$3,000.00 Weather Widget

Published on December 23, 2004 By Kobrano In Personal Computing

I know someone that purchased a 3,000$ computer system, and all they know how to do with it, is check the weather.

Thats a mighty expensive widget!

Anyone else got any horror stories about nOoBs that buy computers, and then are confused with what they are used for? Share them with us....

Comments (Page 1)

Danny Bassette

on Dec 24, 2004

Well there is always the traditional cdrom as a cupholder story. And when I worked tech support I had some interesting calls. Had a few people that put broken cd's, completly shattered, inside their cdrom and wondered why it didn't work. Had one call that didn't know the difference between the computer and the cable modem. And then there are the people that don't know if they have a home network, yet admit to having more then 4 computers wired together. There are definely some inexperienced computer users out there, but then again, so were all of us when we started.

Kobrano

on Dec 24, 2004

Is it inexperiance or ignorance?

Danny Bassette

on Dec 24, 2004

For some people, both. But I like to think that most people are just inexperienced and will learn from their mistakes. Mainly because I hate to think I'm one of the ignorant ones and stuck that way...

WebGizmos

on Dec 24, 2004

Recently went to someones house to see what was wrong with their PC after they mentioned it had slowed down considerably, and they had only purchased the PC in August of this year (2004). First if all...they had no Firewall or AntiVirus and didn't even know what they were. Next. it took about 10 minutes for the PC to even boot up, and even after it did it took forever for anything to load...such as Documents.

The first thing I was run Spybot & Adaware because as soon as I saw they icons on their desktop I knew they had spyware & adware problems. They had just about every "free" utility you could think of that was riddled with spyware/adware, and after running Spybot & Adaware they found a whopping 674 instances.

But even after getting rid of all those things it still ran like molasses had been dumped in it. They no doubt had a ton of viruses as well, but the thing ran so slow I could have built a new PC before anything loaded. In the end I had to do a complete reformat.

Posted via WinCustomize Browser/Stardock Central

joeKnowledge

on Dec 24, 2004

yeah, I tried the one that comes with Yahoo! and its pretty cool.

TasT

on Dec 24, 2004

My favorite thing is when people talk about their CPU/harddrive but are really refering to everything that's in the case. I hear it all the time.

As far as the viruses and spyware go, I have repaired 2 recently each of which had over 100 instances of spyware and one had over a hundred viruses of different sorts.. I used the usual SS&D and Adaware but the one that seems to work the best is the one that comes in Yahoo's new toolbar.

Thomas Thomassen

on Dec 24, 2004

The hard part of fixing someones computer is trying to understand what they claim to be broken. The confustion and mixup of technical terms forces takes the longest time to dechifre.
When I get asked to look at someones computer I allways bring a CD with Ad-aware and Spybot SD with me.

TheD2JBug

on Dec 24, 2004

classic.

I worked in PC retail once and I had a client bring his PC in because he had a problem with nothing coming up on the screen ( this was BITD when Windows 3.1 was king ) . I asked what happened and he replied that he had formatted the hard drive to free up space. Thank goodness I had the same demo machine which had a recovery CD ( one of the first ones to have one ) Set up his PC on the salesfloor, ran the recovery . Happy Customer. Bet he didn't do that again.

Riahon

on Dec 24, 2004

It's bad enough trying to diagnose a problem when the PC is in front of you, it's even worse to help someone over the phone.

butch123

on Dec 24, 2004

riahon-yeah I agree with you...i think i have about 6 people that call me quite regularly to try and help them over the phone. But with patience I always seem to get it done. I think that its more of a lack of experience than anything else. You know a lot of people dont even know what a ghost driver is. And forget a font, that is way too hard for them. But with patience comes virtue.

Kobrano

on Dec 24, 2004

Once spyware infestation gets to a certain point, format is the only logical conclusion.

I always install backend security on peoples machines, and they never realise it - but it protects them heavily.. Stardock has a nice new product coming out after the holidays that will pretty much prevent most infestations of trojans/spyware, and at the very least, make them readily curable.

In testing, its pretty effecient, and is only going to get better.

But then again, even it requires some basic common sense, which some people are just lacking apparently.

EventHorizon

on Dec 24, 2004

My favorite thing is when people talk about their CPU/harddrive but are really refering to everything that's in the case. I hear it all the time.

Got a 40gig pentium 4 at 7200rpm...
3000gigahertz of memory...

TasT

on Dec 24, 2004

Got a 40gig pentium 4 at 7200rpm...
3000gigahertz of memory...

Yep that's exactly what I'm talkin' about.

StumpMan

on Dec 28, 2004

Here's one for you.

Back around 1993, I wasa working for a computer company in my hometown. We sold a computer system to a local business. Well, every day about 4:00 he would call and state the monitor colors were fading out and he could no longer see the screen. We went out there 4 times that week and would replace the monitor in the morning. Well, Friday rolled around, and I made sure to be at his office at 4pm. I walked into his office just as he was explaining about the fourth monitor failing. I sat down and looked at the faded screen, turned around, and closed the blinds. Seems the afternoon sun would shine on the monitor, fading the screen.

Cavan1

on Jan 12, 2005

A guy I work with paid 1700 for a new computer and is using for antivirus a burnt copy of Norton 2003. Keep telling
him that atleast 2 years behind on viruses, but he does not seem to think it is much of a problem.

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