People's computer habits that make you want to slam your head on desks.

[FlameReaper]

I'm sorry if I don't appear civil, but I'm quite frustrated right now so if I can even let it out (and share) it for a bit, I'm fine.

Today, there's still people who don't know what or where e-mails addressed to them come from and they check the whole mail out anyway, and I have seen these people live.

One of them would be my father, whose computer knowledge is your run-of-the-mill the-other-end-of-the-scale in stark contrast to what most people would find knowledgeable; these kind of people.

I've told him quite a few times already: "If you don't know what or where the e-mail comes from, don't bother to even open it. Sent it to the dustbin straight away!"

But nope, he just checks all of them and I get pissed off everytime I see he opens a link in these e-mails and it leads to a website which makes no attempt in hiding the fact that they are pyramid schemes seeking to pull people in. Good thing there isn't a malicious mail... yet, and the PC (running Windows 7) has yet to be bricked thanks to his behaviour.

Don't take me wrong, I have nothing against my father. I just wish he could listen to what I said about freaking SPAM, and I'm quite disappointed my ISP doesn't seem to have spam filters in their mail accounts.

That's my story for now. Let's share yours and others, gentlemen!

Also, moderators, I'm sorry if you find this inappropriate, please take appropriate action straight away if there's a need. Thank you very much.

[nomko]

What about people who are still looking for the any key on their keyboard is some message pops up which says at the end of the message: "Press any key to continue".....

[Gerontion]

A little while ago, I used a (Windows) laptop from my wife's work. It was a few years old, and as far as I could tell, it had never been defragmented, the waste had never been emptied and none of the programs - boring stuff like firewalls, virus software, etc - had ever been updated. It also had almost every bit of junk on it known to humanity. So much of this stuff loaded on boot, that it was almost entirely unusable - a situation not helped by an impressive ecosystem of viruses but amazingly it was used regularly by the person who did the computer maintenance. C'mon. It's not hard to look after a computer...especially if your job is looking after computers.

[Khakilang]

Friend keep on visiting the same website knowing very well it is virus infested and bugging me for help and lie to me that he did not do such thing. He doesn't know that by looking at his browse history I know the website he has visited. So no question ask and give him my bill.

[Docaltmed]

A few years ago, my then-14-year-old daughter was the beneficiary of a desktop computer given to her by a relative. A bit out of date back even then, it was running XP SP2 and had all the original bloatware on it.

My family was then in the throes of having our systems migrated to Ubuntu, and my daughter yelled at me every day about how "Ubuntu sucks" and "it's awful" and "school says I have to use Word or I get an F" (untrue). (She's 14, get the picture?)

So I gave her a choice, I said, let me put Ubuntu on, I'll do the support, maintenance, set up automatic backups, do the upgrading, it will run like a champ. Or, keep XP. I'll get you set up with anti-virus and hooked up to the home network, but don't come to me for support.

I added that if I found even one piece of pirated software on it, I would dump the thing in the trash then and there. I don't condone theft.

Of course she took the XP route. Gradually the thing got so filled up with viruses and crap that it barely even boots up any more. She asked me to take a look at it a few weeks ago, I told her I wouldn't touch that thing without rubber gloves and a hazmat suit. Guess what she's been using for a computer for the past year? Yep, the one in the family room.

She just graduated from high school, and another relative is giving her an Apple. We looked at her school's requirements, and they do support both LibreOffice and OpenOffice, so I told her I would put LibreOffice on it. Her response? "No way, Daddy! I want OpenOffice. I don't like that whole LibreOffice vibe!!"

[facepalm]

[haqking]

People who phone or ask "I have something wrong with my computer can you fix it" and you say "whats wrong with it?" to which they respond

"I dont know, i thought you knew about computers, can you fix it or not"

or

"Ever since you fixed my computer its been real slow"

yeah nothing to do with all the porn sites you visit with driveby downloads and malware.

I HATE PEOPLE !

[NightwishFan]

I have a family member that constantly complains their computer is slow when it is just their slow net connection. It is running 32-bit Debian with 3gb of RAM. It is quite speedy.

[haqking]

I have a family member that constantly complains their computer is slow when it is just their slow net connection. It is running 32-bit Debian with 3gb of RAM. It is quite speedy.

Yeah people and there so called "slow computers" when they just have a crappy slow internet connection.

Here in the UK Talk Talk i think is responsible for at least 10 SLOW computers that i know of...LOL

Although Talk Talk is pretty S*** it doesnt help that these people have there internet connections through 500 feet of home installed telephone extension cabling...LOL

[NightwishFan]

On in my case 5 people sharing the same DSL all wanting to stream HD movies.

[Bandit]

Folks that cant understand if your on the net and some strange looking window pops up that says your computer is infected would you like to run _____ to clean it... You guys know the rest...


Put that same person on linux, had no more issues. Even though they say they are not letting those programs run any more, I know they have a underlying panic attacks when they see them and are still doing it.. lol

...Yes! Yes! Clean my linux box you little fake windows trojan program!!

