Just because you are in the IT working line every lay person thinks you know everything about IT particularly PCs. From knowing....
- what's the best firefox card for the pc - as if I know which was the BEST
- the answer to Windows Operating System quirks - like the popular on with Win98 "why cannot shut down properly wan"
- and can you format my machine?
Some examples of formatting pc's request:
- In primary school, Std 3 i think... was in the school compound leaving to wait for the bus and a teacher familiar only coz she lived around the same housing area called on me. She asked "Your dad and brother can fix computers right?". All i said was "Errmmmm..." and she said "Ask him to come over to my hse. My hse is beside Mr. X house. Do you know Mr. X's house?". I said "No I dunno". "How about Family Y's hse?" I said "I dunno". It went on for a bit and she later rudely commented "How can you dont know wan?? How can you not know your neighbours... and blah... blah...." If she had wanted help she could have left the rude bits out for her benefit. Anyway we never bothered gng to her place - besides we barely knew her and she lived 20 houses away and she's a rude woman and how could she expect us to know her neighbours 20 hse's away?.
- A toastmaster member i knew from the "Hi's and Bye's" asked if i was in the IT line. Then asked me if i could format and install his super ancient computer which was running Win98 to have Win98 back coz he didnt want take it to a PC shop to pay someone to do it!! Can you imagine refomatting a machine with no NIC/USB - how lar to backup data.. duh..with diskettes? And with Win98 have to download the drivers each and that could mean opening up the CPU trying to read the small prints of the components for the brand and type to get the drivers. If it wasn't a tedious job/task why would ppl even sell services to do it in the first place.. Anyway i said "Nope, I think its better for you to get a new computer" and some excuses.
So if someone asked me to format their machine it would have to be with conditions:
- close friend/family member
- Newer PC's only - if got ancient one's better buy new one
- The PC is new with either NIC/USB/CD Burner to be able to backup their data
- Install only the basic apps
- And the rest of the software they need to know how to install themselves too (Not trying to be mean but they should know how to do at least some things)
3 comments:
hmm... come and think of it, i have alot of these kind of request too. And I'd only do for new pc or reformatting the whole thing without backing up their data - they have to do it themselves. ;P
yeah man... i should set that as a condition to lar ;-)
These sick stingy people, sigh!
I used to have friends like that too who are gamers but losers at the OS level...and imagine it's windows XP some more... don't need to do anything one just follow the wizard... and i needed to threaten them by ignoring their request, in order to let them learn themselves!!
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