Never Build a PC for Family
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- čas přidán 27. 02. 2023
- Linus and Luke discuss the frustration of building a PC as a favour and becoming “forever tech support.”
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I charge $120 an hour for tech support/building. My friends and family discount is $150 an hour.
Your lowballing there bud…
still not worth it
Ha ha
So you pay them $30 an hour for your support?
@@sovo1212 He charges them $30 extra, please dude, those maths...
It's not the fact that they DONT'T KNOW about computers that is annoying, it's annoying the fact that they don't WANT to know about anything because "they are never going to understand it anyways". That's what pisses me off, people who don't want to commit to take care of their OWN things.
My grandfather was gonna buy a dell optiplex and I said no I'll build you a way better computer for the same price. It runs super well like it can even run games for 400$ it runs csgo and over 180fps on max settings. He just complains about how it's "buggy" because he wants to use Microsoft edge and won't let me update the drivers because he's scared his data is gonna get lost or something 💀💀
You just described my dad. Like, come on, it's not that hard to download a app. AN APP! I'm convinced he has tunnel vison, cause most of the answer is already on the screen.
Yep. And it's a driving force companies are very happy to exploit.
@@Him-cx7fh That's why you update them in the background using scheduled tasks and silent install switches. Of course if you update video or sound drivers that way your grandfather will REALLY freak out!
THIS 100%
My dad was a programmer - I watched him pour over Perl manuals and troubleshoot issues for years. It taught me that if you have a problem, someone else probably already has had it and has documentation made for it already.
Fair enough but I do think they are people who are assholes and just say Google it. I think it's a balance if you know the answer and a person asks why not say it. Nothing more annoying than some genius who is like you should google this. It just makes people feel bad for asking.
@@monsterhunter445but you should feel bad for asking things that are easily googleable
As I get older, I kinda get the toxicity in stack overflow answers. People just ask the smallest of the questions with googling stuff where many a times the first link has the info they are looking for. I mean sure, go ahead and ask stuff but be diligent on actually trying to solve it yourself first.
Googling for an issue, result includes 5 year old forum post where someone had the same issue, all replies to op on forum: "just google it moron".
If only that where true. It seems 90% of my tech issue have not ever happened to anyone else ever. The kind of things notneven professionals can figure out
I helped my mom with wifi router issues and I am more than happy to to that, I agree with Luke's "help out people who you have consistent contact with but not people who just contact you when they have problems" take
Exclellent way to put it
I am a structural engineer and a trained carpenter. Family and friends ask me to do drawings and work on their house. They never pay me for my time and always without fail complain about something. It got to the point I refused to help them unless something had become a safety problem. Then I would get it to where it would no longer be a safety issue and tell them to hire someone. I once completely renovated my sisters house. Took it to the exterior walls and rebuilt it, for free. I heard nothing but complaints for years after. I fixed a friend of mines rotted floor and designed an extension to their house for them. Got it though all of the permit process up to the construction phase. His now ex wife complained to me for years about everything that she never asked for. I did that for free to. I will never do it again. I live in a condo now and I won't even work on joint area anymore because I would hear someone complain that they could see where I brushed around the window. Long story short never do favors as they are never one offs.
The Joker said it best: "If you're good at something, don't do it for free."
im sorry bud
Jesus, that's a lot of work that you've done for free, my family would never ask for that. They would ask for a day's work, not much more than that.
A family member that is a specialist in something should never be asked to do anything other than give their opinion on things such as estimates or quality of work of their contemporaries. Now, if they offered as a gift, MAYBE. I’d still feel obligated to pay for something.
No, the story is actually "don't let people exploit you", helping good people is good, helping idiots is bad, no matter if it's family or friends or whatever (maybe you just have bad friends, you know)
Younger PC users are often much less competent, I attribute this to the rise of devices that hide all their inner workings from you and either just work or get returned to the store. When was the last time you needed to update a driver on an iPad? Never, thats why people don't learn to do these things.
Fully agree. as a 22 year old when I realized my friends don't know how to install an OS I was baffled.
Yea, kids are supposed to be tech savy but i feel that term is being over used. I feel really they just know how to read basic startup guides and run social media. As far as the nitty gritty. Nothing
@David Sh. But... and OS is pretty simple these days. I mean the likes of windows makes it damn easy and depending on the route you go has a step by step guide with it.
I know as much as i do about computers cause it was far cheaper for my dad to buy a bunch of scrapped junker pcs instead of a new one, so i had to frankenstein them together if i wanted a workin one.
It used to be that being tech savvy meant you had a least a moderate understanding of how the device actually functioned. Nowadays little Tommy installs tiktok on his moms iPad and people go "Oh, kids these days are so good with technology!"
Yep. My mother-in-law asked me to see if I could fix her laptop by saying "the guy the worked on it last time just screwed it up more" and I backed away quickly, saying I didn't know anything about her brand of computer. I could see what was coming.
If she doesn't know enough to fix it herself, how does she know the previous guy screwed it up more in the first place lmao. Yup thats a red flag for sure to never help them with tech
Wont do it for this reason. All it takes is them deleting a file or some minor user error and "yOu BrOkE mY PC"
@@thetechdudemc
I had a granfather shouting at me that i broke their ipad because they forgot the password that i marked on a piece of paper and put in the protective case
He said that for years shouted for me to fix it and that he wouldn't call apple despite it being the only way to unlock it and that i should do it
Haven't talked to him since then
@@fabienso5889This makes me happy my grandfather has never even seen a computer, let alone touched one or asked for tech support.
@@cat-le1hfTrust me, it's better than your grandpa *thinking* he knows tech, and trying to (without asking you first) download a bunch of trojans because he likes the sound of one feature without doing any research on what he's doing.
Imagine having Linus' number and asking him to change your monitors refresh rate, that's like using 100 $ bill as a napkin
I like that analogy lmao
The worst is when they ask you to fix something for them, you go and fix it and then they later call you and complain that you broke their computer, all because their icons are no longer where they left them or the UI slightly changed (for example you updated their million year old browser.)
Usually people ask to make their computer faster, then moan about not having a thousand programs autorun each time they reboot.
Like, how TF do you want me to make it run faster, powered by magic or some sh!t?!?!?!?!?
@@YOEL_44 OMG yes!
If you're moving icons or changing a browser that's not fixing things though?
@@Karaboo7 it could be, for example if things were so broken that you had to reset windows. Or in the case of the the browser, just updating may change where things are.
Doing those things alone may not be fixing things, but they may be part of fixing things.
I had a friend who's PC would often have some problems with it, and because I would use their PC now and again they would blame me when something was wrong with it, and basically threaten me to get me to fix it. It's like, if I'm the one who messed it up, why the fuck are you ordering ME to fix it?? Why do you always ask for MY opinion about computer/tech stuff? And WHY the fuck can't you conceive of the notion that YOU might have screwed your own PC, and ask me nicely to fix it for you, which I would always be happy to do? They were the kind of person who would throw their weight around to get what they want, so I guess that's in their nature, but still...
I guess I had a bit of anger bottled up over that, because after typing that I feel quite a bit lighter, haha
This is like what my family calls being "The Golden Boy": you do troubleshooting / tech support REALLY well, and all of a sudden they rely 100% on you to solve 100% of their tech problems. And then they wonder why you either tell them to figure it out themselves, find someone else, or ghost them, because at that point you just feel used because they offer no compensation and will blame YOU for THEIR tech problems, as though YOU control every aspect of their machines. It's infuriating.
And now you understand how god feels.
@@kgjung2310 So being a computer technician is equivalent to being a god now?
@@diablo.the.cheater well, there's a thing called "God Mode" in Windows
@@diablo.the.cheater Considering how much our lives rely on computers now. Kinda?
@@diablo.the.cheater Tech has the chance of getting paid, so they have it better. God just gets complaints. Do things for people and they become over-reliant and don't do things for themselves. Do it for them and you get complaints and no thanks and more demands. Makes a god want to not do anything and have people believe he doesn't exist.