[SoFl W]

What about people who are still looking for the any key on their keyboard is some message pops up which says at the end of the message: "Press any key to continue".....

I didn't think that was real but I worked at a computer store about 20 years ago, the dialog came up that said "Press a key to continue" and the customer was looking for the 'a' key, and then pressed it.

[Bandit]

Worked Tech Support years back. Had a person call in about not being able to get their computer to power on. After about 30 mins on the phone I realised they had their power strip plugged back into its self. I explained to them that they had to plug it into the wall outlet, but for the life of them they could not comprehend the idea..
Their reply was "But its plugged up?".

[SoFl W]

I dislike the whole "Why is my [Windows] computer running so slow?" They ask me to fix it like I have some kind of special powers. I have used Windows and have had no problems with Windows slowing down. I have an old laptop with Windows 2000 on it. (It was made for XP) That old laptop loads programs faster than their current machine. I truly don't know what goes on to slow people's computers down. My boss used to say with Windows a regular user just needs to reinstall the whole OS every year or so.

I DON'T KNOW WHY YOUR COMPUTER IS SO SLOW.

[Npl]

I understand that quite alot people are computer illiterate, and they often ask me for help... which I wont mind aslong they are reasonable with their demands. But what is a red flag to me is when they at the same time I should help them with stuff they themself admit know nothing about they want to correct and lecture me with some filthy crap they red in some computer boulevard magazines.

[3Miro]

People being ignorant is OK. People needing help is OK. However, if you tell someone "DON'T DO THIS" and the first thing they do is exactly "THIS" then I am losing it.

[u-noob-tu]

my sister has an old dell inspiron that came with ubuntu intrepid ibex. about two months ago she asked me if it was possible to upgrade it cuz "it sucked". well, first thing i did was look at the update manager. i couldnt believe what my eyes saw. over 900 updates had yet to be installed. she had never opened the update manager. worse yet, she had never bothered to open anything except firefox and nautilus. i asked her why she hadnt used anything and she replied "it doesnt work" (she basically meant the whole computer was screwed up). she also believes that ubuntu operates in an entirely different way than windows, claiming that she is unable to save email attachments because "it wouldnt let me do it". Open Office doesnt work, either, apparently. basically, she has no idea how to use her computer and never bothered to try to learn it or ask for help. she also has a tendency to blame the computer whenever something goes wrong (because it couldnt POSSIBLY BE HER FAULT!). she is also very bad at providing details of an issue shes having, she usually just says "it doesnt work", or "i hate it.". she seems to be far happier in her ignorance than frustrated at her inability to understand it. yet, incredibly, she managed to customize all the fonts in the entire OS. how she figured that out while not being able to save files, i will never know.

[mamamia88]

My father will close the browser and reopen it just to navigate to another webpage.

[NightwishFan]

@u-noob-tu

I can understand the frustration with someone seemingly 'attacking' the Linux install especially unfairly. I tend to take it personally when someone assumes the systems I set up have a problem. I always admit and fix real problems but having to argue about pretend ones gets under my skin.

Basically the best thing to do is if they have Windows leave them with Windows unless they want to try Linux. Let them ask you about it if they want.

[wolfen69]

My father will close the browser and reopen it just to navigate to another webpage.

That's priceless!

[cgroza]

My father will close the browser and reopen it just to navigate to another webpage.
I love my father now...

[Brent0]

My father will close the browser and reopen it just to navigate to another webpage.

All fathers must be the same. My dad is just like that. :p

[blueturtl]

My father can't stop signing me up (using my email address) to all kinds of contests and things. Of course the purpose of such sites is to collect email addresses which to send advertising to. Thanks for the spam, dad.

--

Another one is people giving the computer commands when it's still busy (like re-clicking that link will make it load faster). I try to explain that the disk I/O lamp pretty much indicates the comp is already busy and trying to process their request. Then they act up all surprised when after the loading stops they end up with like ten Firefox windows. :D

--

Messing with each and individual software volume control in your PC. I have it set up how I like it, everything is on full or 80% so that the master volume slider controls everything. Nothing is more infuriating than having your speakers explode because someone set the volume for one app really low (while leaving other sources on full).

--

Touching the screen when pointing at something. I always bring my finger close to the screen without actually touching it. However a lot of people will bring their greasy fingers on my LCD. On top of it, they usually use a lot more force than necessary so you're almost afraid the screen will dent. Not so much an issue with tubes, but still very annoying.

Oh gawd, I need to take a break before the twitch on my eyelid gets permanent. Stay tuned for more. :D

[3Miro]

My father can't stop signing me up (using my email address) to all kinds of contests and things. Of course the purpose of such sites is to collect email addresses which to send advertising to. Thanks for the spam, dad.


Dangerous and very scary. I would change my e-mail and leave one address specially for communicating with dad.

[h4x0l2]

double clicking everything

[el_koraco]

An ex gf of mine told me about her time as a computer science 101 instructor in the local employment bureau. She told the guys "now double click on the icon with the mouse", and a guy actually physically brought the mouse up to the screen and double clicked on the icon.

