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tech-related things your family/friends do that drive you nuts

People who use caps lock instead of shift to type ONE capital letter.

People who use no shortcuts, even though I've told them a million times.

People who double click on web links.

People who try something once, and when it doesn't work instantly they call me without waiting or trying again.
 
zelmo said:
My family members routinely ask my advice on computer purchases, ignore my suggestion to just go look at a Mac, buy some cheap ass PC, then complain when it won't do what he/she wants and I say I can't help them because I'm not a PC guy.
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My uncle did this just a few weeks ago. He called for computer buying advice and I told him they just refreshed the iMacs to dead sexiness, that he should spend $1200 and never worry about computer problems again. He said he only wanted to spend $600 so I told him to buy a mac mini and never worry about computer problems again. I specifically warned him against buying a $600 PC, because it'd be junked up in a year and nigh-unusable.

So he compromised and bought a $1500 Dell.

:mad:
 
i'm with those who have mentioned the super-cluttered desktops. my husband does this, and it makes me crazy. all one needs is an HD icon. :)

also, my dad has a habit of buying (on sale, of course) sub-par Windows PC's and notebooks...that always seem to die right outside of the warranty. he's currently looking to buy an HP notebook for my little brother to do video editing on. he'll be spending about $600.

and then he'll call me when it dies ( or doesn't work as he thinks it should) and ask me for advice, which he'll ignore...as always. :rolleyes:
 
People who still use IE6
People who upgrade to IE7, and keep telling me how great tabs are
People who send me chain mail
Hitting File->Save As->Overwrite when saving a document
Double clicking on URLs
 
My Dad:
-Still uses AppleWorks
-Has a messy desktop, so he shrinks the icons so that they all fit

My Mom:
-Still uses MS Office (finally converted to iWork though, so that complaint is no longer valid)

My Best Friend:
-Uses a PC
-Owns a Zune
-Thinks the iPhone is awesome, but doesn't like it because it's Apple

SpookTheHamster said:
People who use no shortcuts, even though I've told them a million times.
.
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To be fair, it's easier for some people to not use the shortcuts. I myself didn't start using shortcuts (besides Q or S) until a few months ago.
 
ghall said:
My Dad:
-Still uses AppleWorks
-Has a messy desktop, so he shrinks the icons so that they all fit

My Mom:
-Still uses MS Office (finally converted to iWork though, so that complaint is no longer valid)
Click to expand...
Wait, so both of your parents use Macs?

You have no right to complain. Have pity on the rest of us. Seriously. ;)
 
Until I was able to recently get my mother to switch to an iMac from her 600mhz Pentium III Gateway, she insisted on saving all of her files to 1.44mb floppies for fear of filling up her hard drive. I fit the contents of several dozen disks onto a 2gig sd card and only used up about 74mb.

It took several hours to transfer all the files from her disks.
 
ghall said:
Thinks the iPhone is awesome, but doesn't like it because it's Apple
Click to expand...

This is MY pet peeve.

Granted, they probably think I'm a snobby elitist because I chose Apple products. I try not to be, really I do. But there's only so many ways to say "Sorry, I don't know, I never have that problem on my Mac".

Also, for some reason, my dad buys cursed computers. He always has problems with them, and I always get asked to help. Now, I'm no Windows newb, I have built many a Windows PC from individually-purchased parts and I work with XP every day at work. So I like to think I know what I'm doing. But even still, dad's computer problems are always frustrating. The other day his laptop just plain would not connect to our wireless network. I tried everything I could think of, no luck. He kept saying the network must be broken. Yet my PowerBook, my brother's MacBook and my sister's PowerBook could all connect just fine...
 
RugoseCone said:
Until I was able to recently get my mother to switch to an iMac from her 600mhz Pentium III Gateway, she insisted on saving all of her files to 1.44mb floppies for fear of filling up her hard drive. I fit the contents of several dozen disks onto a 2gig sd card and only used up about 74mb.

It took several hours to transfer all the files from her disks.
Click to expand...

Ouch.

My boss wanted to return the new PC workstation we had just received because they did not have any floppy disk drives. umm does anyone still sell floppy disks?
 