I’m glad I learned this lesson when I was in high school. Was never popular until people found out I new how to build pcs and fix tech. I started getting calls from random numbers from classmates that have never spoken to me before, asking for troubleshooting tips or favors. The last straw was when a friends brother, who has asked for favors for months now, texted me to ask me to install a Wi-Fi adapter. That’s right, a usb Wi-Fi adapter that you just plug into your mobo, that’s it. I was so dumbfounded , that I decided to tell him yes but I have to charge him due for my time. He asked how much, I said 200$ thinking he would say no and leave me alone. He agreed. Showed up, asked him for the money upfront. Grabbed the usb Wi-Fi stick, plugged it in right in front of him and said there ya go. Needless to say he was mad, didn’t give him the money back, nor did I ever receive a text from him again. Do the same thing to anyone who asks me for a favor, or a stupid question.
EZ $200
Easiest $200 in the universe
Would have given $180 back and told him have some initiative next time before calling me. Might just tell them not to, depending on how annoying they were
I remember my first time going to a best buy in 1999 and laughing at people paying $40 to get someone to install a plug and play hard drive
I was known for much more than that tech-wise and nobody ever asked me to do work for them. You were very lucky. I'm one of those "overqualified for many jobs but I don't have a degree so people ignore my portfolio that proves that I know what I'm doing" people.
That's a pretty funny story though.
As a mechanic I can tell you, I got dragged into helping many of friends and then stuff that's nowhere near what we did magically became my problem. I had a friend literally look into tell me I was wrong and needed to do the solution they found, I was like okay but that's gonna cost you money, magically it fixed itself
If you ever ask a family friend to help you especially a tradesmen you have to pay them and also give them a case of beer
@@gabrielmullett6563exception is dad when you are under 18, its his fault for having sex
Yes! This is exactly what I've been saying for so long. People love to say "I'm not tech savvy", but that's because you choose not to be. Most of us who are "tech savvy" just learned by playing around and Googling; we aren't special. It just comes off as "I can't be bothered" when you say "I'm not tech savvy."
100%. It’s silly
Exactly. You won't learn how to do something unless you're motivated to, and many (most) people these days simply could care less about anything that doesn't affect them on a daily basis. Don't need to learn how a basic file system works -> never learn it. Same thing with cars, houses, money, etc. A good example is how many new drivers have no idea the responsibilities that come with owning and maintaining a vehicle, especially if it was a gift or not actually their own vehicle. Heck, get stuck on the side of the road because you have a flat? Oh well, who knows how to change a tire these days, just call AAA.... Same thing with tech.
Now I certainly wish the general populous could figure out their own tech (and change tires ;) ), but as folks become less and less reliant on their own effort to accomplish odd/uncommon tasks, less people bother to learn them. And to be fair, the number of odd/uncommon tasks is always growing, but having a basic sense of how to troubleshoot should be more valued than it seems to be. I think most people can agree that getting bombarded with simple questions that are one web search away is one, absolutely annoying, and two, makes the other person seem incompetent and lazy. Unfortunately I don't see this changing anytime soon.
Edit: I should add that if someone doesn't want to learn how to do some odd task, that's fine, just don't expect free help. I have nothing wrong with someone not knowing how to install some funky software package or change a serpentine belt, just don't complain about it when it costs you.
some stuff is understandable alot of tech stuff has alot of layers usually that arent well covered in tutorials for example always a presumed level of competance in more difficult subjects
I literally just Googled everytime i faced a problem and since i was so motivated to fix my pc i faced and fix like hundreds of problems now whenever i face a problem i know exactly how to fix most problems i face
Most people cannot be bothered, unfortunately.
I heard of a university professor who holds a two-hour lecture every semester to explain to new students how folders on PCs work. Many young people are so used to apps magically storing files "somewhere" that they just throw all their files in one folder on their laptop and can't figure out how to navigate to a file in some lab software.
What class was it? That sounds absolutely insane, I don't know how a lecture about computer folders could even take 2 hours.. Even going through the differences between Windows 10, 11 and MacOS it would probably take you 15 minutes to explain everything
@@essayedgar I assume it's some physical science (physics, biology or chemistry) or its practical equivalent (engineering, medicine, pharmacology). Computer science students are usually computer nerds who shouldn't have such troubles, and any other type of course doesn't really need a lab.
@@essayedgar "Windows 10, 11 and MacOS it would probably take you 15 minutes to explain everything"
No
To you ? Sure. But most people don't care to understand why / what is going on. Not only will it take 2 hours to explain, but I guarantee you that MOST won't remember a thing because they don't give a shit.
@@realmothbuterfli Here’s an OS agnostic script explaining folders & how to use them:
“Computer folders are a way of organizing and storing files and documents on your computer. Folders act as virtual containers that can hold one or more files or other folders inside them.
To create a folder, you can simply right-click on the desktop or in an existing folder and select "New Folder". You can then give the folder a name and begin adding files to it by dragging and dropping or copying and pasting them.
Folders can be used to organize your files in a way that makes it easy to find and access them later. For example, you might create a folder called "Photos" to store all of your pictures, or a folder called "Work" to store documents related to your job.
You can also create subfolders within a folder to further organize your files. For example, within your "Photos" folder, you might create subfolders for each year or event.
In addition, folders can be used to perform certain actions on multiple files at once. For example, you can select multiple files within a folder and then move, copy, or delete them all at once”
C’mon, it’s not rocket science. If you are in university, you must have some basic computer skills to begin with from elementary/middle/high school. The question is, could you read this & answer everyone’s questions in 15 minutes? 😅
@@realmothbuterfli I also highly doubt people that don’t care would show up to a 2 hour lecture on a very specific topic..
My grandma occasionally needs help with tech support. But it's nice how much she's learning. There's lots of edge cases with printer connectivity but she's learning some of the common solutions. Also taught her how to transfer pictures over to the PC and delete pictures on her phone.
grandma slay, we win these
Printer problems are a pain in the ass even for the most skilled tech savvy. They're machines built in the depths of hell, and that's where they belong.
same w mine.
thats my grandpa too i will help him about tech stuff that doesnt understand i will explain to him and in no time he will know what to do and i love that tbh
At this point i might start a business as personal tech support and do house calls when people need help setting up pcs,cameras, routers,etc then over the phone support for other things
It never fails to amaze me just how many people from my generation (Gen Z) are completely helpless when it comes to technology. Maybe its because im on the older end of gen z but usually a simple google search will fix your issues. Being the "Tech guy" for my friends and family sucks, I never understood why my dad would refuse to be tech support but now I do. Im happy he got me into all the tech stuff though, its a gift that keeps on giving!
see the funny thing is a lot of these tech illiteracy issues would be chalked up to "Okay boomer" by our generation but boomers invented the tech we use today. and just like our generation they simply just have members that aren't willing to put in the effort to learn anything.
People are too lazy to solve their own problems.
Thats the main issue. They will rather bother someone else instead of doing 1 hour research about problem and solving it themselves
younger gen z primarily uses phones while the older end remembers using and troubleshooting a vista craptop as a kid
Bro are we the same person ☠💀
so many of my classmates and colleagues cannot do simple computer tasks or type in the traditional way, (almost all of them do one finger typing), if i had to blame anything i would blame chromebooks and smartphones, its sad that these people cant even do simple every day tasks because they are so babied by smartphones.
My 12yp nephew got a gaming PC for Christmas, similar situation where he was hounding me for help with small topics. I suggested politely to look into the issue and chat with his friends. This one step has now given him the confidence to do it all himself, and is now modding games and slaying steam content.
Hes lucky to get a gaming pc so easily i got a core 2 duo when i was 9 and i5 2400 at 12 now im almost 14 and i had to sell some of my 5 yrs old game accounts online for 155 dollars so i could finally get atleast a gpu and psu but i still may not be able to get it.. Also if i had just given my pc to a repair shop every time i faced a problem the pc would probably never even leave the repair shop lol
@@adan1221 i used to get laptops with integrated graphics as my dad insisted that laptops are better but when i turned 13 or 14 i built my own pc and life's never been better, even though i have had to fix my computer myself from time to time but i mean it's not that bad tbh.
