Computer Abuse, what ticks u off?

im gonna have to aggree with most people here on the touching of the monitor... grrrr

another thing that kinda bugs me.. not really a big deal... but when people call "installing" downloading... i dunno why it bothers me just does :D

and my dad... he double clicks EVERYTHING

and last... when your parents or gf's parents know that you have a pretty good knowledge of computers... they will tell people who say they have problems with their computer... and then volunteer your to help them... or "can you take a look at it"... most of the time i take a look at it.. and think in my head... "your computer is 7 years old.. its worth about $8"... only once have i made out of "looking at" someones computer... i had to format someones computer... got paid $100 for 20-30 minutes of work... but then i had to format another persons computer w/ win ME (ughh) it took like 2 hours.... i got a whole $10!!!! WOW!!!!!

and last... people that try to explain the problem they have with there computer and you just stop listening cause you dont even know what they hell they are talking about... i will usually play dumb so that i dont have to fix it for them :rolleyes:
 
jrbryner said:
Wal-mart electronics department people that try and sell computers. I know they're just doing their job and all, but if a person comes and asks them a technical question they don't know, they should just say so instead of recommending more RAM.

Also, the preppy sale people at Best Buy that come up to me and ask if I need any help while I'm looking at networking gear or something. I just want to say back "No thank you, I believe I can tell you much more about your products than you can tell me." But I usually smile and say "No thankyou, just browsing around." Once in a while I'll ask a question to test out the new guy =)


hahahah i do the same.... sometimes ill over hear someone talking to a customer and in my head im like "wrong...wrong...wrong..." and will sometimes catch the customer and tell him the right.... :p
 
I know the newer macs have gryrscopes installed in them, and I came across a program called macsaber, light saber sounds as a result of the mac being shaken. My frist though was "thats pretty cool" immediately followed by "what about the hard drive?" I see my friends shaking their computers around and I know some day they're gonna say "why won't my mac start?" and get kernel panic screen.

And on that note, anyoe who likes to bang on the case of their PC. My friend would do a rhymithic drum solo while her PC started up right up to the day where it didn't want to anymore. My frient would occaionaly thump his laptop and now it has a messed up boot sector. I'm trying to recover the data (I have on of those laptop hd converters) but all the IDE cables I have have one of the 40 pins blocked off and my converter has all 40 pins... grr old technology.

But I definitely have to agree with number 4 as well, its also the reason I don't do a lot of computer support. And touching my LCD is a big no no. Speaking of which waht is a good LCD cleaner?
 
atherton213 said:
and my dad... he double clicks EVERYTHING
i forgot about that one.. there are a few people at work that do that.. i will tell them to do something and they will double click some things and open them twice, or single click when they should double click..
 
You know what makes me angry? Case straps that dont have side straps..

I have very unfond memories.. I got a free case strap from a friend.. and it didnt have side straps. This is that story:

I was going to another friends house for a LAN, and I had my computer. The case was a gigantic Stacker 810, and I had 10 hard drives, 2 dvd drives, dual power supplies, everything in it. VERY heavy. Probably a good 60 or 70 pounds.

Well. I had just bought a bundle of goodies off another friend, and within that bundle there was a case strap, that was quite large. It was the only case strap I had ever seen that could fit around my stacker..

Well, I got everything to my friends house, and as I'm pulling my gigantic case out of my truck (its very high up, about 3 or 4 feet up), being very careful so it doesnt slip out, it slips out, and of course its too heavy for me to be able to support the full load of it falling with one hand... And it falls to the ground (heh, that makes it sound soft. I should re-iterate that that ground was CEMENT). So far 9 of the 10 hard drives have failed, started clicking, overheating, or completely wont start. Most of the front case covers were broken. Some of the screwless mounting brackets literally broke in half. My HUGE scythe ninja heatsink fell off my processor.

Anyways, it was a perfect opportunity for me to upgrade my computer to what I have now. I lost about 2 terra's of storage in that drop (luckily saved a lot of the data, though). Lost my motherboard because the PCI-E slot quit working.

It wasnt pretty. So moral of the story is this: never use a case strap without side straps.