[d3v1150m471c]

double clicking everything
...or when they continue double clicking because it doesn't open immediately lol

[Maheriano]

My dad puts web addresses into Google. So for any site he wants to go to, he'll type it into the Google search and click the result rather than just typing it into the address bar.

[u-noob-tu]

Another one of my favorites is when I put ubuntu on the old family e-machine pc which had been given to my 13 year old brother (why my 17 year old brother didn't get, I don't know). I was surprised when he asked me to put ubuntu on it, but I did it anyway. So I got everything up and running, and after logging him in for the first time, he got in the chair to start using it. Well, not start right away. He stared at the screen for at least 10 seconds and then asked the most mindboggling question. "How do I use it?". My jaw dropped in absolute disbelief. He hadn't even touched the mouse yet. And when I told him to just explore, he turned around and said "How?". Oh, gee, I don't know, maybe you should click on something?

[Dangertux]

My 2 personal favorites are.

"HELP I GOT HACKED THE WORLD IS OUT TO GET ME SAVE ME!!!!"

Sorry no, you're really not important enough for anyone to bother hacking you. You munged your install by noodling about in your settings and we all know it.

"Do you know why this website doesn't work right? I am clicking the link to submit the form but it doesn't submit..."

Yes...let me go audit that website's code for a few hours, and write a lengthy email suggesting to them why they should fix it. The primary reason being to get my mother in law off my phone. Mind you, this is a phone conversation and I still to this day have not been made aware of what the site in question was.

Oh and another good one.

I knew an individual who had an entire website they made about themselves (just personal stuff) , they kept it in their my documents folder. They updated it almost daily for 2 months. Never once did they attempt to acquire any hosting for it. They blissfully went along just assuming it was visible on the web. I didn't have the heart to tell her :-/

[fillmont]

My father will close the browser and reopen it just to navigate to another webpage.

YES.

My dad does this all the time. It is super strange.

Edit: My aunt is a sweet lady, but she really doesn't understand what computers are, apparently. She has one, and had be over to set up her email so she could get in touch with friends and relatives. Simple enough. She had a list of things she wanted to learn to do, and had some pretty normal stuff: how to log in, how to open a text document, send emails, etc.

But then she asked me "how to find the pictures." I wasn't entirely sure what she meant, so I asked. She simply said she wanted to know how she could use email to find the pictures. Apparently she had seen a relative use email (or something) to view family photos, and she wanted to do the same, without actually knowing what program they had been using.

I found myself quite unable to explain that "how to find the pictures" wasn't actually a meaningful request without some further knowledge about where "the pictures" were.

[Thewhistlingwind]

They blissfully went along just assuming it was visible on the web. I didn't have the heart to tell her :-/

Thats totally not cool. You couldn't have at least said "This needs hosting"?

[beew]

Don't know if this counts as "computer habit", this lady takes her netbook to the kitchen and eats while she is going on the internet, she has all kinds of crumbs, tomato sauce stains and unknown sticky substances all over her machine and after a while they just become crust. Last time when she asked me to trouble shoot her netbook because of a virus attack I actually took the chance to clean it up for her, and not just the virus.

[Linuxratty]

Worked Tech Support years back. Had a person call in about not being able to get their computer to power on. After about 30 mins on the phone I realised they had their power strip plugged back into its self.

I know someone who used to do tech support..She saw the same thing when she went to "fix" a computer. People's 1q's tend to drop 20 points anytime they are near a computer for some reason.

[tumbes2000]

My recent favorite, my wife who only uses Macs, got a facebook message from a "friend" who see has not talk to in ages (besides the initial facebook friend request). The message had a link in it, so of course my wife clicked it. Guess what, virus, the very one Apple had to release a patch for. She as a unique knack for always having to click on links needlessly yet since she has always had a Mac she has not gotten a virus. Well that finally caught up to her.

[KiwiNZ]

Remember how you didn't know how to tie your shoe laces?
Ride a bike
Catch a fish..........

Your "dad" showed you how.

The supercilious attitudes displayed in the thread are nauseating.:evil: :rolleyes:

[lisati]

Remember how you didn't know how to tie your shoe laces?
Ride a bike
Catch a fish..........

Your "dad" showed you how.

The supercilious attitudes displayed in the thread are nauseating.:evil: :rolleyes:

Good morning!

/me avoids sharing an anecdote about how I've seen colleagues using google to get to facebook.

[Maheriano]

Another is when friends send me some attachment in my email without any explanation, no body, no mention at all of what they're sending me. So I immediately delete it without looking at it and the next day I get, "What, why didn't you at least look at it?"

[Dustin2128]

Remember how you didn't know how to tie your shoe laces?
Ride a bike
Catch a fish..........

Your "dad" showed you how.

The supercilious attitudes displayed in the thread are nauseating.:evil: :rolleyes:
The thing about computers is you get a lot of resistance trying to teach people to do... anything. You'd be shocked at how often I've heard stuff like "I don't WANT to learn! I just want to do it!"