You should just teach them how to do things themselves, teach them how to use google and youtube and explain that it's pretty easy to learn everything.
that's the pun here but not many commenters here are saying this. Just teach them how easy it is to do it yourself and all problems solved, literally, and if they can't/wont after trying for a while then they can just get tech support themselves, they can ask friends too etc.
@@adan1221 I used to game on my mom's old office PC with a Pentium 3 and a JAZ Drive.
Exact same situation for me. I added him as a friend on steam to play some games and 90% of the time I got messages like yo, my wireless MOUSE/KEYBOARD/HEADSET/WIFI ADAPTER keep not working............. I told him next time to get wired shit...
I used to do this for my family, but then I realized that they don't even try to read what's actually in front of them. Now every time they asked I just tell them to read what's in front of them carefully to get the answer. They either get frustrated and leave it or they figure it out by themselves. No more quick and easy answers from me. Not my mom though, she gets all the support she wants.
exactly this, i also went to a system where i answer all their problems with questions, usually i still have to do it for them, but i think they got the hint and bother me less
@@barongerhardt Plot Twist. It was some program where the developer thought they were being funny by having an error message that literally says "I don't know"
@@Cyber_Akuma or the developer really didnt know what the error was
same. my mom sometimes asks the, sorry but, dimbest questions, like literally things i showed her 10 times or 5 second google things. but will i ever complain even the slightest? f*ck no!
@@barongerhardt That more or less sums up my experience working at an impromptu help desk at my school district during distance learning. I'm an IT tech, but when schools closed, we ran a help desk. It was awful. Its not that I don't want to help, but when nearly half of the calls were "My computer doesn't work" or "I can't login" and then don't give you any details was infuriating.
I don't mind helping people with their tech problems. That's why I'm an IT tech but damn, it makes my job as a help desk tech very difficult if you don't tell me what you specifically need help with. I had kids call in who said their Chromebook wouldn't turn on. I would spend about 5 minutes doing some basic troubleshooting steps only for them to tell me "Yeah my Chromebook turns on but don't remember my password" I would think to myself, couldn't you have told me that from the beginning? I can reset your password in less than 30 seconds and have you logged in and ready to go." I remember one instance where a parent called in saying their kid's Chromebook wasn't turning on. I went through some troubleshooting steps. I asked the parent to plug the charger in, just to make sure the device works. And then she goes, "Oh ok. Its charging and turns on now". Do you really need to call tech support to plug a charger into a computer??
We would have staff members complaining that they couldn't log in to their program. No other information. I would ask for some details, and sometimes they would say "I used to be able to login to my program without problems", or "I used to be able to just click the icon on my screen and it would take me straight to the program".
Sorry for the cursing, but how the fuck am I supposed to help you with that? I literally have no idea what "my program" is or what "the icon" is. And for some reason, they could never accurately tell me what "my program" is. In some cases, "my program" turned out to be Outlook. They couldn't tell me, for some reason, they were having problems accessing their email. They would just tell me "my program" doesn't work. Of course I was never rude to anyone, but it was incredibly frustrating working the help desk because of this. I dreaded every single time it was my turn at the help desk. Fortunately we had a rotating schedule so we were only scheduled 3 times at the most per month, but it was still dreadful. Our department was very unprepared so we didn't have a remote control utility that would work with staff who were off site nor did we have any way to remotely control Chromebooks.
I understand that not all people are tech savvy. I have no problem with that. However, you don't need to be tech savvy to tell me what you need help with. I don't need a novel; just tell me what program or website you need help with, what error or problem you're having, and we will go from there. Its not that hard to give details. Working the help desk definitely made me realize how much tech support over the phone sucks. Rant over.
My father built me a pc when I was in middle school. I was so shocked that he actually just knew how to put it together without looking anything up from what I remember… he told me he used to build PCs, and I had no idea. Makes me wonder what else I don’t know, lol.
maybe he was also a double agent in the past :)
I mean my father used to code and make websites.. to sell items like 8/16gb usb pendrive.. which is very rare at the time in my country so he imported it from china but he does not talk about it. Only when my mother talk about it will he add more details to the conversation.
He is probably one of the earliest person to get a pendrive in my country when everyone else uses CD at the time.
Your point about the younger user’s having low technology skills is bang on. I’m a music production lecturer (ages 16-20ish) and I’m always shocked at how little the students know about using a computer. To the where they still struggle with zipping files even months into the course.
Absolutely. I always hear people say that my generation is tech-savvy (I'm 15) however, it too often turns out that people in my parent's generation are actually better with IT than most teenagers.
Depends on the individual I believe. Usually people who are more inquisitive and have problem solving skills will be better
Specifically on computers it is those who use them a lot more. Kids nowadays use phones/iPads more than PC’s so they know a lot about that realm compared to the other
I'm a tech-savvy midteen, but I didn't get a computer until 2020 (which my mom got for me because of lockdown). I wanted to have a computer before then, so I did a lot of "research" into computers which lead me to discovering LTT and other tech channels.
These people you're lecturing were probably already able to get a PC already, so they didn't have the same enthusiasm and knowledge for it like when I got mine.
@@StripedJacket Your bottom paragraph runs contrary to mine, but it's probably because I REALLY wanted a computer.
Are schools not having parts of lessons where students need to use simple applications like microsoft word? or write emails? I'm 22 and I'd assess most people my age who uses a computer and not exclusively a phone as being sufficiently tech savvy to do more ""complex"" stuff. Hell a kid who spent his time unzipping minecraft mods instead of relying on a mod launcher is probably more knowledgeable than some you meet today.
I'm 23, but I know a lot of people my age or a bit younger who don't even know what task manager is lol. So, it doesn't surprise me to hear computer proficiency isn't a strong point for us. We had a family PC that my dad used for Photoshop, and I wanted to play games as a kid, so I learned through that and became proficient with computers over the years naturally. I am the tech support for my friends and family now. I love to be useful but I gotta make them solve the problem themselves sometimes otherwise they'll just forget what I show them, I'm not a good teacher.
Your kidding??? I thought our generation and the ones after were tech savy?
I'm with you. And anyone that tells you not to do it. Well, I guess they don't have a family to even be helpful towards. And I always get paid for my efforts. Normally, food. Food is good payment, and if anyone says other wise. They. Are. Lying. But, other times, it is cash.
@Qardo The only annoying thing is that one family members that asks you for help and then gets impatient and says your doing it wrong....
@@GreyBlackWolf That right there is when I put my foot down, lol. But, you are right.
@@GreyBlackWolf the issue is that thanks to the oversaturation of technology in schools-especially with low/no-maintenance machines (chromebooks or iPads), so very few people are knowledgeable of relatively common troubleshooting tools because "nothing goes wrong" or "it just works." The demographic who knows how to tinker/fix their issues hasn't changed, only the amount of technology available.
So true. I owe my entire career and lifestyle to the simple fact that 13 year old me wanted to play cool video games so I built a PC to do so. Had to figure out drivers, troubleshoot, learn what BIOS is, how to format and install windows, etc. Without that drive I would have been very computer illiterate.
same, this resonates with my reason for PC building. To think I did a job installing a scanner a week ago. What that does have to do with gaming? lol nothing,
Same, I was too poor to buy a real gaming rig so I built a Frankenstein PC out of an old office desktop tower and junk parts.
@@bespokepenguin103 building what you can with what you find is special. Any dedicated gpu can get you far if you know what games you can play with it.
I definitely learned this one the hard way. I straight up built pc’s for free for family and friends and all they did was treat me like their personal IT guy afterward. I only build for myself and my son now.
That makes sense. If anyone is gonna get free tech support it should be your kids lol. Hope you teach them well.