I'm in the camp of people looking to switch my parents to Mac (would help if I got one first, though). I'm trying to convince them to get an iMac which would be perfect for my mom. I keep trying to tell them that any PC they get will have Vista installed and that Vista is really bad.

Also, my mom, who used to work for Lucent, is baffled why she can't use Exchange for email. After 5 years, I finally went off and told her that exchange is not possible outside of corporations (I guess it theoretically is possible but not without a lot of money and knowledge).

The funnier side though, is when a technotard (isn't that a great word) is trying to explain something to you. True story, but on my wife's first ultrasound, we brought a floppy disk in to save the pics. As the doctor was doing the ultrasound he told us that to email the pics (bitmaps, by the way) we could attach them to a Word document and send them on. I rolled my eyes, and my wife rolled hers at me. Fun stuff.
 
The biggest complaint is my dad's computer. He has a windows box that is about 3 years old, running XP. It has more crap on it then any other PC I know. It takes 2 minutes to boot up, and another 5 to log in, and this is with a 3ghz pentium 4 with 1gb of ram.

He also uses McAffe, and will not switch to something less sucky like avg. I also told him he does not need a firewall at all because he is connected to a router (which is a hardware firewall) as well as he has the Windows firewall, but he refuses to listen. Also, the default browser on his computer is netscape 7.1, even though it's about 7 years old. I tried to get him to switch to firefox, but he claims it looks way to complicated. So he keeps on using netscape with its outdated standards, and crappy security.

On his desktop he also has about 50 icons. I tried to get him to clean it up, and although he got rid of some crap, he refused to let go of icons that he hasn't used in years. Worse yet, I have offered to fix his computer for him, and set it up like new, but he absolutely refuses, telling me that it runs perfectly fine. A computer that sounds like a jet engine with the fans roaring on high while no visible applications open is not "fine". He also thinks that he knows alot about computers. That was true in 1998 where he taught me the foundation of what I know, but now...not so much.

My mom is much better, even though she has a laptop thats worse then my Dad's. I have convinced her to finally get a Mac, but she won't get one until another year or so. In the mean time, the one thing that drives me crazy is that she maximizes every single freakin window, even though half of the maximized window isn't being used anyway! I used to be like that to, but now seeing all of the wasted screen space on her widescreen monitor makes me cry.

/rant :)
 
People who forward me chain e-mails. You would think that, after the 600th time I've ignored the attempt to get me to "send this back to me to show me that you love me" or participate in some other equally inane activity, they would catch on. I get particularly annoyed with the ones who have ignored direct requests to stop forwarding me things.

People who complain that I don't respond to emails in five minutes. Imagine, some of us actually have work to do! The worst, though, are people who call to make sure you got their email when you don't respond in five minutes - and then wonder why you are behind with your work.
 
Leareth said:
Poking the screen when they want to point out to something.
Click to expand...

I hate this too. First, they leave smudges on my screen, and second, if they'd get their hand out of the way then maybe I could see what they're trying to show me.

Other things that bug me:
- Thinking a few pictures will fill up their 200GB hard drive
- Emptying their Safari cache five times a day, again, so their HD "doesn't become full"
- Refusing to use easy to remember shortcut keys and asking me how to do things "the normal way"
- Giving me advice. "You don't need more than 512mb of ram. You just need to empty your Safari cache!"
- Windows users - Not being able to tell the difference between a left-click and a right-click
 
Lyle said:
Wait, so both of your parents use Macs?

You have no right to complain. Have pity on the rest of us. Seriously. ;)
Click to expand...

Should I mention that also my aunt, uncle, my school principal, and two of my teachers use Macs as well, or would that be too painful? :)
 
I'm tired of getting calls at 0 dark hundred to ask "where do I plug a DSL hotel line in" or "is Apple going under?" I go to bed around midnight and don't appreciate lame phone calls at 0530. I want to sleep~ :(
 