[KiwiNZ]

The thing about computers is you get a lot of resistance trying to teach people to do... anything. You'd be shocked at how often I've heard stuff like "I don't WANT to learn! I just want to do it!"

I was in IT Management for a long time. I came down very hard on support staff with the exampled attitudes here. I am aware of the learning resistance, it is OK to resist or feel apprehensive of the unknown.

[Bandit]

The thing about computers is you get a lot of resistance trying to teach people to do... anything. You'd be shocked at how often I've heard stuff like "I don't WANT to learn! I just want to do it!"

Or "I am to d*** old to learn that!!"..

I sometimes find myself closing my own browser. This must be something that happens to fathers like myself when we get older.. I get mad at myself from doing it.

I have the right to complain to my father, doesnt mean I dont love him. But I taught myself to ride, hunt, fish, drive, etc.. etc.. Never been lucky enough to have parents do anything for me.

[alan404]

I don't mind people being unsure or not knowing. But sometimes it goes beyond that. My mother-in-law shouted "What's it doing now?" at the computer, and looked at me as if it was somehow my fault because I know a bit about them and therefore take the computer's side against her or something. I looked over helpfully, and just caught her typing capital letters, but with her finger on the CTRL key instead of Shift -- The computer was having a crazed maniacal house party - Printing, Opening new Documents, pretty much anything. I said carefully , "erm, you're holding the, erm. " and then she noticed "I've got it now, I'm fine"
But thinking about it afterwards, it is quite easy to do if you're looking at the screen and trying to remember what to do. And if you don't notice why you may think that all computers just do crazy things occasionally.

[Dangertux]

Thats totally not cool. You couldn't have at least said "This needs hosting"?

Oh believe me I wanted to, but it was just one of those scenarios where she was so happy with herself and so proud of herself, I couldn't ruin it. In the end it worked out best, she was going through a hard time in her life, and it was mostly a reflective journal type site. Honestly IMO it was best to keep private. She moved past it and stopped updating it.

Normally, I would agree with you ; however in this case I feel it served its purpose better staying private. She now has her own blog on a VPS host, so I'm assuming either someone told her or she figured it out. She never mentioned it, so I'm assuming that she probably just feels sheepish about the incident lol.

As far as the people who act like we are horrible people for finding humor in people's ignorance. I think it is one thing to look at a situation and be like, man that's pretty silly that you did that. Maybe even share it with like minded individuals and have a good laugh. Versus degrading the person doing it, making them feel stupid, or inadequate and refusing to help them.

When it comes to professionalism obviously, a professional attitude is paramount to success, regardless if you're IT support or HR. I think that goes without saying.

To be honest, if you say you haven't laughed at someone "screwing something up" I think you're a liar or a saint. We've all done it at some point in our life, and I feel it's ok as long as you're not cruel to the person. I mean I screw things up all the time, and my wife or a coworker will rib me about it for a little bit, and it's in good fun. I think it all depends on how far you take it.

[Thewhistlingwind]

Mine has got to be "Defrag solves everything".

The amount of good advice I've dispensed to be shot down with "We'll just defrag instead"

:(

[uRock]

A few years ago, my then-14-year-old daughter was the beneficiary of a desktop computer given to her by a relative. A bit out of date back even then, it was running XP SP2 and had all the original bloatware on it.

My family was then in the throes of having our systems migrated to Ubuntu, and my daughter yelled at me every day about how "Ubuntu sucks" and "it's awful" and "school says I have to use Word or I get an F" (untrue). (She's 14, get the picture?)

So I gave her a choice, I said, let me put Ubuntu on, I'll do the support, maintenance, set up automatic backups, do the upgrading, it will run like a champ. Or, keep XP. I'll get you set up with anti-virus and hooked up to the home network, but don't come to me for support.

I added that if I found even one piece of pirated software on it, I would dump the thing in the trash then and there. I don't condone theft.

Of course she took the XP route. Gradually the thing got so filled up with viruses and crap that it barely even boots up any more. She asked me to take a look at it a few weeks ago, I told her I wouldn't touch that thing without rubber gloves and a hazmat suit. Guess what she's been using for a computer for the past year? Yep, the one in the family room.

She just graduated from high school, and another relative is giving her an Apple. We looked at her school's requirements, and they do support both LibreOffice and OpenOffice, so I told her I would put LibreOffice on it. Her response? "No way, Daddy! I want OpenOffice. I don't like that whole LibreOffice vibe!!"

[facepalm]
I let my daughter use whatever OS she wants, though she is only 7, she can use OpenOffice and Abiword with no problems.

Being that most schools use MS Office, I would rather pay for software that works instead of having her turn in a paper knowing the formatting will be messed up and she will have a reduced grade because of it.

The only reason I use OpenOffice is the fact that my teachers accept documents as PDF, though I have found flaws in OO's formatting of PDFs.

[speedwell68]

Clickers...

The computer displays a dialogue box giving them a message of some kind and they just click OK to get rid of it. They had no idea what it said, but they click anyway.