10:05 yes! As IT/tech support for the last decade, I love the people that try to learn and ask what you did. I hate when I go to help someone and they walk away and go "I don't know computers, I'll just call you again if I need help!"
Great talk as usual folks, can't wait for the next WAN show!
You played yourself.
Tech support for older people pain is an understatement
Hi, I’m 59 and I build my own. My mom was born in 1929 and she could build a PC and earned a living writing software. My stepfather still codes and maintains his own hardware.
@@LynneCooney Great. Just know that is EXTREMELY uncommon and isn't a useful data point.
@@LynneCooney it's not you that's the issue, it's the ones who don't know, refuse to learn and insist on asking for help on even the most basic of troubleshooting tasks. I swear the amount of times my grandma called me to help and refused to even reset the PC to see if that fixed the issue. I set her up with all apple products and pointed her to the nearest genius bar.
In the professional environment... I strongly believe they should either have mandatory classes or recertification exams.
Yea teaching you how to read and write also would have been a pain for older people when you were young
Like "Never loan money, cosign a loan, or rent a home to family".
Yup i don't
boo
I do think it depends on the relationship with the specific family member
@@collincreeden2862 Yeah, my brother still owes me thousands and it took half a decade for my credit score to recover. So just don't do it.
@@Bigrignohio yeah that's not good, I mean I've loaned money but with repayment terms and papers signed that they are liable for it lol
This is one thing I've actually been so thankful for over the past 10ish years of being my family and friend's tech support person. Out of the people who I semi regularly provide tech support for, all but one of them were always very attentive during the troubleshooting process, asked lots of questions, and haven't had to contact me for the same issues. I am more than happy to spec out, purchase, and/or build computers for these people for this reason and have done so about 15 times so far.
Funnily enough, the only one who has asked the same questions twice (actually many, many times) is my little brother. The age gap between us is only five years, but his general unwillingness to try to figure things out on his own in all of our overlapping hobbies is astonishing (Computers, 3D printers, RC cars, full size cars, etc). He has purchased incompatible hardware multiple times despite me telling him over and over to either plug his choices into PC part picker to check for compatibility issues or run the part by me first so I can check it manually. I still point out issues I see if I see them, but I no longer volunteer my time to his problems.
I had built my dad a PC a while back. He had an issue with it and took it to a PC shop. They convinced him to trade it in for a rehashed Lenovo workstation.
Haven't built him a PC since.
The problem is their inability and refusal to google or lookup their problems on CZcams to find the VERY easily solution. I deal with this constantly at best buy, it's incredible.
Literally had a family in a couple weeks ago that thought they needed a usb to hdmi cable because they didnt know the back came off the switch dock and didn't know how to connect it to the TV.
Literally would take 30 seconds on youtube...
Or they could have read the paperwork that came with the Switch lol!
@@CommodoreFan64/videos or they could fiddle around with the switch to realize that the back comes off
thats literally how i learnt everything about computer science, i mess around to find out
USB A to HDMI, lol
I am a person who grew up with google, so if i had a problem i would just be googling for hours to find every possibly guide. I still remember taking hours to fix a dns issue on my laptop having no idea what dns even was. I still have no idea but i know where to change the address now 😅
going to the store is much more effort no
It's been a mixed bag for me. On one hand, I've built systems for people that insist on monopolizing my time because they don't want to Google something. I've worked in tech support in the past, so I have a stomach for this... to a point, but it's still super frustrating when someone just sees you as free tech support. On the other hand, I've built two of my nephews gaming PCs. I taught them how to do it and they rarely ever bother me with problems. One of them had been dealing with an issue for months before the finally bothered me with it, and it was bad enough that I had to bring another system to diagnose the problem since it was so odd. I commend him for doing his best to try and figure it out.
what the problem was?
Unrelated, but I love your Optiplex series! Very informative.
reminds me of when i installed a camera onto a monitor and it worked, but my sister didnt know how to turn it on. so she came up and asked me "do you know why it's broken?". and i was immediately annoyed because she made absolutely zero troubleshooting or googling attempts and decided that something that didn't automatically turn on the moment she thought it should meant it was too complex to figure out.
The whole fixing your stuff to play games is so true. 😂 I learned how to troubleshoot and fix both hardware and software issues just through my sheer determination to play games. Add to the fact that we didn't exactly have the privilege to use money on new tech, it was kind of expected that my stuff has to last for years. I remember asking for my friend's broken psp back then to salvage some parts from it to fix mine. 😂
The best part is after all the work you don't even play nearly as much as you expected to
my grandparents went about it the right way in my mind. any issue they have, they call me and i remote in via team viewer, then once the problem is fixed (i've never had anything take longer than maybe 20 minutes) they slide a little $$ my way, and its always helped. so i dont mind helping them. its not about the money, i've never asked for it, but they do it to say thanks.
It's not about the money, but it is about they apreciating your work, I had an aunt that asked me a few times a long the year to fix something, mostly connections to the TV or printer, and sometimes of the year I would ask to use the printer to print something, sience my printer is all ways dry and I never use it, but a few years ago she complain that she left someone use her printer and would never let anyone else use it... I sayde ok, sience then she asked my mome for a few things, I told my mome that my time is not to waste every single time....
from their point of view they could just be giving you pocket money as if you were still a kid
and tech support is an opportunity to give you money
When I was in my mid teens my family would come to me for tech support bc I was the savvy one in the family and I kinda liked it since it made me feel validated in my expertise. Nowadays it just annoys me
Same lol, i will begrudgingly do it for specific people because they are good family and its the right thing to do. and now im older ive revived a certain message twice and after the first time i constantly live in fear waiting for it to happen again, "can you build be a website?"
And if its like a hardware problem and a part needs to be replaced and u cant fix it right away they say something like "i thought u were so good at tech but nvm"
@@Llama_charmer "Ooh... Damn, mate. That's a whole other skillset. You're gonna need to learn HTML, CSS and JavaScript, _plus_ graphic design AND system administration if you want to pull that off. I can _maybe_ teach you some of the sysadmin stuff, but you're gonna have to learn the rest on your own."
I bet that would have all but the most passionate of them running screaming.
I think the problem isn't the people asking for help. It's that it's the first thing they do. They don't even try to figure it out. Personally I see it especially with older people. My parents so often show me a screen with text clearly stating what it is, and they ask me what it means. I'm at the point that I've given up on my parents and when they ask me how to do something I usually just do it for them if it's something that doesn't come up all the time. It saves me both time and frustration
I like to say that using a computer is 90% reading comprehension and experimentation and 10% reading the manual. Doing online searches when you're having trouble can be a bit of both.
My family have tried to bribe me multiple times through life to help them with tech stuff (all kind of things), and although I only help 50% of the time I've over a 10+ years period had the 'policy' of: "If you want me to fix it, your payment is going to be me teaching you how to do it yourself in the future." That approach (although pretty annoying to them) have made them *a lot* more tech savvy through the years, and the more years go by, the less help they ask for, and the more they try to fix things themselves.
I was litteraly about to write this comment. My mum is just like this
It's infuriating when there are directions written on the screen clearly telling them the exact steps to take, but they just look at you and tell you to fix it as if it's all written in Egyptian hieroglyphs
I had issues with my family trying to teach them how to solve issues for themselves. My mother sometimes has problems and I ask retorical questions that I answer, like, "Have I checked the cables on this thing? Well, looks like it is connected. Have you checked whether its the default device?" And while helping or telling her to click certain things so she could learn it for herself while helping. And yet, she got mad I was somewhat telling her to at the very least click the buttons herself so she could learn how to do it. She didn't want to learn how to fix it, only to have the issue fixed
If you ever decide to help older relatives / grandparents with tech problems, be ready for it to be a lot worse than you expect. I once decided to help a family member with onedrive, only to find the absolute worst labyrinth of directories I have found. Data spanning decades was duplicates multiple times, and by some miracle, there were directory links that literally looped through the multiple copies of the same folder until I ended up where I started. I personally don't mind helping family with tech problems, especially older people, but I am constantly blown away at how much they can screw up their computers.
