talking with a group of people I know when the conversation drifted to computers and gaming. This guy was like, "My computer's really good - it's got a core i7, 8 gigs of RAM, and an Nvidia video card."

 

And I was like, "Which card do you have?"

 

"I don't know...I think it's an 820 or a 920?"

 

 

Turns out it's a laptop. I'm guessing it's one with a 920m...which is not even near high-end. I didn't want to make him feel bad or anything like that, so I just went along with it, but it just nagged me for the rest of the day. How do you guys handle situations like this?

 

Honestly...the knowledge of the average consumer is beyond just lacking. It's unbelievable. I mean, in BestBuy's flyer last week, there was an ad saying, "Intense gaming sessions need a Core i7 and 16 gigs of RAM". No sir, that is not the case. And these i7-6500U laptops can barely tag along with desktop i3-6300s. Yeah, 16 gigs of RAM is nice, but not nearly as important as the GPU. And the "high performance" laptops they're selling have GTX 940Ms and dual-core i7s!!! Which makes me wonder: why did Intel even decide to market these CPUs as i7s? I mean...you can get a laptop with a dual-core i7 for $700, while that is what you'd have to pay for just the motherboard, CPU, and RAM on a desktop.

 

And we still have people buying Macs and consoles and these "high-performance" laptops. And we have people who support Donald Trump. 

[themctipers]

1 minute ago, Chaos_Sorcerer said:

How do you guys handle it when people claim/think their hardware is good when it's not?

 

Like...I was talking with a group of people I know when the conversation drifted to computers and gaming. This guy was like, "My computer's really good - it's got a core i7, 8 gigs of RAM, and an Nvidia video card."

 

And I was like, "Which card do you have?"

 

"I don't know...I think it's an 820 or a 920?"

 

 

Turns out it's a laptop. I'm guessing it's one with a 920m...which is not even near high-end. I didn't want to make him feel bad or anything like that, so I just went along with it, but it just nagged me for the rest of the day. How do you guys handle situations like this?

 

Honestly...the knowledge of the average consumer is beyond just lacking. It's unbelievable. I mean, in BestBuy's flyer last week, there was an ad saying, "Intense gaming sessions need a Core i7 and 16 gigs of RAM". No sir, that is not the case. And these i7-6500U laptops can barely tag along with desktop i3-6300s. Yeah, 16 gigs of RAM is nice, but not nearly as important as the GPU. And the "high performance" laptops they're selling have GTX 940Ms and dual-core i7s!!! Which makes me wonder: why did Intel even decide to market these CPUs as i7s? I mean...you can get a laptop with a dual-core i7 for $700, while that is what you'd have to pay for just the motherboard, CPU, and RAM on a desktop.

 

And we still have people buying Macs and consoles and these "high-performance" laptops. And we have people who support Donald Trump. 

My dad bought me an i7 3x17u laptop and 

it was fucking horrible

 

asus rma took out the gpu.. Hdd died a bit over a year and the motherboard died about 2 years later 

 

ಠ_ಠ