[Thewhistlingwind]

Being that most schools use MS Office, I would rather pay for software that works instead of having her turn in a paper knowing the formatting will be messed up and she will have a reduced grade because of it.

I have never had OO mess up formatting for .doc (Except for stuff that was REALLY minor.)

More and more schools are accepting .odt anyway.

At any rate, I see the sentiment. Less and less computers ship these days with microsoft office though.

[Quadunit404]

Thinking that everything they see (including the Start Menu) is a virus.
Double-clicking everything repeatedly in hopes it'll open up faster.
Taking "screenshots" with a camera.

[uRock]

I have never had OO mess up formatting for .doc (Except for stuff that was REALLY minor.)

More and more schools are accepting .odt anyway.

At any rate, I see the sentiment. Less and less computers ship these days with microsoft office though.

It is free. All you need is a Hotmail account, then you can use Office within the browser.

[walt.smith1960]

My dad puts web addresses into Google. So for any site he wants to go to, he'll type it into the Google search and click the result rather than just typing it into the address bar.
My wife does that. I don't discourage it because I think Mozilla foundation gets some small $ from Google for each Google search initiated from the window to the right of the address bar.

[8_Bit]

I don't know if this has been mentioned before but one thing that absolutely gets on my nerves is when people install a billion third-party toolbars in Internet Explorer. Most of them spyware... :x

[Dustin2128]

Mine has got to be "Defrag solves everything".

The amount of good advice I've dispensed to be shot down with "We'll just defrag instead"

:(
Their fault for using a file system that fragments :P. I know the kinds of people you're talking of, really annoying.

[Zerocool Djx]

My pet-peeve is when people ask how to put modern OS systems on extremely old computers then get offended when you tell them it won't be a "Performance beast" cause they don't understand an OS system don't drive a computer, just makes the seat comfortable. Then they turn around and try to make you look like an fool cause you didn't suggest things in there "rules". I wish they would just burn their POS rather then ask a series of dumb questions. It's like the annoying kid in the car "Are we there yet???" GRRR...

I worked on some dinosaurs before, just like last week. But, I have common sense and sensible relitivity to the crap I am working on and it's limitations. It's one thing to ask, what would be the best solution Vs. I want this to BE the best solution, it don't work that way.

[beew]

People on this forum who reflexively tell new users to remove pulse audio whenever the latter have a problem no matter what the nature of the problem is :)

[BrokenKingpin]

People who have about 800 files and icons on their desktop, and do not realize there are other folders they can store files in.

[Brian0312]

I would say that the most annoying habit people have that I encounter is a lack of flexibility and/or adaptation. I like to be a teacher, not a solution. So go ahead and ask me anything. Ask me again if I answered in a way you don't understand. Go ahead and install a bunch of viruses and spyware and ask me for help to fix it. Find out what FDISK is the hard way. It's all part of the learning process. I won't judge I promise.

But if I take the time to fix the problem, show you what went wrong and why, explain what should be done in the future, and have you go through the motions to ensure you understand, and then find that you've turned around and done the same damn thing again. I will not be helping you a second time.

Lack of knowledge is fine, voluntary ignorance is not.

[slooksterpsv]

Didn't read any of the previous ones but here's the ones I just hate:

1. Like you said, which key on "Press any key..."

2. Again like you said, junk email. Scam emails, etc. just they think they got, won, etc. something and try to fill out the information.

3. Common program updates - yeah true not many people understand Flash is a valid program or Java, but I get called, do I need to update this? It's like yes you need it, do it.

4. Viruses, they go to pages I can't even find and they get infected. It's like I try doing the same thing you guys do and I can't even find Windows Spyware 2011 or that.

5. IMs from bots. They say, who's this? And talk with them, click on the links they send and get mad, it's like if you don't know them DON'T RESPOND!

6. How do I download a picture I sent to my email? ...

I'm done already, this is irritating, cause you expect people to take initiative and learn a bit.

[Old_Grey_Wolf]

Relatives that have allowed me to set up an admin account and user accounts; however, they give the password to the admin account to their mature computer literate offspring so that their mature computer literate offspring can install software.

Example: It disgusted me to find the pirated movies, pirated software, p**n, etc. that these mature computer literate offspring that were 30 or 40+ years old downloaded to their mother's computer. The relative also give them unsupervised access to her computer; therefore, they could bypass all security measures including a password protected BIOS.

[FlameReaper]

My dad puts web addresses into Google. So for any site he wants to go to, he'll type it into the Google search and click the result rather than just typing it into the address bar.

That sounds like my mother.

However, I can't blame them for that. My mother only gets on the computer for that (to look for cake recipes) and some Solitaire games.

[Quadunit404]

Going on the Internet just to post ponies and nothing else.

[slooksterpsv]

Ok I guess I'll do a story instead of itemized things I hate:

So I used to work for a DSL Company that did Free computer repair. I loved it, at first (it was the company that I really started to dislike after a while). Anyways this lady brought in her computer and it was just overly infected. Viruses, spyware, etc. over 50,000 pieces - how? Fake files in a Limewire folder like Cars Movie RIP DIVX.AVI or that (just about 2MB or what not).