Same , they sometimes do things I didn't even know was possible.
You know i actually learned you can download a web pages entire content (html css image files) from my grandad. Because when i went to sort his laptop out for something completely unrelated i found his file explorer FILLED and hundreds of random images, html files, css files, JS files. He had like 5 different chrome GPS extensions which were flashing saying google suspected they were malware. I will help him out every time because he really is absolutely hopeless at using anything with a screen but good lord he manages to do things i didnt even know you could do!
Sounds like you went on an adventure.
What's great is your retired parents, who both worked in tech fields, no longer being able to use google to solve a problem, even though that's how you help them every time.
For real.. I've built multiple PCs for myself, use them professionally for 3d modelling and other digital workloads - but the strangest issues I've found have always been on the pcs of relatives who do virtually no heavy tech work at all. Most only use the standard software their devices ship with - but without fault they always manage to conjure up some completely whack problems and utter messes behind the curtain of their normal looking desktop. And when they DO get 3rd party software, it's never the internet-standard programs. It's always some knock-off shady program that you wouldn't find even in the first 10 google page searches.
Suddenly their email encrypts file attachments in a non-standard format nobody uses that you'd even struggle to find in the advanced settings pages, sometimes its simple malware that has come from god knows where, sometimes its file duplicates like you say -oh god cloud storage as a whole... Of all the relatives I know who actively use cloud storage, 9/10 of them have no idea how it actually functions and they just press things and hope for the best as long as it seems to store stuff. They don't even care to see the duplicates, or check what data is actually being stored and what isn't, and from which devices etc. They just see "oh I remember those photos" and think that means everything is working perfect and as intended. I per definition no longer touch any cloud storage for anyone, I do not go near that mess.
I helped my wife's grandmother fix her printer once.
A week later her monitor stopped working. She insisted it had to be something I did. (To be fair, reinstalling printer drivers is a leading cause of monitor death...)
I've completely stopped helping people with technology.
Having just finished my undergrad, which is in a non-computer-related STEM field, it’s kinda concerning how few of my peers don’t know how to do basic tasks on a computer. I do trivial things like file management and some programming, and my classmates think I’m some kind of wizard. I’m not a wizard, I just know how to use google
As a teenager who’s been trying to troubleshoot a micro stutter issue on my PC for a couple months now I’ve learned a lot about PCs and honestly I agree with your statement, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with asking for some help with an issue but there comes a point where you just become a burden to the person your trying to get help fix the issue, I would be lying if I said I didn’t ask help from a family member for troubleshooting tips but I’ve tried to fix my issue myself as much as possible, and honestly even though I haven’t 100% eliminated the issue at least if I have an issue with something else I should be able to quickly understand the steps I need to take to fix it.
Probably a slow ssd, if you got micro stutters
@@user-gz1nv6nw3qWould this be considered a slow SSD? :1920GB Force MP510 NVMe SSD
Again it doesn’t happen in every game, it happens a enough to be considered a issue though and I do feel like it has to do with texture loading but that’s just a random guess.
@@TheTacticalTuna could also be ram i'd guess but stuttering in my experience has been a failing drive
try go into your bios & disable xmp if it's turned on, sometimes helps
@@ck275 I would but running my ram at low speed with a AMD CPU will definitely give me hurt my performance wouldn’t it? I know AMD is pretty picky when it comes to ram.
I have no problem being the tech support guy in the family/friend circle, but when someone asks a question in the same realm as he said, so "What is HDMI", about 3x in a row, without trying to solve anything on their own, that's when I stop helping. It becomes clear to me, that I'm just getting used as a first step to any problem they might have. If the questions evolve to more and more complex, with clear evidence that they tried to do something on their own, then I actually enjoy helping, even if they ask 10x the amount. So give them all the necessary info to figure it out on their own, let's say basics of googling for true beginners and go from there.
Yea especially with the very simple but essential stuff, like cable connections for common devices. "What is HDMI? What is USB C? Why can't I just use this cable from my old one?". If you want to own a TV, you should invest at least 5 minutes of your mental capacity to also learn how it functions, beyond just pressing the 'power on' button. But the moment anything with tech isn't 100% plug and play, they just nope out of it and don't care until the inevitable issue arises, and all it took for them to solve that issue was realizing their device is 95% plug and play, not 100%, and then learning about that tiny 5% portion. 5%. That's literally all it takes for most commonly used tech at the entry level of understanding what it is and how it works.
Laughing my head off because I've been there. Thankfully with my expierence they were appreciative and not pushy and I was happy and able to help but still, once you are seen as tech support, you will always be tech support.
It gets worse once they take you for granted, even for stuff you're not good at. My mom's family is basically treating me like a walking encyclopedia now ever since I troubleshoot random stuff on their house.
Break shit, it will stop immediately
I used to help my family alot with tech problems. It only leads to more work, and you get blamed in the end for things not working or for not wanting to help. I started saying no, they got mad for a while but now they never ask again. I only help my parents and a few close relatives I know wont be bothering me unless its absolutely necessary.
It depends. I’ve always been tech support for my family, but they always help me in other areas of my life, so it never bothered me. All relationships should have give and take, it’s only if the relationship is give give five where it becomes a pain.
Exactly, I always help my mom with her tech problems, but she cooks my meals and does my laundry so it's only fair I help her too haha
Absolutely this. I will happily help my stepfather with his tech problems when he's willing to help me with making decisions on investments, tax, and general "life management" that no one teaches you but you're expected to just magically know. Give and take.
This 100% as I'll gladly help someone like my mother who's been there for me even at my worst times in life, same for my sister, but the uncle I see a few times a year, and thinks I'm going to fix his smashed TCL Android phone he overpaid for, and do it for free, yeah no!!!
"Where is the exit?" "There, let me show you, come with me." "But how?" "Oh, just walk after me." "Walk? You are walking right now, why can't you just carry me?" "Oh come on, do your part, and I will do mine!" "You are rude, you don't want to help me after all!"
This is how many of those conversations look. You never want to invest effort in people who don't even try.
Of everyone in my family, my grandparents are the best when it comes to computer questions. On my mom's side, my grandpa used to work on mainframes for ups and has always been technically savvy. He's been able to keep up 90% and will only sometimes call regarding modern nuance.
My grandma on my dad's side is not as savvy but always tries to look into her problems, and she always takes notes on what we talk about for the future.
I always find it funny they're the best to work with in contrast to my aunt to called me to ask how to change the default page on Chrome... (Granted apparently she accidently installed an extention which overrode the home page which I haven't seen before so I guess she gets a pass)
My friend's 3080 died a few months ago about half a year after I watercooled it, tldr I'd done the same mod to my card about a year prior and everything was working fine.
He isn't made of money to say the least, however he was completely chill about the whole thing and just shrugged like eh life happens. If he wasn't so level headed it could have yeeted a 13 year friendship though and it definitely made me more hesitant to mod or build anyone else's rigs / not everyone has the composure to just shrug about £1000 of dead electronics even if no one is to blame.
building a problem? I gave my parents new Dell systems one Christmas and have spent the last year dealing with my father fixing things he decided were broke or wrong on his PC. This includes my finding him having deleted many apps and installing them all over again. To accidentally activating OneDrive and wondering where his documents have gone. The joy.
Microsoft pushing one drive is a nightmare though. I’m tech savvy and I couldn’t easily figure out to stop my documents being suddenly all just being saved on f*cling onedrive on win11 at one point after it just defaulted on to do that for some reason 😩
crap like this is why I put my mother on Chrome OS Flex using a $50 used Lenovo Thinkcentre Tiny I dropped a 256GB SSD, and 8GB of RAM in connected to her TV, as she only needs to remember one password, there is nothing she needs to install, or delete, the updates are handled automatically in the background, it does everything she needs a basic computer to do that her Android phone can't handle, and everything syncs between her phone, and computer when it comes to things like her bookmarks, and files that are not stored offline. So fewer tech support calls these days.