:D
 
Astrogiblet said:
I was going to another friends house for a LAN, and I had my computer. The case was a gigantic Stacker 810, and I had 10 hard drives, 2 dvd drives, dual power supplies, everything in it. VERY heavy. Probably a good 60 or 70 pounds.
So...basically you were stupid for taking a giant computer to a LAN party. :p
 
GJSNeptune said:
So...basically you were stupid for taking a giant computer to a LAN party. :p

x2

yeah as much as that sucks i dont feel bad... i wouldnt trust my computer on any strap or anything. even if it had sides and bottoms and flaps and zippers and whatever... even if it was a solid bag
 
First off I'd like to say sorry on the "Analog" comment, I had been up for 32 hours and my mind was not quite right. :p I know they're not analog...but for some reason my mind thought "Analog = pure/on off, no grey area". Odd...

Astrogiblet said:
The gold plated mechanical switches are for longevity. Where a standard keyboard generally lasts 15-20 million keystrokes, gold plated ones are usually guaranteed for at least 50 million keystrokes. So sure you pay twice the price, but you get over 3 times the usage out of it. There are also a lot of "expensive" keyboards with crazy features. Like the Razer keyboard. It has built in memory for customizeable key's and macros that can be stored in the keyboard itself. I'm assuming this is so if you go to another computer, your macros and button combo's are still saved. If I recall correctly, your one of the guys that messes with their controls in FPS's and makes them all weird right? Well that would be perfect for you. This keyboard also has an expansion slot for a web cam, a light to light up the keys, and all sorts of other things.

And the LCD is good for a lot of things. Specifically displaying temperatures that you would normally have to alt-tab out of a game to get, displaying network activity when your gaming, etc. Its quite useful.

It may last 20 million more keystorkes, but by the time you hit 5 million so much of the paint is gonna be wore off that you're gonna need to buy a new one anyway just so it doesn't look completely homely.

The Macro thing is nice, but I plan on getting an n52 so I can hide my KB and have macros all in the same package. The n52 is 20 bucks...just what I said the budget should be.

My controls are complete custom (eadf + other tweaks) but you'd still have to tweak the controls, because in some games couch is c, in others its ctrl, in others its shift...you'd still have to mess with it so your KB would know to register whatever key you use for couch, to the key the game uses. It defeats the purpose...also, I have no use for a webcam or light-up keys, as i got out of my back-lit Kb phase awhile ago.

The LCD thing cracks me up. Why would you want to check your temp or network usage while in-game? That just boggles mym ind.
 
I'd never use any kind of strap to hold my computer. I'm sure your computer wasn't 60-70 pounds, probably 30-40.
 
digital_exhaust said:
I don't know about you, but I've got kids and a wife, and they all have very nice machines of thier own, makes life alot easier on everyone.
I've never understood households that can "share" one single computer. I honestly wonder how many divorces could have been prevented by simply adding a computer or two to the household.


Hahahaha! :p

I just started reading this thread and found that pretty funny, soooo many fights over using 'the computer'.
 
CHAoS_NiNJA said:
It may last 20 million more keystorkes, but by the time you hit 5 million so much of the paint is gonna be wore off that you're gonna need to buy a new one anyway just so it doesn't look completely homely.

The Macro thing is nice, but I plan on getting an n52 so I can hide my KB and have macros all in the same package. The n52 is 20 bucks...just what I said the budget should be.

My controls are complete custom (eadf + other tweaks) but you'd still have to tweak the controls, because in some games couch is c, in others its ctrl, in others its shift...you'd still have to mess with it so your KB would know to register whatever key you use for couch, to the key the game uses. It defeats the purpose...also, I have no use for a webcam or light-up keys, as i got out of my back-lit Kb phase awhile ago.

The LCD thing cracks me up. Why would you want to check your temp or network usage while in-game? That just boggles mym ind.

First off, most of the keyboards with gold plated keys (the ones I'm looking at anyways) either have no letters, or laser engraved keys. So there is nothing that can wear off. :) And seriously, do you honestly need to look at your keyboard to know what key your pushing?

Second, please tell me your joking when you ask "why would you want to check your temps or network usage in game". Uh hmm.. Make sure my overclock isnt over heating during one of the most taxing things you can possibly be doing with your computer.. , or something hasnt gone wrong. Or make sure nobody is whoring files off me while I'm gaming. Or make sure your hard drives arent overheating from over usage. Or, as my friend does, she controls the music shes listening to while in game using the LCD and its controls.
 