Anyways I cleaned up her computer, used Eusing and cleaned the registry, did a defrag, cleaned up just tons of junk, viruses, spyware, registry entries, old caches, temp files, removed Norton, etc. Well the computer ran amazingly quick. Lady picked it up, I gave her a run-down of what we did. And she took it home. She called later that day and said she never had a faster computer.

2 weeks later, she brought the computer back in, said she didn't want me working on it cause I made it slower than when she brought it in last. It was infected with a few rootkits, tons of spyware, and a bunch of viruses.

My co-worker cleaned it up, she took it home, and was happy. A week later she calls in saying she wants to cancel her service cause "we keep putting things in her computer to slow it down". Yet she's been installing every pop-up that came up on her in existence.

So she leaves and sets up service with another company. 3 months down the road, we buy that company and she emails us saying she won't use be moving back to us because she didn't get infected with the new company she used.

Yeah it was all the DSLs fault that she got infected. Stupid people. Needless to say it's people like that that don't deserve a computer.

[FlameReaper]

So while I'm seeing that it isn't a very nice thing to post about how you tell our significant elders on how computer works, I guess I'll say something about those who're close to home (as in, ones in my current generation or something).

My eldest sister: My god, her laptop. It came with Vista, and when I borrowed it for a while - it overheated on just trying to start up. Eventually I sold it off anyway (without the hard disk, of course). And seeing the junk she crammed inside it, it just makes the already bad Vista experience, suck worse. As far as I can recall the laptop (which I previously had the same model version) runs best with XP, although for some reason the retailer just suggested that we upgraded into Vista. Okay, that's still fine, since I managed to iron out my own problems (but not hers).

She has this annoying knack of snapping at me whenever I handle her laptop, insisting that she should do the "maintenance" (there is a reason I put that word in quotes). As if I could believe that!

And to make matters worse she got angry at me just when I'm asking to have my laptop back (politely) - actually, I just want to get her off it since she's just there for Facebook and checking useless e-mails... and repeats the cycle one after another when she's done with one. It's an infinite loop, and I know she won't get done until she's sick of it - and that can repeat for two days if she feels like it. Hey, that's my laptop damn it!

Eventually I got fed up and whenever she's around, I lock my computer to a TTY (now that I'm using Ubuntu) screen. I know some of you would say "But what if she knows how to get around that?" But then again I doubt such a casual user like her would get around it without my intervention (which I won't. Unless there's some sort of a higher order like my mother).

[cprofitt]

gah... this thread has lured me in.

The types of users I have grown weary of:


"My document was in Microsoft Word and then recent documents... can you restore it?"
"I read your email about never giving out personal information; did you get my email with my social security number?"
"You want me to log out? O.K. I am logged out." <can't rdp> "Oh, you just wanted me to log out?"
"My third cousins best friend told me that this program would fix my computer, but its been running slow ever since I loaded it. Do you think it was the last Microsoft patch?"
"My <significant other> is a computer expert and <he/she> says you are doing it all wrong"
"Yes, all my documents are saved to the server and there are no documents on my desktop" <after the image> "Where are all my documents; there are no documents under recent documents anymore." <show them their home directory> "No, those are not the ones I was looking for." <show them the documents you found on their desktop> "Yes. Those are the ones; Good thing I helped you find those, heh?"
"I want program <blank>!" <install program blank> "You did something wrong, the program isn't working." <discussion> "Oh, the program can't do that? Well, the salesman told me it would. You must be doing something wrong; so fix it!"
"The Internet is down!!" <plug in Ethernet cable> "Wow, you fixed the Internet."

There are plenty more. When you work in IT and have dozens of neighbors, friends, family, etc... you get to see a great deal.

[SoFl W]

My dad puts web addresses into Google. So for any site he wants to go to, he'll type it into the Google search and click the result rather than just typing it into the address bar.
I think my mother does the same thing, but on her computer I can't tell the difference between the address bar and the yahoo search toolbar.

[u-noob-tu]

Ok I guess I'll do a story instead of itemized things I hate:

So I used to work for a DSL Company that did Free computer repair. I loved it, at first (it was the company that I really started to dislike after a while). Anyways this lady brought in her computer and it was just overly infected. Viruses, spyware, etc. over 50,000 pieces - how? Fake files in a Limewire folder like Cars Movie RIP DIVX.AVI or that (just about 2MB or what not).

Anyways I cleaned up her computer, used Eusing and cleaned the registry, did a defrag, cleaned up just tons of junk, viruses, spyware, registry entries, old caches, temp files, removed Norton, etc. Well the computer ran amazingly quick. Lady picked it up, I gave her a run-down of what we did. And she took it home. She called later that day and said she never had a faster computer.

2 weeks later, she brought the computer back in, said she didn't want me working on it cause I made it slower than when she brought it in last. It was infected with a few rootkits, tons of spyware, and a bunch of viruses.

