Venting here
All of us need to vent, I do not claim to be almighty god of computers but GEEEEEEZZZZZZ. 8) Diary of an onsite technician-Here we go. . . * Why do people make computers harder than they have to be? * Why can some people who work million dollar equipment not find the f&(kin Start button? * Why do A LOT of users (no ...
All of us need to vent, I do not claim to be almighty god of computers but GEEEEEEZZZZZZ.
8) Diary of an onsite technician-----Here we go...
* Why do people make computers harder than they have to be?
* Why can some people who work million dollar equipment not find the f&(kin Start button?
* Why do A LOT of "users" (not power users or experts) think that you need Windows 2000 for Office 2000 and Windows XP for Office XP?
* Why is the right click such a mystery to "users"?
* Why do "users" play so stupid on the phone and then when you get to the site suddenly they know more than you (but still can't fix their own machine)?
* What is so hard about burning a CD?
* Why do these "users" steer their friends and family into crappy systems and situations after under a year of owning their FIRST computer themselves?
I have worked on computers for years now. I own a medium size onsite computer service company. I try not to tell people what I do because I always end up getting suckered into looking at their 133MHz 6 year old machine that has 16MB RAM and no free space on the 3400RPM 1.2 Gig hard disk!
The first thing I hear when I tell them what I do is "Oh maybe you can help me with my computer" or "I think I have a virus, the computer won't bootdown" Whatever the h@ll "bootdown" means! You don't tell some guy whom you just met that is a Doctor that your @ss is on fire! "Could you look at my @ss, it doesn't want to boot" I'LL BOOT THAT @SS!
Anyway, please respond to this with gripes, vents, sympathy, yada yada. But don't tell me I am wrong, these are my vents and opinions. Check out my new prog www.computergenx.com/TL2.htm
8) Diary of an onsite technician-----Here we go...
* Why do people make computers harder than they have to be?
* Why can some people who work million dollar equipment not find the f&(kin Start button?
* Why do A LOT of "users" (not power users or experts) think that you need Windows 2000 for Office 2000 and Windows XP for Office XP?
* Why is the right click such a mystery to "users"?
* Why do "users" play so stupid on the phone and then when you get to the site suddenly they know more than you (but still can't fix their own machine)?
* What is so hard about burning a CD?
* Why do these "users" steer their friends and family into crappy systems and situations after under a year of owning their FIRST computer themselves?
I have worked on computers for years now. I own a medium size onsite computer service company. I try not to tell people what I do because I always end up getting suckered into looking at their 133MHz 6 year old machine that has 16MB RAM and no free space on the 3400RPM 1.2 Gig hard disk!
The first thing I hear when I tell them what I do is "Oh maybe you can help me with my computer" or "I think I have a virus, the computer won't bootdown" Whatever the h@ll "bootdown" means! You don't tell some guy whom you just met that is a Doctor that your @ss is on fire! "Could you look at my @ss, it doesn't want to boot" I'LL BOOT THAT @SS!
Anyway, please respond to this with gripes, vents, sympathy, yada yada. But don't tell me I am wrong, these are my vents and opinions. Check out my new prog www.computergenx.com/TL2.htm
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Guess again I don't have that silly lil agent thing running. Its the main app. that you see in the tray. I'm pretty much always listening to music and I prefer it taking up a tray icon then space on the tastkbar.I didn't know you could put the main prog in the system tray, or is it just a shortcut? & if so, why not just use the QuickLaunch bar?Quote:Its actually Motherboard Monitor, and the three temperatures are: CPU1, CPU2, and System. Ah, I see - you're 1 of those rich peeps that can afford a dualie. Reason I don't like MM is it it can't read HDD temps, plus SpeedFan is nice & simple & there's not as much fiddling about to do to get it set up.Quote:Two network connections. DSL and LAN.Ah, I see. You might wanna check out DU Meter then - is a cool prog for network/internet speed monitoring [if you care about such things ]Quote:Thats one of the icons that I mentioned as perhaps being pointless. I used to always remove it post-install, but I left it in there this time as I was using it to quickly get to the soundcards settings as I was messing about with speaker posistioning a lot etc. I could remove it now but it I've kinda grown attached LOL.Well, it looks like I will be doing battle with the Eeeeeeeevil CL tray apps even sooner than I expected - I just checked my bank balance & I have just enough spare to get my OEM Audigy, so will be going into town soon to transfer the money to my other bank that is nice enough to give me a card I can order with. [Indeeeed! ]Quote:My 2nd useless icon. Its displays my uptime on my desktop. The icon being in the tray serves no useful purpose.Actually, this sounds kinda interesting - got an addy for it?Quote:Which icon? but nooope. the 1 that looks a little like the radiation warning symbol - then again, maybe I'm thinking of Bomb Shelter [did same thing - just as badly, but forget who made it]Quote:I use some viewers that load up in the tray too, such as ACDSee, QuickView Plus... but I always close them after I'm done.I just use either XP's built in viewer [forget what it's called @ the mo] & Paintshop Pro for any images, as for anything else - I have Office & Acrobat which covers all Office & PDF files, so I don't have any need for any other viewer.Quote: I used to have QuickRes and ZoneAlarm aswell, but I don't change resolutions much these days (besides I don't think you can get QuickRes to show-up in 2K/XP ?)Ah yes, QuickRes - that takes me back - to the days of 98SE & my Voodoo3. Quote:and I stopped using ZoneAlarm when I switched to something else in the tray that it conflicts with. Oh? what was it conflicting with? I still find ZA works for me just fine.