The part about the younger generation is absolutely true. Working as a teacher I find it much more efficient time wise to just do everything on each student's computer myself rather than trying to go through extremely easy steps with them and have them doing it themselves in a classroom setting. Even if i have to do it 25-30 times, it saves a LOT of time if I just do it for them myself. I once spent over two hours helping a class of students install a very basic piece of software, and I had to physically stop one of the students from entering their credit card details on a sketchy site because they clicked an ad. If it doesn't come pre-installed, or if it can't be installed by an appstore or similar you may as well just give up.
I guess this gives me hope as someone entering the IT industry... It's still weird that so many young people are so tech illiterate though.
@@awesomeferret They did not grow up noticing and adapting to changes and needing to build an intuitive sense of how the programs worked like the earlier generations (Millenials and Gen X) did. To these generations, computer technology was just as innovative and exciting to keep up with and know about as car technology had already been for decades.
@@awesomeferret How does this give you hope? If anyone cared they can easily learn unless they have a crazy disability, lots of people just dgaf
gen z that don't have PCs just tend to think the internet is a bunch of apps on their phone. I knew someone not even know to use a browser and manually enter a website address.
@@zzdahaewaeit gives me hope as someone about to enter a career that I thought was going to be very crowded. If the younger generation really is that bad with tech, then I don't have to worry as much as I thought about being flooded with competition in the workforce.
I do admit that while what I said was grammatically sound, it was not the best way to describe it. Maybe "big silver lining" is a better way than "gives me hope".
Remember back in the day trying to build a PC and troubleshoot BEFORE the internet was a thing and knowing that if I couldn't fix the issue for free I would not be able to game at all. Desperation is a great motivator - I remember spending hours on a random Saturday just taking out sticks of ram and putting them back in again desperately hoping my PC would boot.
This extends to my whole family, no exceptions. I've gotten tired of people coming to me for basic problems or non-problems, refusal to work on it or look it up themselves , people acting like I'm a savant at everything including stuff I've never dealt with, and, last but not least, just ignoring my advice. (Either not listening or just engaging in the exact same things that gave them issues despite warning.) It's strained relationships, but I've been doing it for 20 years, since I was in elementary, with all of the above happening.
There is no greater sin than the refusal to learn.
I made the fatal mistake of building a machine for a very close family member when I was 16. I took no profit, and invested a LOT of hours into the build. Like LTT experienced, some trivial issue popped up once they started dicking with it. The situation escalated and escalated till they demanded their money back (an adult to a 16 year old kid). I broke off my relationship with that person from that point forward.
Today I'll just point people at a suitable off the shelf product. Fuck if I'm ever building something for someone, don't mind offering advice but it's very much a "you build it, you broke it" situation.
I just say, sorry, not my area of expertise. You'll have to google it. People can be real entitled assholes
Should have punished the person by pointing them to a Dell pre-built if they want to see real problems.
The funny thing is that they will blame you even if the off-the-shelf product you've chosen starts having any issue
@@ApofKol Oh god this.. Like when you say "I would recommend this desktop over a laptop for x and y reasons", but they are adamant on getting a laptop so you point them in the direction of the one with fair reviews and least bloatware - and then, as all laptops do, it doesn't perform as well as a desktop and perhaps has some other issues specific to laptop, then they'll blame you for "guiding them to a bad purchase"..
@@ApofKol i had that with a friend, he wanted a new laptop fpr some university work (computer science mind you) and asked me to look fpr one together with him. I told him beforehand that i have next to no expertise on laptops and could mostly purely gp by speca and some limited amount of reviews. He settled fpr some HP Pavillion in the end... and from that point on i basically gpt blamed because that thing has thermal problems and thermal throttles quite hard. Like hof the f should i have known, i told you before i dont have a lot of knowledge ob laptops (and that laptops in the bottom price range mostly suck anyway)
I am dealing with this situation currently. Built a baller gaming/ streaming PC for a friend, and now am constantly texted questions, most of which are very niche (codecs, specific bugs in games) that I know little about.
ON THE FLIP SIDE: it can also be bad if you build/ buy a computer for someone, and they don't want to bother you any more, so end up having easily fixed problems that they never tell you about.
That's one of the worst thing about helping people out. Just because you know how to build a computer they assume you're also going to be an expert in some obscure software from 1997 that they still use.
My greatest tech accomplishment of my life was not building any one of my computers, but teaching my boomer parents in their 70s how to google their questions and not bother me about it.
My worse regret but at the same time best moment was teaching my parents in their 70s how to buy stuff online.
Worse part is, my house now looks like a warehouse, best part is they now know how to turn a small profit by selling the stuff they bought online to their technologically impaired friends.
@@wahidpawana424 You got Amazon at home?
This truly is one of the most frustrating things ever. I’ve built a couple pc’s for people. I kinda go by first question is free the second question is free for certain people (friends family) but pushes them to find a solution for themselves next time. If they ask again I just hit them with the “did you you look it up” and leave it at that.
I get it if it’s like a elderly person or something that isn’t to tech savvy but when it’s like a young kid or like just someone who expects you to be like “ahh yes the answer isss” it’s so annoying.
My friends don't know how to install an os even. I've been doing my own PC stuff since I was 14, 23 now. One friend who has been on a prebuilt for a year tried to tell me that anisotropic filtering is another form of ambient occlusion and argued with me. They're constantly having weird issues and they always blame me because I built it, rather than just Google it first.
As a younger “Tech Savvy” PC user, it’s really irritating to me as well being asked how to do basic googleable things by my friends. I’ve learned so far using google, youtube and a lot of LTT.
(also I will now be using let me gpt that for you)
Never been there, but fro what I saw it seems like it's just a LMGTFY. Looks like it just takes the text from a top result of google, then opens a Google search which will show that result.
I encounter this all the time, my siblings will ask me how to do something very simple and when I say you should at least google it they just give up, if I give them the 2 sentence answer they do it immediately. It's crazy to me that at the very least they cannot attempt to seek the information, even the manual for the product, they need. This extends to older generation as well, my parents and grandparents will just live with issues on their technology until I fix it or tell them how to (because it's usually restart or sign out/in).
They did seek the information, they went to you.
My favorite is getting asked something, then just sending them the link to the question types in google.
I learned a lot about computers by doing almost everything myself and fixing my own problems. And watching LTT videos helped me build my first pc a long time ago. :)
same here + I tried getting around the internet timer my parents set up... my dad and I had an arms race for a while. It helped me figure out most things and taught me how to look them up (though I am at a loss when it comes to my current R6Siege stutters) and in the process I found Linus and Luke out there showing builds with all these mods etc.
I've found for some people it's best to give a little guidance but don't take over for them. Like some of my friends/family I will research a parts list or pick out the best racing steering wheel at a price range but I let them do the rest. I don't have enough time to take over the responsibility for them but helping each other out every now and then is nice
This. If they ask you tedious questions, give them tedious answers. Constantly give them such slow, step-by-step instructions that they get frustrated and try to figure it out themselves (or better yet, they actually learn from the super slow explanations). Win-win. Throw the tedium back, but be nice about it.
It's like forcing training wheels on a kid who doesn't want them (or better yet, they actually learn from it).
That's why whenever my family says I grew up with technology, and that is why I know how to use it, I call bullshit.
I learned just like everybody else. I just did not sit there and expect people to do shit for me.
As if every person born after 2000 just comes with pre-installed knowledge about the workings of phones and computers xD
Yup, I got to the point in my early 20s, when I just straight up gave my family a price list for my services. I've never been bugged about help ever again.
the worst part is that you feel somewhat obligated to help because knowing some family members they could be duped by someone posing as “support”
Yep, that's what my problem is with helping friends and family. Once you've helped them a few times, people think you will help them every single time they have a minor issue. I had one friend a few years back who was experiencing issues with his computer. I went over to his place and got the issue fixed. I started looking over his computer and realized that, for some odd reason, he had removed the cmos battery. Told me he didn't know why the motherboard had a watch battery in it. Told me after I fixed all of his problems, that he was going to pay me back for the time I worked on it, never seen that happened, but the individual still kept reaching out to me for every. little. problem.