-People who buys Windows only hardware, and wonders why it doesn't work with OS X, and then tells me to go fix it for them.
-People who complains their computer is slow, only to find out they are using a G3 with 128MB of RAM, and 6GB HDD running OS X Tiger...and they want Leopard!
-People who poke the LCD screen when wanting to point something out.
-People who call me for help on Windows.
-People who swears by Microsoft, and for some reason hates Macs.
-People who do not know the difference between Mac & Windows.
-People who look dumbfounded when I tell them press "Command."
-"Mac users don't know what right click is!"
-"Macs can't play games!"
-"Macs suck"...."Because they do"
-"Macs are for people who don't know much about computers"
 
ezzie1029 said:
i'm with those who have mentioned the super-cluttered desktops. my husband does this, and it makes me crazy. all one needs is an HD icon. :)
Click to expand...
Really? I've never seemed to need an HD icon on my empty, beautiful desktop :)

I hate when people touch my screen. My school friends insisting Macs are expensive while their education discount brings prices down to cheaper than equivalent PCs.
 
I guess I shouldn't complain, considering that my parents and siblings have 2 PowerBooks, a two week old MacBook Pro, 11 iPods, a week old 24" iMac, an iPhone, an iMac G5 (me), two iMac G3's, two AirPorts, and one Dell Inspirion 600, but I will.

>My parents switched from their PC to a Mac in February, and they still have old PC habits. For instance, my dad MUST double click on an app in the dock. Also, they won't use the computer if every single window is maxed to fill the entire display.

>My sister started med school a few weeks ago, and she desperately needed to replace her Inspirion (not the aforementioned one), and she wanted the $2300 MacBook Pro over the $1700 one, because she needed an additional 200 MHz and double the VRAM because she thought that she'd be doing graphically intensive work (such as viewing photos of cadavers--THAT's pretty demanding on the graphics card.) My dad agreed, and kept saying "when you buy a computer, always buy more." Sure, that's true to a certain extent, but it's not like a PC where it starts having major problems down the line. I told him that it's a waste of HIS $600 to buy the 2.4 GHz MBP, but he thought that I was telling him that because "I was jealous". I'm actually quite content with my iMac G5.

>My dad gets in these manic moods where he just gets these odd notions, like above. He also wanted to buy my mom the 24" iMac last week over the 20" because he thought she needed a big screen... for Mail. It's way too big for her desk, and I, too, told him that he needn't spend so much.

>My dad got an iPhone, and he'll want me to show him something on it, and I move my arm closer to it to show him how to do it, and he'll scream at me "LET ME LEARN THIS ON MY OWN!!!" (well, why did you tell me show it to you, then?)


I could think of tons more, but I'm tired of typing, and I should be lucky that all but one of the seven of us now have Macs.
 
probably my girlfriend....who is extremely close to switching back from her macbook to her hp pavilion laptop just to use AIM 6.0....it causes an argument whenever she brings it up. I hate the mentality that because something isn't done "the windows way", then it's wrong...when actually the "mac" way is 99.9% times more intuitive!
 
1. relatives who still use a windoze machine
2. and are not maintaining its software and security
3. and sometimes get their address book hijacked with my address in it.
4. Then I get rejected mails back from a zillion mails spoof-sent "From" me.

Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.
 
My dad continues to forward me all those damn "OMG THERES A VIRUS THAT WILL DESTROY EVERY COMPUTER ON THE INTERNETS" e-mails even though I use a Mac, he uses a Mac, and I've told him a million times that they're hoaxes, and even if they were real, those viruses will have no affect on our computers
 
zelmo said:
My family members routinely ask my advice on computer purchases, ignore my suggestion to just go look at a Mac, buy some cheap ass PC, then complain when it won't do what he/she wants and I say I can't help them because I'm not a PC guy.
Click to expand...

Totally agree with you. I told my parents to get a new iMac or at least a Mac Mini after their iMac G4 became too slow. Instead of listening to me they went out and bought an HP with Vista on it.

They apparently had it home for about 5 days before Vista wouldn't boot up and gave a boot disk error. They asked me to fix it and I told them exactly what you said, sorry but I can't, I'm only Mac.

~Crawn
 
mike12806 said:
probably my girlfriend....who is extremely close to switching back from her macbook to her hp pavilion laptop just to use AIM 6.0....it causes an argument whenever she brings it up. I hate the mentality that because something isn't done "the windows way", then it's wrong...when actually the "mac" way is 99.9% times more intuitive!
Click to expand...

Have you showed her Adium? I hate the mac AIM and iChat for chatting as well. I absolutely LOVE adium.
 
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