Guess again I don't have that silly lil agent thing running. Its the main app. that you see in the tray. I'm pretty much always listening to music and I prefer it taking up a tray icon then space on the tastkbar.I didn't know you could put the main prog in the system tray, or is it just a shortcut? & if so, why not just use the QuickLaunch bar?Quote:Its actually Motherboard Monitor, and the three temperatures are: CPU1, CPU2, and System. Ah, I see - you're 1 of those rich peeps that can afford a dualie. Reason I don't like MM is it it can't read HDD temps, plus SpeedFan is nice & simple & there's not as much fiddling about to do to get it set up.Quote:Two network connections. DSL and LAN.Ah, I see. You might wanna check out DU Meter then - is a cool prog for network/internet speed monitoring [if you care about such things ]Quote:Thats one of the icons that I mentioned as perhaps being pointless. I used to always remove it post-install, but I left it in there this time as I was using it to quickly get to the soundcards settings as I was messing about with speaker posistioning a lot etc. I could remove it now but it I've kinda grown attached LOL.Well, it looks like I will be doing battle with the Eeeeeeeevil CL tray apps even sooner than I expected - I just checked my bank balance & I have just enough spare to get my OEM Audigy, so will be going into town soon to transfer the money to my other bank that is nice enough to give me a card I can order with. [Indeeeed! ]Quote:My 2nd useless icon. Its displays my uptime on my desktop. The icon being in the tray serves no useful purpose.Actually, this sounds kinda interesting - got an addy for it?Quote:Which icon? but nooope. the 1 that looks a little like the radiation warning symbol - then again, maybe I'm thinking of Bomb Shelter [did same thing - just as badly, but forget who made it]Quote:I use some viewers that load up in the tray too, such as ACDSee, QuickView Plus... but I always close them after I'm done.I just use either XP's built in viewer [forget what it's called @ the mo] & Paintshop Pro for any images, as for anything else - I have Office & Acrobat which covers all Office & PDF files, so I don't have any need for any other viewer.Quote: I used to have QuickRes and ZoneAlarm aswell, but I don't change resolutions much these days (besides I don't think you can get QuickRes to show-up in 2K/XP ?)Ah yes, QuickRes - that takes me back - to the days of 98SE & my Voodoo3. Quote:and I stopped using ZoneAlarm when I switched to something else in the tray that it conflicts with. Oh? what was it conflicting with? I still find ZA works for me just fine.
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I didn't know you could put the main prog in the system tray, or is it just a shortcut? & if so, why not just use the QuickLaunch bar?
Yeah you can put the program in the tray. Its under Options->Display->Show WinAMP in:.
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...Reason I don't like MM is it it can't read HDD temps...
Actually MBM can display HD temps. too, with the adition of the HDDTemperature plug-in (although thats only free for one drive) and unfortunatly, no HD monitoring programs that I've seen can yet monitor them off a RAID controller
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You might wanna check out DU Meter then - is a cool prog for network/internet speed monitoring [if you care about such things
Will do
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Actually, this sounds kinda interesting - got an addy for it? the 1 that looks a little like the radiation warning symbol - then again, maybe I'm thinking of Bomb Shelter [did same thing - just as badly, but forget who made it]
Yeah.. Uptime 2000.
The radiation symbol is the World Time Servers Atomic Clock synchroniser. The one built into XP times out a lot for me (firewall problem no doubt) and I prefer to use this anyway.
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Oh? what was it conflicting with? I still find ZA works for me just fine.
WinRoute Pro (thats the icon next to the radiation symbol). They both want to take over the TCP/IP stack. The only thing that I miss from ZoneAlarm is the outgoing protection (from MS stuff mostly heh, oh and RealPlayer) and the advert blockers thats in version 3.