Thats absolutely hilarious xD. "huh that weird, this ELECTRONIC device has a battery slotted in a hole that fits exactly into its slot, clearly that shouldn't be there"
@@Llama_charmer "lol did some idiot factory worker drop his watch in the circuit board machine? Here, let me fix that idiot's mistake."
When visiting family I used to play "how long until someone asks me to look at their computer problem?"
Several times it would be before I had even said hello to everyone and settled in. It was always quite tempting to get back in the car and leave.
I had/have a relative who when they are visiting, (i live at home) greet everyone else with a hello, and i get greeted with "i need your help" *gestures towards laptop* xD
Honestly I wouldn't mind that. I'm completely all about efficiency and if people just cut the crap with greetings when they already know each other my time would be much more well spent doing something actually productive and maybe something that I actually enjoy.
@@ChaoscelusApollyon Yeah fair enough and i agree actually, i dont particularly care to interact with them that much. But i wouldnt completely ignore them and then come bother them when i need help. It just confirms to me they really dont even remember i exist until im needed
the way I went about this problem was to try and teach my family as much as possible while we're together, I'll go trough basic troubleshooting with them and show them basic things to do and now they'll fix most problems on their own and figure it out without issues so I only get bothered with the very rare major issues or things that require fiddling with hardware
This makes me SO grateful that I've never had to put up with this from any family members
I've built my fiancée a PC and my older brother too. I also occasionally help my younger brother with problems with his PC, although he built it himself and almost never asks me for anything. My older brother only asked me when his PC died, likely my fault, so I did a quick and dirty replacement. My fiancée's PC hasn't had any problems I wasn't around for yet, and I'll always help because it's a heavily modded ITX chassis that isn't the easiest to work in - although I try my best to explain my thought process too. I got it for them so we could game together, so I'm just as motivated to fix it as my own system should it ever break.
I honestly wouldn't mind sitting with people and explaining things to them but I think its the level of disinterest and entitlement that gets me the most for stuff like this
Sometimes you just have to let people fail. Helping them out all the time just enables/reinforces the lazy behaviour.
On the other hand, if it's a mate that has tried what they can and googled the issues but is still struggling that's another story.
In high school currently, and I took a Computer Applications class thinking I could at least get something out of it that was not super easy.
The class they taught was some "Google Docs 101" class because they couldn't teach us how to use a real computer thanks to everything being Chromebooks. My generation is called one of the most tech savvy generations but in reality that is just because most of us are handed all these technical things on a silver platter in a easy to use walled off platter where most of them don't then take into account that when something stops working, it can be easily fixed with a simple Google search.
Or I will set something up like a game server, a friends game will crash and the first thing they do is "Hey your server is broken" when it is running completely fine.
I think the walled gardens have cheated a lot of people out of the richness of computing. They're not even actual gardens. They're full of plastic plants. There's no room to learn or grow, just to look. Contrast this with Linux or even Windows 7 (I haven't used anything later), where you never _have_ to use the technical aspects for routine tasks, but they aren't locked away and anyone can find them if they spend a few minutes poking around. To continue the metaphor, this is a garden with real plants, where you can actually do some _gardening._
I've been through almost the exact same thing before: I gave some stranger a (really) good deal on old hardware that I had no use for and even set it up for them. What a mistake, because it turns out if you help someone out once, you become their designated tech support until you block their number.
I did you a favor, so the way I see it I owe you less than nothing. So please don't double down by asking me more favours
It's especially the worst to troubleshoot over texts or voice conversations. Like often times the issue is so vague and they don't know enough to actually describe their problem that you end up having to do so much more work then it should require to fix a basic problem.
Yep. That is pretty much why I despise doing help desk/phone support. I'm an IT tech for a school district. We did phone support during distance learning and it was absolutely terrible. It was hard getting information out of some people. "I used to just be able to click the icon and it would take me straight through." I would ask, "What specific icon or program are you having trouble with?" Their response "I don't know. I just click the icon on my screen and it used to open right up."🤦🤦
I learned how PCs worked because my stepfather's son was a really cool dude. He was into Portal and such (Steam when it was first coming out, showed me Minecraft when it was in alpha) and I was just getting into PCs, trying to figure them out. He did his best to give me a base line of what RAM did, what a CPU and GPU were, the motherboard, etc. I walked away with half an understanding of what he told me that day, he left me with the recommendation to buy PC gaming magazines. I never bought any magazines, but time and the vast wells of information scattered across the web is what taught me the rest. Now, over a decade later, I am now fulfilling the same role he did all those years ago.
I feel like problem solving isn't something everybody learns in their life. Computers and cars are really the two main hobbies people get into that teach them this skill, but if they don't get into it expecting that problem solving element then they default back to just asking the "teacher," how to do it like they've been taught to do their whole lives.
asking what HDMI is is like a slap across Linus's face. "why is he even doing what he is doing if people dont know what HDMI is" 😂
my exception to that is if its a particularly obscure problem I've had that's hard to find, or problem with more obscure hardware, and requires more of a thinking-out-of-the-box style problem solving, or if it required troubleshooting steps I couldn't find on google. In those cases ill tell or show somebody who has a similar problem how to solve it and help them.
sometimes it felt like we went to family meet-ups, just to fix whatever tech problems my family had. that's after driving almost an hour to a family member's house so we can all hang out again. we all live some time apart from each other
i don't mind obviously. and will always help mom and dad :-)
I work in a tech support role. I have to help people do a massive amount of stuff that should be basic know how. Like the older ones don't bother me I walk them through it and do my best to make sure they understand it. It's the new hire 17 year old kid who doesn't know where the documents folder is that I don't like.
Gen-Z employees have quickly become the most dreaded call in my IT department, because we know it'll be something utterly dumb like "how did you even get hired" stupid.
I still feel guilty from 10+ years ago when a family friend turned up on my doorstep (no warning) with a PC (case only) that his wife had bought used from the school she worked at. I can't remember my exact wording but I gave him some hints as to how to fix HIS problem which was not having administrator rights. I didn't even let him through the door I just kept him on the doorstep until he went away. He wasn't happy, I was pissed off that he'd done this and couldn't respect my time or privacy. But I still feel guilty about it. There have been other times when I've had to tell friends no when I've helped them once, because it just doesn't stop unless you draw a line.
showing up unannounced even once is a permaban
@@FractalPrism. Yeah, there's been no justification for doing that for a looong time. This was *possibly* okay up until about 25 years ago. Going back further to the days when I was in my teens and tweens and there was just a landline that was always being used, then yeah turning up without warning was okay. Well, it was acceptable as there wasn't any other choice. But yep I would never dream of showing up at someone's house without it being pre-arranged, and it still annoys me when one of my wife's old friends (and sometimes her friend's mother too) who now lives about 70 miles away will just turn up at the door. The last time she did that, my wife was out and wasn't due home for an hour. I told her so and turned her away. "Maybe ring beforehand next time Debby?"
First PC I built (back in early 2020) was my brother's, I did it for free in exchange for being allowed to use it occasionally. Then I built my own PC, and most recently I built my dad one, which he paid me for. They've all been great learning experiences for me.
5:52 I know when I was in highschool I usually wasn’t done with homework til at least 6 and often later, but yeah it is really frustrating when the moment someone has a problem they come running to you rather than trying to solve it themselves.
Don't provide technical support for family members with Alzheimer's. Tech support expectations move into the fun realm of "please locate the missing device". It's been super fun to figure out how to set up a phone and contacts for a failing brain set on an early 2000s Blackberry.