My co-worker cleaned it up, she took it home, and was happy. A week later she calls in saying she wants to cancel her service cause "we keep putting things in her computer to slow it down". Yet she's been installing every pop-up that came up on her in existence.

So she leaves and sets up service with another company. 3 months down the road, we buy that company and she emails us saying she won't use be moving back to us because she didn't get infected with the new company she used.

Yeah it was all the DSLs fault that she got infected. Stupid people. Needless to say it's people like that that don't deserve a computer.
it amazes me, that in such a computer driven world, where people need to have basic to intermediate knowledge of computers, where it is such an integral part of our daily lives, that people simply do not think about what they are doing with computers. Do people do these kinds of things to cars, too? do they load a car with a ton of bricks and ask why its slow? Do they take out parts of the engine and complain that it wont start? Computers and cars dont make mistakes, people do.

[kaldor]

People who think that everything gives you a virus.

Examples...

Was playing a game a while ago, and mentioned that some of us were on IRC while playing at the server. One of the people refused to join in because "IRC gives you viruses"

"Don't download Chrome. I downloaded it and it gave me a virus"

"I got a virus when someone gave me a link to something and I didn't even click on it"

Above are real quotes from people I know. Even worse is when they try to explain to me that I'm wrong when I say otherwise.

[Timmer1240]

People that want a computer and dont want to know anything about how to keep it running fast. A

s soon as it gets annoyingly slow they call ME EVERYTIME!

[jhonan]

People who think that everything gives you a virus.
Oh yeah, I love that. But paradoxically they seem oblivious to real malware/viruses, randomly clicking facebook links and opening strange email attachments.

[Santaji]

I think most of these complaints show how complicated computers are to most people, Not how stupid the users are. This is why i think devices like the iPad are the future of computing. Because it's so "restricted and locked down" it's impossible for the user to mess it up/break something. And the because the software is so simple and well designed, People are not scared/intimidated by it.

[uRock]

it amazes me, that in such a computer driven world, where people need to have basic to intermediate knowledge of computers, where it is such an integral part of our daily lives, that people simply do not think about what they are doing with computers. Do people do these kinds of things to cars, too? do they load a car with a ton of bricks and ask why its slow? Do they take out parts of the engine and complain that it wont start? Computers and cars dont make mistakes, people do.

It doesn't surprise me. The same goes with cars. Every car's factory manual recommends weekly PMCS, but I hardly ever see people doing the checks.

[createdcreature]

People don't know what a browser or an OS is. How :confused:

[goldshirt9]

various work mates try to literally push the keyboard keys through the keyboard when typing :P:P:P:P
.

The worst i had was a free desktop from a IT friend for my son.
when i received and turned on , i have never seen so many trojans / virus / maelware /
porn .

clean install and away i went :)

The best was a dual graphic card gaming desktop , 8 gb ram , i was given as it was no good.
HA his sons took to bits and couldn't get back together ,
after 1 hour and W 7 64 bit installed away it went.
WoW fast and free.
some people think , but know nothing , is is so sad

[arunb]

My dad puts web addresses into Google. So for any site he wants to go to, he'll type it into the Google search and click the result rather than just typing it into the address bar.

I used to do that some time ago during IE6 days. But now with chrome I don't have to.

Its mainly because in IE6 there were no tabs, just windows, besides opening a new window from File menu would open a duplicate window and the address bar entry had to be deleted, so it was much easier to close and run the browser.

[Random_Dude]

http://img121.imageshack.us/img121/9895/6etb4.gif

[dniMretsaM]

I dislike people who put EVERYTHING on their desktop. Also poor folder organization. You know, 20 "New Folders" per directory. Naming picture/video folders date only, etc. People who complain about the Internet being slow when it takes more than 0.5 seconds for a page to load are annoying, too.

@Docaltmed: "LibreOffice vibe" LOLWUT?

[PartisanEntity]

What about people who type "Google" into the browsers quick search bar to search for something from the Google page, instead of just entering their search therm there :-)

[doorknob60]

People that think that having more programs installed makes your computer slow. "Oh, but if I install Firefox it will slow down my computer!" For most real programs, this is completely untrue. Get rid of the ones that run in the background, and any malware, but removing regular programs won't speed up your computer :P

@Random_Dude: Haha yes :D

[sanderella]

I told my husband that if he put a Windows os on his new puter I would not maintain it for him. Nevertheless, when something goes wrong, he blames me. :(

[christoph411]

http://img121.imageshack.us/img121/9895/6etb4.gif

That. Was. EPIC! =D>
That was so funny because it was so true! :-D

[cgroza]

Having every toolbar in the world installed in the web browser and then complaining the browser runs slow and they do not have enough screen space.

[Quadunit404]

Having every toolbar in the world installed in the web browser and then complaining the browser runs slow and they do not have enough screen space.

Ahem. (http://cybernetnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2006/12/Firefox200/Fullscreen.jpg)

[cgroza]

:lolflag::lolflag::lolflag:
Ahem. (http://cybernetnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2006/12/Firefox200/Fullscreen.jpg)

[Ctrl-Alt-F1]

I stopped caring what people do with their computers a long time ago. I'll probably start caring again if the time comes that I ever have to work in a help desk position.

