Anyone else have amusing incidents with these so called trained experts? They seem to have no real idea about what there talking about. They will feed you any information to a) make them sounds sell impressive b) Or sell you stuff you dont need With my first computer I had a problem with the screen not displaying correctly (I think it was missing red colours). I was young at the time and my father didnt know much about computers so we took it back to PC world as it was under warranty. After about an hour they came back telling us that it would need a windows reinstall (which meant loosing alot stuff for me as young person I had done no back ups). Luckily we took home and I discoved that the vga cable was missing a pin!. On my next computer the monitor kept every now and then going dull and being unable to view the screen properly (again a faulty monitor) But that wasnt the tech guys advice, guess what reinstall windows! Its probably thanks to them and developed my own investigative mindset to solve these problems and is probably how I'm here today. Still Im always curious about what training they go through. My last anecdote that I can remember for the moment is that my uncle went into the same shop asking to buy a pc capable of using two monitors (so any standard dual output graphics card, which is pretty much all nowadays). He was told he would need sli! : Anyone else got similar stories to tell from this and other retailers?
Dell tech support! Dead Fx5200, messed up colours all over the screen, blocks of pink and black, I too was young, reinstall windows(kindly)! then after that had occured, oh you need a new graphics card.
No, thankfully due to my own inquisitive nature and knowing various people good with computers when I was younger we never had to use such soulless idiots.
I had a fx 5200 go the sameway, though I think I just pushed it too far one day when I installed a modern game (overheated most likely with years old dry thermal paste). By then I was just getting into custom pcs so I thankfully knew enough to replace it myself. EDIT: Like your signature Ramble, so very true.
Ive got a good friend who teaches me everything i know about computers. I swear he could work for NASA, the stuff he seems to know is beyond me :S
I always go with family members and friends when they go to buy tech-related things, and I always watch the salesmen to see if they're pushing a product or if they know what they're talking about. It's usually the first.
I must confess, thanks to the fiascos with Dell, I now know how to repair a computer and have since built my own, thanks dell!
I went into PC-World looking for a network switch and some cable (was an emergency otherwise i would have bought online..). When i asked about one of the switches some muppet asked if i had considered networking using usb cables and a usb hub.... I laughed so much i almost fell over.
Went to pc world with a friend who was wanting to buy a Mac, my friend got talking to the sales guy, who explained that on a windows pc every piece of installed software is running all the time, but Macs let you only run what you want to run. He also explained that when you install a program on a mac no data gets written to the hard drive, making them less likely to get a virus. Couple that to him being baffled by me then asking him why he was trying to sell us a larger hard drive, and asking how cd's work wirelessly (if it doesnt write to the hard drive, that was my logical assumption) needless to say, we didn't buy one from him RwD
well i went into PC-world with a porblem with my pc as my mobo was posting a weird error code and i not being able to sort it or find the manual. my dad made me take it to pc world. the guy in the shop then looked at it said my PSU was causing the post error. and also that some bit of hardware was wrong and then when he asked what processor i had (a skt 775 p4 at the time) he then tried to sell me a skt 939 board and ram which i didnt need. BTW: i turned the pc on the next day when i woke up after work and it was working fine apparenly my dad had kicked the case and knocked a cable.
there was the pc mum bought from the pc company, which went through 3 cpus, two gpus, ram replaced 4 times (1 stick iirc), 3 motherboards, 4 or 5 harddrives... they went bust and pbtech took over the warrenty they replaced the gpu (his words it was a piece of ****), the motherboard (same thing he said) and the power supply (the root of the problem and the only thing pc company didnt replace) and all was dandy for a couple of years
back then in the old days i've heard one of those highly skilled tech persons claim that installing win 2000 on a computer that ships with win me would brick the computer. A neighbour asked me for help when his cd rom failed, i said no problem, well i'll never say that before having seen the inside of a computer again..... the cables where all attached with glue... ("so they dont fall off during shipping you n00b" as the guy from the system integrator told me on the phone). when i went to buy my first tft... classic moment, the sales guy was unable to tell me if the cable would be included, whith what excuse? he's the guy form the washing machines and due to that coudnt know the answer... (he was prolly just too lazy to go read it from the box(which are never accessible to the customer due to stores fearing theft)). dont even get me started on shops trying to sell computers with a 7100GS graphicscard as a high end gaming machine and similar marketing stunts. seeing all that happening in the country i'm originally from i'm happy i moved to belfast, it wont happen here, why? there are no computer shops.
We had an issue with TalkTalk a while back. Our router (the one that they insisted you have to offer any tech support) kept on dropping the line. I mean every five minutes or so, which makes using the internet almost impossible. After about an hour and a half in queues and talking to idiots, we finally got through to someone who started on some diagnostic questions. His first question was how close to the telephone exchange we were, which is about 500 yards. His response was as follows: "Well that explains it, the internet is coming in too fast for your router" Of course, why didn't I think that a 54Mb router couldn't cope with an 8Mb internet speed, perfectly logical when you think about it.
If it's a really bad router, it could easily have trouble with 8Mb. The fact that it does 54Mb on the wireless side has nothing to do with it.
I never needed them, I started "repairing" PCs when I was about 8 (well, I broke them first), never needed help ever since.
I have never had any use for them. My family has been involved with computers for ... well, most of my life at least ... and I got my first one (a Mitac 4.5Mhz XT with hercules display, 1Mb RAM and a 10Mb HDD ) at age 7. Happy days.
I once bought a 30gb crappy ide hard drive, took it home and discovered it was all scratched and didn't work. Obviously they had tried to sell me second hand as new. So I took it back and the idiot on the counter just said "oops, must have got on there by accident, go grab another one if you want." So I did, but i thought I might as well test the guy and picked up an expensive 120gb drive and he didn't even check
