Thechnological Ignorance.

[Jorsoft]

I've heard the computer called the CPU, hard Drive, and even Modem. Yes....MODEM....The first two I can kind of understand but Modem? And i heard that one more than once, too....

A few years back I had this rednecked fellow from Forest lake or some such looking for a computer. He had been told that the Pentium 3 was the best and to make sure he got one of those. He was told this, of course, by the family computer expert. Now, this was circa 2004-5 and Pentium 4 with HT was all the rage and P3 hadn't been around for years! But he was pretty stubborn about it, said he'd have to go talk to his "expert" about why we wouldn't have any Pentium 3s...

edit: another one people butchered a lot was USB cable. BSU, BUS, USB, UPS, square cable thingy, UDS, UMB, the list goes on.

 

[hikaricloud]

I've heard all of those, haha.

Lately though, working at our AT&T store, I've heard people referring to "SIM" cards as "sims card". Not very far off, but stupid nonetheless.

Don't you hate "family computer experts"? They're almost always just some guy that knows 1% more about computers than a rock...and the rest of their family.

 

[Jorsoft]

I hate it when they just advise from afar. When the so-called experts actually come into the store it's a lot better. You can easily demonstrate that you know a lot more than they do so they end up just agreeing with whatever you say. I remember it was easy to sell a lot of stuff that way

 

[Kharn]

I hate family computer experts, they are the bain of my life at times. Considering that the last time the bought a PC was 2002 an they havent upgraded since and still think that a Dot matrix printer is the be all an end all in printer technology.

I have seen some one use a optical drive as a cup holder before and it was ****ing painful to explain to a 73 year old company hold over that it is not designed to hold a cup of hot liquid next to expensive computer equipment.

 

[hikaricloud]

Seriously. I thought the cup holder thing was just a joke until it actually happened to me, haha. God, people are so stupid sometimes...

But yeah, Jorsoft, it's much better when they come in so you can school them...geek style.

 

[Jorsoft]

Dot Matrix, i've been asked why we didn't carry those a few times. Or the guy (usually older) would jsut assume that's what he was getting, either dot matrix or laser. Just like in the early 80's...

 

[hikaricloud]

Well laser is making a nice comeback, with the cheaper color laser printers nowadays.

I find we can still sell dot matrix Okidatas, but only to companies that still use stuff like that....something about certain software only working with dot matrix..

 

[Kharn]

I have seen a few dot matrix printers for sale but they are specialist use only like printing off packing orders for industrial shipping companies or for filling in sheets at a car rentals place.

 

[hikaricloud]

Exactly, stuff like that. Not for personal use at all, lol.

 

[Kharn]

Yea I was considering getting one for a online shop when a order was taken it was going to print out the order for me or some one else to box it all up, its hard to ignore a bit of paper coming out of the printer and the noise they make is a great LOOK AT ME!

I had a phone conversation the other day with a older gent who has a older computer 20gb hard drive and 128mb of ram he has kept it updated as best he could and took care of it (wasn't filled with dust like most rigs of its age) but it finally died after many years of service. So I called him up to give him the news that he would need a new computer and he said sure I guess I need one anyway so I quoted him £350 for a new tower and he was happy with that.

So I ordered the parts and go back to doing some other work, then I get a call from his 40 year old son complaining that he spent £1000 on this computer an he was told at the time that it was the best computer on the market and that his dad didn't need a new computer I explained to him the situation an he wouldn't have any of it an comes round to my house to pick it up. I ended up showing him how much technology has moved on and that this rig and dodo have two things in comman and that is they are extinct and belongs in a museum.

He ended up ordering a new system off me too, this situation ended well but last time something happened like this I had a windows 95 laptop thrown at me.