Just a couple things I need to get off my chest

1. People that buy $500 GPUs and play WOW 24/7 - even to the point of missing class and failing tests
2. Those same people that have nice high end systems but don't spend any $ on a monitor either LCD or CRT that is worth a damn to display the graphics! why do people DO THAT? spend all this money on a system and have a POS 50ms response time monitor that SUCKS
3. BORROW DVDs AND NEVER RETURN THEM
-- and this one isn't quite as bad- but I buy good DVDs- you know what I mean.. the good ones.. and my roommate copies them and never returns them.. it really pisses me off
4. Here is my favorite- people that buy shit and don't know how to hook it up.. had a buddy buy an HTIB and I have had to hook it up twice-- he can't even hook up MY xbox (which he asked to borrow and never returned) into the back of it without playing 20 questions
 
Recent thing that ticks me off the most... I tell someone that WoW will NOT work on my laptop... crappy video card and not enough RAM... my laptop wont even play Guild Wars... and to quote... "Your computer has 5 free gigs, it will play WoW" *sigh*, and another thing, people who decide to uninstall Foobar2000 because it doesn't look like a program that is good at playing music... and last but not least... someone who goes into MSCONFIG and messes with my system.ini... and boot.ini settings.... That makes me very angry, espicially when they think they are doing me a favor.... UGGH.
 
Astrogiblet said:
So moral of the story is this: never use a case strap without side straps.

:D

Yea, I have an Antec SuperLanboy that has straps that mount into holes that are attached to the case and I don't even trust that strap. It's designed to be carried with a strap but I never use it.
 
People who spend big bucks to cool their PC so they can overclock the cpu when they could just buy a faster cpu for the same or less. ;)
 
I've only read the first few pages of this thread, so I may repost something someone has already brought up.

My wife thinks my monitor is the computer. I was talking about selling my computers to get some more money to buy my new one and she got all piss at me. She loves my LCD monitor and she thought that that was what I was selling. Anyway it aggravates the hell out of me when she does that.

Another thing that I instantly correct people on (without thinking before hand) is memory vs storage capacity issue. My friend was telling me his dad was wanting to know if I'd build a new computer for him, and that he'd need a LOT of memory for al the tax documents he stores for his clients. I had to go into a ten minute discussion with my friend that a hard drive is not memory. (not in conventional terms). If someone were to ask me to upgrade their memory, I'd go out and buy a stick of RAM and put it in their box. Of course if they meant storage space, they'd be quite pissed. :)

There are other things, but oh well. The double-clicking thing isn't a problem for me, I do it on accident all the time. But I grew up on Window 3.1 and 95 where everything WAS double clicked. Touching a monitor isn't a problem for me either, as long as it's a CRT, not an LCD. But since I got an LCD there hss been a lot of hand-smacking going on in my house.
 
jrbryner said:
Also, the preppy sale people at Best Buy that come up to me and ask if I need any help while I'm looking at networking gear or something. I just want to say back "No thank you, I believe I can tell you much more about your products than you can tell me." But I usually smile and say "No thankyou, just browsing around." Once in a while I'll ask a question to test out the new guy =)

Yep, and what's worse on the rare occasions I actually *do* want to talk to an employee (generally to find the XYZ that's on sale for less than newegg) it takes 15 or 20 minutes to actually find an employee.
 
DanNeely said:
Yep, and what's worse on the rare occasions I actually *do* want to talk to an employee (generally to find the XYZ that's on sale for less than newegg) it takes 15 or 20 minutes to actually find an employee.

That's when you send your mom or wife in. There'll be an employee at her disposal within seconds.
 
my dad really pissed me off the other day.....

he has a large vegetable garden in the backyard and he is out there a lot. all the work he does really beats up his hands, so he uses a hand salve to heal them up. The problem is, it doesnt soak in....you have to rub it constantly and then go wipe the excess off. my dad, however, doesnt wipe the excess off for a long time............

the other day he comes to me and asks if he can use my lappy to do some work related stuff because my mom is camping on the other computer. i say sure and think nothing of it. An hour later i go upstairs and get the shock of my life. he must have used the salve stuff because my brand new logitech g7 is covered in it and my keyboard has little grease fingerprints. zomg. ive spent a lot of money on my hardware and i CANT stand it when someone gets it dirty or doesnt treat it like a baby. that shit was a bitch to clean off....he's not using my computer again.

oh, and i get really pissed when people try to tell me how to do my job. i work as a computer tech guy for my local school district as my summer job. it rubs me the wrong way when a teacher tries to tell me how to do my job when i know like 1892327501982357 times more than they do.....ack!
 
#1. People who will not learn.

If you don't know anything about computers, and you tell me that, we don't have a problem. If you continue to not know anything about computers, even though I am giving you any and all information you ask for, and some you didn't, we have a problem.