This goes back to a video by Louis Rossman made a while back about being 'invest-able'; the idea that you nudge them in the right direction but THEY themselves eventually get to the solutions they need. When you can tell the person you are trying to help isn't putting the legwork in, it just becomes apparent that they don't want actual "help", they really just want their problem solved for them. Which really is just laziness hiding in plain sight. I think that's really the most disappointing part.
Learned this lesson years ago. Never helped friends and family again beyond giving parts recommendations.
I work in tech support and the amount of times clients just walk up and say their computer doesnt work with zero troubleshooting theyve done themselves is mind boggling. These people cant even do a basic Google search, you can literally talk into your phone and Google will give you search results. You dont even have to type! Just had a lady come in saying her laptop camera doesnt work.....the fucking camera cover was on. Didnt bother to look in the direction of the camera at all, just decided it was broken cos all she saw was black on her screen. These people lack any research abilities.
Learning to put boundaries in place and tell people they'll have to figure it out for themselves is a important skill for someone whose job or expertise includes fixing things. There are friends I've had to tell to google things because I just don't know, despite knowing exactly what the issue is and how to troubleshoot it, because they would come to me for tech things despite being very capable of researching and troubleshooting it themselves.
On the whole family building pc's for people thing - I helped some family recently complete a PC build after they couldn't get it going. They had no cpu cooler and couldn't figure out how to build the thing properly. I absolutely didn't mind helping them out and getting it up and running. After the first phone call that was about how to get the sound working, I just stopped troubleshooting it for them. It's not my job, I'm not getting paid, and I'm not obligated to provide tech support. They know that, and stopped calling me about it when I didn't fix it for free for them.
Boundaries, people. They're hella important.
A great example other comments reminded me of is a close friend who I've helped many times. Starting out I'd be asked things like "how do I set my monitor's refresh rate in windows" or "what is vsync". After a while of learning she built her own new PC and only needed to ask me what orientation the AIO goes in. Now she's capable of setting up her own audio mixer for streaming. I have helped someone's tech literacy to the point they no longer need to ask me for help on almost anything. That's a good feeling. It's not all bad.
Man, games really are a great motivator for learning tech.
The second problem isn't even complicated. A Google search would just tell you or at least direct you in the right direction and I quote "Check your sound settings through the Control Panel"
Easiest troubleshooting step from there is just disabling all mics and enabling them one by one until you know which is the one you wanna use, now you can use it for everything.
I had to figure that out myself at some point, other people had to figure it out themselves. Just look around a little bit
This is really a problem of the younger generation.
I teach Python in high schools.
At least once in every class (we are talking here about grades 8-9) a student complains that the computer is not working, because he thinks that turning on the screen is enough for it to turn on.
my condolences, I feel your pain
Although I don't teach python (I am a programmer), I have met many peers that don't know the basics like how to uninstall a program (on windows, not even linux)
A few months ago I helped my brother installing Linux. At the beginning it basically was a Linux crash course a had to give him, later it turned into tech-support (or rather the let-me-google-that-for-you-guy) and nowadays he only asks me for help if he is really stuck.
I actually loved Vista
cuz the pain of going through a reinstall about once a month was how I learned about computers
Id assume these days its rare to accedentaly set default program for .exe files to be opened with notepad
and yes that includes ALL and ANYTHING youd use to try and change it back, any links to settings, policies or cmd, everything, quite funny
5:25 that’s a great way to put it. I’m 25 but still had to learn how to fix issues when my laptop would fuck up but my sister who is just 21. Not even that much younger, she hasn’t needed to learn the stuff I did because her computer was new enough that it worked more often and had less issues
Maybe it was because learning to fix things when we were kids (90s era) was much more difficult (basically either experiment with it, or find friends who had found a solution), that we were more keen on learning. Kids these days have answers so easy, they don't even want to look it up. Which seems counterintuitive, but somehow the easier something is to do, the more people want someone else to do it for them with the logic of "if it's so easy, why are you making a big deal of it? Just do it for me okay!" What are the odds that kids these days could handle a cartridge system like the NES? Those things were so problematic we all learned the tricks, like blowing it out and pushing it in gently so it barely made contact (which was also weird, you would think going in all the way would seat it better, but it seems the people who made the game cartridges didn't do the pins well so just a light contact was best). That's all stuff most of us learned through trial and error, and somehow we all came to the same conclusions so we would laugh when we heard someone else doing it like "you figured it out too?!?"
In that sense im quite lucky to have not been born in the oldie tech illiterate group but also not in the super young generation mentioned in the video.
Brave new world. Aldous Huxley. All information is readily available, but no one cares.
I'm not surprised. I'm 19 and I used to just help my friends and family for free. While I still do so towards my own mom, I can't do the same anymore towards my friends, except for some close friends who are willing to learn about tech.
One ironic story I had is one of my friends who was going to study computer science in uni. At that point of time he just got a decent laptop (550 USD-ish) by trading in his dad's arcade tickets. I had done tech support stuff for this guy before, and he asked me to help set up his new laptop. What I found out in that moment was that he never learnt anything at all. He can't even open settings, and even worse, he did not find where the power button on his brand new laptop is. I kid you not, he video called me right after unboxing said laptop on the arcade counter to ask me where the power button is. Even worse, he still did not find it after I told him where it is, and at that point since I was somehow within the same mall where the arcade is at the same time as him while with my mom, I immediately rushed myself to that arcade. And after that he then was able to turn on the laptop and finally set it up.
But that was not the worst. I had this other friend who asked me about tech stuff a lot. One day she wanted to buy a laptop, so I recommended her a good laptop for the price at that point of time (with Celeron N4000). She was still unsure and thought that she might get it wrong and asked me to tag along for the search. I came to our agreed location, but she changed the location to buy the laptop twice, and then decided she was going to buy the laptop with her mom at another place. So I was ghosted and basically my only option left was to go home. The next day, she brought the "new" laptop alright. An older model, with AMD E1 and less RAM than the one I suggested her to buy. Worse, it has a bloated battery, dented keyboard, and Windows not activated. Even worse, it's more expensive than the new laptop I suggested while also being used. At that point I just say, "well you're fkn screwed alright."
Le MLP pfp.
I bought a pc from a friend and my gpu went down. So my friend walked me through how to test all the components and now im totally rebuilding it myself. I felt terrible asking him for help and annoying him with this stuff but now i understand how to do it all on my own because of his help. Give a man a pc and he'll game for a day, teach him to build/fix one and he'll game for a lifetime.
I used to work as an Electronics Technician back from 1979 to 1995. I also originally did electronics fix-it jobs for "friends" for free. I stopped doing that when a few of these people figured that they should get lifetime warranty and consultation help after I fixed it the first time. I would get people who repeatedly damaged their equipment themselves, and then cried "warranty", and said that since it was warranty that I have to pay for the replacement parts as well. I ended up having to cut a lot of these people from my life, and I started refusing to do anything for any people.
Fast forward to now, and I have a small software business, where I develop a specialized 3D software product. I honestly have had people email me and tell me that they only bought the software to use it once to complete one job that they had to do, and they now want me to refund their purchase price because they won't be using the software again. That isn't how life works. You aren't "renting" the software with a full money back guarantee when you are done your one job. I have come to dislike pretty much everyone.
God, you are right. My kids will not troubleshoot their stuff at all. Even if I let it sit, my wife will start asking me to fix it for them
Ask them questions that makes them think critically. "What were you doing when it broke, might that be related?"
Imagine Linus being your uncle or something like that and talking about you on the WAN show lmao
I got into computers while in college, but my dad has been a semiconductor engineer and software developer for decades.
The only time I've *ever* requested his time to sort out a PC problem was when I ran into very specific, weird problems. I bought an M.2 SSD (I think it was an XPG drive) that didn't come with a driver installed. It was recognized in bios but not windows, and the company that made the drive does not make drivers for them. That was a bit out of my realm, and he was more than happy to help with really weird issues like that.
I think it comes down to "literally just try first and then I'm happy to help"