[Allavona]

Over tabbing! Tabbed browsing is a great thing, but my buddy takes it to the extreme. You open firefox on his machine and 20 minutes later all gazillion tabs finally load!

[jerenept]

Over tabbing! Tabbed browsing is a great thing, but my buddy takes it to the extreme. You open firefox on his machine and 20 minutes later all gazillion tabs finally load!

http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/tab_explosion.png (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TvTropesWillRuinYourLife)

[lisati]

... people who type "facebook.com" into Google's search box instead of the normal place for addresses on the browser.

[markp1989]

Over tabbing! Tabbed browsing is a great thing, but my buddy takes it to the extreme. You open firefox on his machine and 20 minutes later all gazillion tabs finally load!

I have a pretty bad habbit of doing that, I always end up with a gizillion tabs after a long browsing session

[mambeu]

My uncle and I bought a computer for my grandmother a few years ago (she's 83). I know that this is all unfamiliar territory for her, but I do often feel like I'm beating my head against a wall when I try to explain something to her or help her out with a computer problem.

It took me forever to convince her that the internet is not contained within AOL. "You can get to all your political blogs from Firefox too, really!"

And somehow she kept resetting her system clock to two or three years in the past, so all the websites she tried to visit would give her an 'expired security certificate' warning. That was a fun one to troubleshoot over the phone.

She really does pretty well, all things considered. I just wish she would stop clicking 'like' on every single status or post in her Facebook news feed. It drives the rest of my family crazy.

[ashwinrao]

Was doing PC maintenance work few years back. Once we got a call from cyber cafe whose owner is a computer illiterate old man. One of the PC was infected by Virus and corrected it. While paying bill, old man asked what was the issue. We told him that the PC was infected by virus. All of a sudden, old man turned to a lady who was looking after the cyber cafe and strated blasting " Didn't I told you to cover the PC's while we closing? See now, they got infected by virus" . The lady and we are speechless. We collected our money and came outside at the earliest and started laughing like any thing :p

[PartisanEntity]

My uncle and I bought a computer for my grandmother a few years ago (she's 83). I know that this is all unfamiliar territory for her, but I do often feel like I'm beating my head against a wall when I try to explain something to her or help her out with a computer problem.

It took me forever to convince her that the internet is not contained within AOL. "You can get to all your political blogs from Firefox too, really!"

And somehow she kept resetting her system clock to two or three years in the past, so all the websites she tried to visit would give her an 'expired security certificate' warning. That was a fun one to troubleshoot over the phone.

She really does pretty well, all things considered. I just wish she would stop clicking 'like' on every single status or post in her Facebook news feed. It drives the rest of my family crazy.


You know, I have no problem being patient with older generations when it comes to computer instructions. My parents still don't understand certain computing concepts, but I don't have a problem with that at all, I explain it to them every time they ask or are confused, it is something I have come to live with.

Where I don't have any patience is with similarly aged individuals and colleagues. People who don't have an excuse in my opinion.

Like this one colleague who asked me several times if she could highlight text and copy it, from a JPEG...

[goldshirt9]

Ahem. (http://cybernetnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2006/12/Firefox200/Fullscreen.jpg)
a classic :P

[squenson]

A former colleague used to store important documents in the 'bin' as the icon was on the desktop and easily accessible. Thanks to the size of the bin folder, she never lost anything... as far as I know!

[Irihapeti]

People who have to "forward this to everyone in your address book", and include your email address in plain view. Who knows where it will end up?

[cloyd]

My father does not use his computer now, but when he did . . . I would be visiting and getting ready to leave, and then he'd say, "Hey, will you look at my computer before I leave? Something happened and I don't know how to fix it." So, I'd go turn on the machine, and see a gizillion shortcut icons scattered at random over the screen. "Well, what's wrong?" Then he'd get on the machine and start moving the mouse over the place, and clicking at random as he went. Using the mouse like that, there was no telling what he had done.

I finally realized one reason . . . it was a way to keep me there another 30 minutes to an hour. Really, that is a good thing.

As far as the shortcuts, there was no curing that, nor could I cure him from clicking at random. And, as he used windows, he just didn't realize how valuable an anti-virus program was. I'm sure he never did any updates. He would never pay of a subscription after the free one ran out that came on the machine.

But he did manage to keep me there an hour or so longer.

[createdcreature]

Quote: I have a family member that constantly complains their computer is slow when it is just their slow net connection. It is running 32-bit Debian with 3gb of RAM. It is quite speedy.

Or the other way round! This must be why the ISPs get loads of people subscribing to overkill plans!

[overdrank]

From the Ubuntu Forums Code of Conduct (http://ubuntuforums.org/misc.php?do=showrules).

If a post is older than a year or so and hasn't had a new reply in that time, instead of replying to it, create a new thread. In the software world, a lot can change in a very short time, and doing things this way makes it more likely that you will find the best information. You may link to the original discussion in the new thread if you think it may be helpful.
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