PG Music Home Forums General Discussion Off-Topic The new computer build list

Next to the Easy button.

My favorite is the people who only 2 things and they answer every question with those 2 things. One is to "defrag your hard drive". Well, let's look at that. Defragmentation pulls pieces of a file and rewrites them in a contiguous manner. Now, what do those files do? They load. When you are done, they save. They don't go back and forth during operation. So what does the state of the hard drive have to do with OPERATION? It has to do with storage and loading time. But that apparently makes them think they know computers.

The other is "update your drivers." Again, let's look at that. The driver you have worked YESTERDAY. And the day before, and the day before that. Computer logic and troubleshooting does not contain the word "something" or the word "messed up", as in "Something could have messed up your driver." No. Just no. And because a company releases and updated driver does NOT means that the old driver will not continue to function. It may have fixed some minor issue, but if your driver is working fine, was working fine yesterday and the day before, there is NO NEED to run out and update a working driver. Driver fixes are for when something that worked yesterday stops working. But again, people who want to seem "in the know" drop that cliche regularly. Most can't give a working definition of what a driver is, but they know that if you update them your whole computer world gets sunny again!!

The memory issue will always be debated. To apply it to this place, let me offer this nugget to think about. When you regenerate something, this software saves undo data. In a buffer. A buffer consumes memory. I can work on my downstairs computer with 16GB and on my upstairs computer with 64GB, and upstairs I can do FAR many of those regens and saves of undo files before the program say "no mas". Eventually those buffers fill up and the program crashes. Rebooting to clear the memory registers fixes the problem, and on you go.

This is similar in concept to cars going 100 mph. Any car will go 100. The difference is how long it takes to get there and how long you can run at 100. You can use an i3 with 4GB of RAM and surf just fine. It's when you start taxing it that things go south.

I actually had a guy tell me once as I was sitting at his computer that "The error said something about a page error and I wasn't even printing anything!" I was really tempted to tell him to box the thing up and return it to the store because he was too stupid to own a computer.

My best moment ever was the day that I was fixing a very badly infected computer and as I scanned it kept directing me to 3 specific and very deeply buried directories. As I sat there working the woman never put down her bible and rosary, and the whole room was all Jesus pictures and crosses and stuff. When the AV program quit I looked at those directories and found a bunch of files named things like bhhgsdhjgjhasg.mp4 or .mov and I said "The viruses seem to be attached to files in that directory. Let me see what's going on." And I launched one to find some of the most explicit [*****] I had ever seen. I knew immediately what the story was, but she said "Open a few more of those. So I opened 4 random files in those directories, and they were all the same thing. She said "Excuse me while I make a quick call." and she called him and said "Hey the computer guy is here and he found a bunch of virus infected files. Do you mind of we erase all of your [*****] because that's where they are." And then a pause. And then "Oh you bet we will talk about it later." So I erased almost 6 GIGABYTES of [*****] and the computer was fine after that. I have never felt so bad for a customer.