Have fun with the Audigy! If you have trouble and want to give it to someone else... hehe.
I didn't know you could put the main prog in the system tray, or is it just a shortcut? & if so, why not just use the QuickLaunch bar?
Yeah you can put the program in the tray. Its under Options->Display->Show WinAMP in:.
Quote:
...Reason I don't like MM is it it can't read HDD temps...
Actually MBM can display HD temps. too, with the adition of the HDDTemperature plug-in (although thats only free for one drive) and unfortunatly, no HD monitoring programs that I've seen can yet monitor them off a RAID controller
Quote:
You might wanna check out DU Meter then - is a cool prog for network/internet speed monitoring [if you care about such things
Will do
Quote:
Actually, this sounds kinda interesting - got an addy for it? the 1 that looks a little like the radiation warning symbol - then again, maybe I'm thinking of Bomb Shelter [did same thing - just as badly, but forget who made it]
Yeah.. Uptime 2000.
The radiation symbol is the World Time Servers Atomic Clock synchroniser. The one built into XP times out a lot for me (firewall problem no doubt) and I prefer to use this anyway.
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Oh? what was it conflicting with? I still find ZA works for me just fine.
WinRoute Pro (thats the icon next to the radiation symbol). They both want to take over the TCP/IP stack. The only thing that I miss from ZoneAlarm is the outgoing protection (from MS stuff mostly heh, oh and RealPlayer) and the advert blockers thats in version 3.
Have fun with the Audigy! If you have trouble and want to give it to someone else... hehe.
You know what I did to solve the whole "screen real estate" issue is purchased a $15 4MB PCI video card and a 2nd 17" monitor $75 and run DUAL MONITORS. I have been running them for a couple months now and could NEVER go back. My primary screen has nothing on it and is reserved for the applications I actively work in. The secondary holds start bar, Icons, quicklaunch, winamp, email etc. I love it!
Most games run just fine, it just disables the ability to mouse over to the other monitor (for obvious reasons). One game I have to simply disble the other mon. Otherwise I get a wierd error. But I have been told the error is related to my second card not supporting 3D, since it's so cheap. Other than that I have had no problems gaming at all. The cool thing is running email, hardware monitor and winamp on one monitor and gaming on the other, you get to see incoming mail, temp and view yer playlist without ALT Tabbing. Or running a video on one mon and working on another.
Hmm I have a Creative GeForce2 GTS and I ran it with an old ATI Mach64 card awhile ago, but I found that I had to disable the second monitor everytime I wanted to run a (3D) game.
Did you ever find that CyberGenX? and maybe the newer Detonator drivers better support it now?
I was thinking that only the newer cards worked (almost) flaslessy with games, though reading your last post, I might have to give it another go with what I have.
Did you ever find that CyberGenX? and maybe the newer Detonator drivers better support it now?
I was thinking that only the newer cards worked (almost) flaslessy with games, though reading your last post, I might have to give it another go with what I have.
Here are some of the games that I have that play without trouble;
Half_Life and Mods, Serious Sam (both), Jedi Outcast, Tony Hawk Pro Skater 2, Quake3, UT, Medal of Honor and RTCW. The only game that I recall having to disable the 2nd monitor is Nascar 4 and maybe NFS Porsche. The rest play on the primary great, one i think makes the other monitor only half visible (oh Well). My second card is an OLD PCI Cirrus Logic 5446 4MB.
One thing, if you are going to do dual mons...Don't plan on going back---If you remove a mon and you had a program that opened up on it, sometimes it loads in invisible space (where the 2nd used to be)
I am using Det. 29.42
Half_Life and Mods, Serious Sam (both), Jedi Outcast, Tony Hawk Pro Skater 2, Quake3, UT, Medal of Honor and RTCW. The only game that I recall having to disable the 2nd monitor is Nascar 4 and maybe NFS Porsche. The rest play on the primary great, one i think makes the other monitor only half visible (oh Well). My second card is an OLD PCI Cirrus Logic 5446 4MB.