#2. People who cannot remember the name of the product, and what it does, at the same time.

Examples: "Nvidia CPU" "Pentium Motherboard" "Graphics drive"
 
dBTelos said:
I've never heard any of those examples before.

A friend at work told me he has a Nivada (sic) video card (sic). (He also said he used to have a Radon (sic) one.) I asked him what type. "A 128 meg one."

What chipset? "A 128 meg one!"

You get the picture.

It eventuated that it was a FX5200... and he was actually gaming with modern-ish games on it with his old Athlon XP. Apparently he was running full eye candy with high FPS on these modern games, too.

That ticks me off mildly.
 
I got a good one!

When someone asks a computer question and doesn't listen to get help.
 
When people complain about the help you give, but always keep coming back when something breaks.
 
dBTelos said:
I've never heard any of those examples before.

ive heard people say "modem bored" or "ram bored" and my favorite that i have heard once before... "mothership bored" :D
 
How about people that mess up acronyms :D Is my PIC GFU compatable with my AGT mothership board?
 
ryan_975 said:
That's when you send your mom or wife in. There'll be an employee at her disposal within seconds.

I wish. I'm single and my mom's past the age where she'd trigger drool reactions, and doesn't look like the kind of person who's a likely mark for a fleecing.
 
Oh yea, I had a kid at school tell me "Those people who buy video cards are so stupid. Why spend $300 on a new video card when you can just download one! I did that last night. I downloaded a new video card."

How can you be like 18, living in this day and age, and not know sh** about computers?
 
Astrogiblet said:
"I downloaded a new video card."
Wow. To think that came out of their mouth. The logic behind downloading a CARD, as if it's just information. I can't believe they're that dense. Ugh. Youth.

"I clicked DOWNLOAD and this video card appeared in my CPU. Woo! You're all suckers!"



I really hate when people don't protect their electronics. I've seen a million iPods with tons of scratches. And other devices with scratches on the screen and on the casing. I can't stand it. I'm so protective, even of other people's stuff.
 
Astrogiblet said:
How can you be like 18, living in this day and age, and not know sh** about computers?

I know a lot of people around that age that don't know shit. Hell had to go to a lesbian friends house not too long ago to remove the memory card from her machines card reader because her gf put it in the wrong slot. I didn't care because I went later at night when they were in their sexy p-jays. Good times.

Really in this day and age you need to have some basic computer training. Hell they are getting cheapr and cheaper too. I'm typing on one of those walmart 400 dollar notebooks right now. Pretty impressed with how it runs(not that I've uninstalled most of the crap). For normal use this thing woudl be a great machine for someone.
 
swatbat said:
I know a lot of people around that age that don't know shit. Hell had to go to a lesbian friends house not too long ago to remove the memory card from her machines card reader because her gf put it in the wrong slot. I didn't care because I went later at night when they were in their sexy p-jays. Good times.

Considering they are lesbians I doubt it was that good of a time. ;)
 
I stopped reading around page 5 when I felt the need to add what ticks me off:

1) One of the computers at my college was infected with spyware and porn popups. It took three weeks until the professor finally called IT. In that time, I believe some of the guys there saw more porn in class than they saw at home. LOL!
2) People who toss their laptops, or the bag/backpack/purse the laptop is in, onto the floor or their beds.
Example: My sister does this constantly. It's barely two months old but it's starting to have some problems.
3) People who no matter how many times I've told or asked them to will not update any of their security programs. Their reasoning is: "You always do it for me."
Example: My entire frakking family. I have to set aside one weekend a month to update every PC in the household plus the ones of my relatives.
4) People who insist that security is not important.
Example: My mom and sister believes that the WPA encryption I turned on is the reason why they gets such a poor wireles connection. They ignore the fact that they're both several rooms away and behind fairly thick walls.
5) People whose saves EVERYTHING to their desktop. Then they don't realize that they can move the files to the My Documents.
Example: My friend did this. One day he told me that he needed more hard drive space. I check out his PC and about 98% of the desktop was filled with icons, files, pictures, etc. He was also using only 12GB out of 120GB hard drive. Once I cleaned up the icons, he asked, "Does this mean I don't have to buy a new hard drive?"
6) People who refuse to update their Windows PCs. Or refuse to allow me to turn on automatic updates.
Example: My mother and stepdad both believe in the philosophy, "If it ain't broke, don't fix it."
7) People who expect their illegal copy of XP to still be supported by Microsoft. This is knowing full well that they're using a well known serial key.
8) People who use illegal copies of XP and believe their PC is still safe.
9) People who have businesses using illegal copies of XP.
10) People who have businesses that refuse to install security software on their PC. Especially an anti-virus
11) There was a web design class at my high school. My friend took that class and told me that they were being taught how to make sites with Microsoft Word and Powerpoint. Not once in the semester did they ever hear the word HTML. Frontpage was installed on all the PCs but not once did they ever used that program.
12) At college, there is a Java and PHP course held in a room with only one computer. The class size is 35.
13) People who believe that the Geek Squad are computer gods and whatever they say is holy and irrefutable facts.
Example: My friend calls me up as he was unsure of a laptop purchase he was about to make. He asks me, "Can a Celeron beat a Core 2 Duo?" I answered, "No and told him why. Unfortunately, my friend's dad was told that a Celeron could beat a Core 2 Duo by some Geek Squad guy. His zealotry lead to them buying a Celeron laptop that was $100 more expensive than a Core 2 Duo laptop that was on sale at the time.
14) Salespeople who sucker customers in buying more expensive systems that are already outdated.
Example: Read number 13.
15) People who use IE despite how I've asked them to use Firefox to keep their PC safe.
16) Salespeople who have absolutely no idea about what they are selling.
Example: I was at Office Max the other day buying ink cartridges when I overhear a young woman ask a salesperson what does she need to have a wireless network. The sales person then proceeds to show her a line of radios.

Needless to say, I had to step in and help out the young woman. Got her number in the end, though.
17) People who want the fastest gaming PC possible yet only use that PC for Myspace.
18) People who automatically reformats their PCs every time there's a small problem with their PC. They also pass on this reformatting habit to others.

I'd keep going but it's late at night now. Peace.
 
Danny Bui said:
15) People who use IE despite how I've asked them to use Firefox to keep their PC safe.

To be fair, I've run into quite a few issues with FF and have a substantial list of IE-only sites that I have to visit for work.

And FF2 crashes on a daily basis here. It's probably an extension that was poorly updated, but then FF2 did all the updating and changed whatever code it is the extension is causing to crash.

So between the two, I wouldn't blame less saavy users if they went with IE because "it just works".
 
I have all the computers in my house using Firefox. Even my sister's and mother's...at first it was hard because they kept asking "why, this is so different". Now they just use it and don't worry about why they use it vs. IE.
 
^--- just switch the firefox icon to the internet explorer icon ;). Works all the time.

My mom thinks firefox is a type of version of internet explorer now.
 
Although this post will probably get lost in the shuffle, I have a deep hatred of "the mysterious computer tech guy" who helped out an old lady neighbor of mine about 7 years ago.

I went over to her place and she said the computer made "some awful, loud noises followed by some tearing, a clank and then it powered off". All she was doing was browsing the web and playing Slingo.

First thing I did: open the case. She had two hard drives--a primary (which was screwed firmly to the proper cage location) and a second hard drive (which I later found out was installed by the incompetent tech guy). The second drive wasn't in a drive slot--it was laying at the bottom of her case along with several chipped pieces of "other stuff" that I couldn't really identify (probably caps or something else from the mobo).

After looking a bit further I saw adhesive at the very top of the case, and there was a sizeable amount of duct tape stuck on the "top" of the hard drive. The power cable was completely unplugged from the hard drive, so I tried to plug it back in just to see if it would do something and the power cable wasn't long enough to reach any meaningful amount of distance in this case.

My conclusion: he put it in the cage but it couldn't get power due to the short power cable. Instead of doing the obvious solution and buying a small extender/splitter he decided to duct tape the HD to the ceiling of the case and plug it in that way (the ribbon cable was stretched out completely as well, and had obvious signs of being contorted in that direction). What PROBABLY happened is the hard drive finally got used for an extensive period of time and heated up, causing the duct tape to fail, leading to the hard drive getting loosened from the top of the case and it fell, smashing in to things on the way down.

*SHAKE HEAD*
 
defakto said:
I've gotten into an arugment with the wife over this so many times, I could care less if she does it to her system, it's nt mine, but when she does it to mine it bothers me to know end.
Typing "I could car less" online when they mean "I could NOT care less."

The saying is meant to mean I could not care less be cause I care so little already and not I could care less because I apparently care already considering I could actually care less.
 
Back
Top