One thing, if you are going to do dual mons...Don't plan on going back---If you remove a mon and you had a program that opened up on it, sometimes it loads in invisible space (where the 2nd used to be)
I am using Det. 29.42
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Actually MBM can display HD temps. too, with the adition of the HDDTemperature plug-in (although thats only free for one drive) and unfortunatly, no HD monitoring programs that I've seen can yet monitor them off a RAID controller Yeah, it sucks that they can't read temps through a RAID controller. I want to run my HDD from my RAID controller, so that my CD [which will hopefully soon be replaced by a DVD - thinking on getting a Toshiba SD-M1612, 's not region free, but can be made so with a patched firmware] & CDRW can each be master on their own channels.Quote:Yeah.. Uptime 2000.Thanks for that, wow, 2days, 13hours-ish since last reboot - if I ever get nostalgic for 98SE I'll just run that prog to see what my uptime is. After tomorrow morning, which is when my Audigy should get here [finally got around to ordering it Saturday afternoon], & not counting the reinstall I wanna do soon, I should have much longer uptimes. :crosses fingers:Quote:The radiation symbol is the World Time Servers Atomic Clock synchroniser. The one built into XP times out a lot for me (firewall problem no doubt) and I prefer to use this anyway.This used to bother me more with my old mobo as the clock wasn't too accurate - think the battery may have been going, but with this new 1 things seem a bit better.Quote:Have fun with the Audigy! If you have trouble and want to give it to someone else... hehe. LOL, yeah, right! If I have any probs with it it's going back for a refund. Dunno what I'd get as an alternative, though. Hey guess what? [this'll give the VIA critics a laugh] Before I ordered my Audigy I phoned OcUK tech support just to check if they knew of any issues between my mobo & the Audigy as they sell both [or did until Abit stopped making it]. They said it was a bit hit & miss - some cards would work on 1 mobo [with various makes & models], but on an idetical mobo it would cause probs - the funny part is that they said the only CL sound card they hadn't seen any issues with mobos of VIA chipsets is the Extigy - a USB soundcard! I think that's quite amusing considering the number of probs I've heard ppl complain about with VIA-based boards & USB.
Actually MBM can display HD temps. too, with the adition of the HDDTemperature plug-in (although thats only free for one drive) and unfortunatly, no HD monitoring programs that I've seen can yet monitor them off a RAID controller Yeah, it sucks that they can't read temps through a RAID controller. I want to run my HDD from my RAID controller, so that my CD [which will hopefully soon be replaced by a DVD - thinking on getting a Toshiba SD-M1612, 's not region free, but can be made so with a patched firmware] & CDRW can each be master on their own channels.Quote:Yeah.. Uptime 2000.Thanks for that, wow, 2days, 13hours-ish since last reboot - if I ever get nostalgic for 98SE I'll just run that prog to see what my uptime is. After tomorrow morning, which is when my Audigy should get here [finally got around to ordering it Saturday afternoon], & not counting the reinstall I wanna do soon, I should have much longer uptimes. :crosses fingers:Quote:The radiation symbol is the World Time Servers Atomic Clock synchroniser. The one built into XP times out a lot for me (firewall problem no doubt) and I prefer to use this anyway.This used to bother me more with my old mobo as the clock wasn't too accurate - think the battery may have been going, but with this new 1 things seem a bit better.Quote:Have fun with the Audigy! If you have trouble and want to give it to someone else... hehe. LOL, yeah, right! If I have any probs with it it's going back for a refund. Dunno what I'd get as an alternative, though. Hey guess what? [this'll give the VIA critics a laugh] Before I ordered my Audigy I phoned OcUK tech support just to check if they knew of any issues between my mobo & the Audigy as they sell both [or did until Abit stopped making it]. They said it was a bit hit & miss - some cards would work on 1 mobo [with various makes & models], but on an idetical mobo it would cause probs - the funny part is that they said the only CL sound card they hadn't seen any issues with mobos of VIA chipsets is the Extigy - a USB soundcard! I think that's quite amusing considering the number of probs I've heard ppl complain about with VIA-based boards & USB.
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I love overhearing a conversation at eateries where the person talking has no clue about PCs yet is trying to impress their friend who probably never used one. My favorite is when people confuse hard disk space with memory. "How much RAM do you have Bob? "Oh I got like 40 Gigabytes of RAM, still doesn't seem to be enough though." LOL
Well Ram vs HDD mixup is quite common, but has anybody paid attention to people trying to use acronyms and mess them up totaly. They will tell you something like "I don't have any UPS ports left where i can plug my *anythin* to."
And before being able to reply you have to decode this to not having any USB ports left. This was the simplest when they think they know about computers it is just downhill from there.
I had one guy get in to a bet with me claiming DIMM stood for "Dual Integrated Memory Module"
I reaally enjoyed that six pack of Stella!
I love overhearing a conversation at eateries where the person talking has no clue about PCs yet is trying to impress their friend who probably never used one. My favorite is when people confuse hard disk space with memory. "How much RAM do you have Bob? "Oh I got like 40 Gigabytes of RAM, still doesn't seem to be enough though." LOL
Well Ram vs HDD mixup is quite common, but has anybody paid attention to people trying to use acronyms and mess them up totaly. They will tell you something like "I don't have any UPS ports left where i can plug my *anythin* to."
And before being able to reply you have to decode this to not having any USB ports left. This was the simplest when they think they know about computers it is just downhill from there.
I had one guy get in to a bet with me claiming DIMM stood for "Dual Integrated Memory Module"
I reaally enjoyed that six pack of Stella!
Originally posted by CyberGenX:
Quote:I love overhearing a conversation at eateries where the person talking has no clue about PCs yet is trying to impress their friend who probably never used one. My favorite is when people confuse hard disk space with memory. "How much RAM do you have Bob? "Oh I got like 40 Gigabytes of RAM, still doesn't seem to be enough though." LOL
lol - I never tire of hearing people who think they are competent with computers swapping RAM for Hard Drive space. As I don't currently work in the IT industry (hopefully in the future), I can't really share that many horror stories, but I am the unoffical computer advice person for the family - and it does get tiring showing somebody how to burn a CD each time they want to burn one - I don't claim to be a computer expert, more of a savvy user - experience from years of use (first comp as a child was TI-99/4a, tho I never did much Basic or anything like that on it), but relative to some people I have assisted, I am a demigod of computers. If these people would actually consult the manuals, or the internet, they would find they would learn much more about computers by at least trying to fix some problems themselves (though I do recognize that many of you rely on the ignorance of such users for your well being).
Quote:I love overhearing a conversation at eateries where the person talking has no clue about PCs yet is trying to impress their friend who probably never used one. My favorite is when people confuse hard disk space with memory. "How much RAM do you have Bob? "Oh I got like 40 Gigabytes of RAM, still doesn't seem to be enough though." LOL
lol - I never tire of hearing people who think they are competent with computers swapping RAM for Hard Drive space. As I don't currently work in the IT industry (hopefully in the future), I can't really share that many horror stories, but I am the unoffical computer advice person for the family - and it does get tiring showing somebody how to burn a CD each time they want to burn one - I don't claim to be a computer expert, more of a savvy user - experience from years of use (first comp as a child was TI-99/4a, tho I never did much Basic or anything like that on it), but relative to some people I have assisted, I am a demigod of computers. If these people would actually consult the manuals, or the internet, they would find they would learn much more about computers by at least trying to fix some problems themselves (though I do recognize that many of you rely on the ignorance of such users for your well being).
I had some guy insisting that a 3DFX V3 3000 was more powerful than a GeForce 4 Ti4600...or something like that. This was also after 3DFX was long gone and the V3 was no longer a high-end card.
You want horror? Try working as a IT Tech Co-Op in a high school *groans*. You wouldn't believe the questions. My personal favorite: "My printer isn't working, could you come take a look?" *one hour later testing drivers & cables* I look at the printer, and what does it say on the LED display? "OFFLINE" *sigh* I hit the power button and BAM, every document they had tried to load in the last four weeks. FOUR WEEKS. Before coming to tell us it wasn't working, started to print.
Then there is the Labs, we'll go into one and start upgrading the hardware of some of the older P3s and removing some of the Celeron 433s and P2s, and we'll see three computers with lined paper taped to their monitors saying "Doesn't Work". How long have they been like that? WHO KNOWS!
And mouse balls. Don't get me started on those.
And we had a few good P4s come in, and we assigned one per Lab, the rest went to office staff. Now, I kid you not, but the teachers, when their class is over, will walk out of the room, and NOT close the door behind them (the doors are always locked) thus leaving these rooms full of hard to find and expensive hardware (you try locating 128/256Mb SDRAM sticks for a fair price these days) open to the students. We found a brand new P4 2.66GHz opened up, stripped, the motherboard had been shorted, and the 512Mb of DDR400 was stolen. Lovely.
Ahh, the joys of Education.
Then there is the Labs, we'll go into one and start upgrading the hardware of some of the older P3s and removing some of the Celeron 433s and P2s, and we'll see three computers with lined paper taped to their monitors saying "Doesn't Work". How long have they been like that? WHO KNOWS!
And mouse balls. Don't get me started on those.
And we had a few good P4s come in, and we assigned one per Lab, the rest went to office staff. Now, I kid you not, but the teachers, when their class is over, will walk out of the room, and NOT close the door behind them (the doors are always locked) thus leaving these rooms full of hard to find and expensive hardware (you try locating 128/256Mb SDRAM sticks for a fair price these days) open to the students. We found a brand new P4 2.66GHz opened up, stripped, the motherboard had been shorted, and the 512Mb of DDR400 was stolen. Lovely.
Ahh, the joys of Education.
