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Tuesday, July 18, 2006
The way non-geeks think
[ZOMBiE CyGiG] ranted at 2:37 AM --- Post#115316144480080705

So peepz call IT ppl “geeks”, how true is that im not sure. But even im so called an “IT savvy” guy, I always try to live in the world of “normal people”, or so call the “non-geeks”. Between me and Yan, Yan will always rattle to me model numbers of chips and speed and about the different interface; between me and Ah Lam is always ways to make a picture look gay or look gory by means of digital manipulation; between me and Kiat is always if Visual Basics is easier to use than Flash ActionScript; between me and Andrew is always the fight of Windows and Linux.

Well, so what happened if its not Yan, Kiat, Lam or Andrew? Blue_Quartz never believed that outside this pool of “geeks”, the rest of the people are actually so call computer noobs. Noobs dun mean they dunno how to use a computer. Nowadays, except for aunties and unkers and ah ma and ah gong, who dunno how to use computer? "'Non-geeks" here means they dunno how computer really works, not even the brief understanding.

Hardware
Ok, say I pick 5 boys and 5 gals from my school. I can safely say that the 2/5 guys and all the 5 gals dunno what the hell is a graphic card. So I exprained to them “it’s a board with chips and extra processor to draw the 3D images in your game lah!”, then they will start to get puzzled on why there are so many kinds of gfx cards, what “PCI-Express” what “AGP” dunno lah!

Most of the time they take the jagged edges in 3D game for granted! To those unconcerned about their game graphic, jagged edges, squarish geometry, pixilated objects and plain coloured textured are normal. Well in fact they dun realized them until I tell them. Im no pro in hardware, but I do have some experiences with gfx cards. Lower end models cannot render “halos” or “gloss”, simply saying it’s the reflection on a shiny surface such as water or vehicle bodies. Spending $50 to upgrade to a slightly better card to run the game faster and render the texture nicer seemed to be like “WTF, only shiny surface mah, I cant really tell the diff lor, dun waste money lah, I dunno how to put the card in as well lor!”.

WEll..sad to say some had never seen a graphics card before. The word "card" in "PC card", "netword card", "TV tuner card" somehow reminds "non-geek" of our old skool $5 phone card.

Lets talk about something simpler, thumb drives. Im surprised when one of my classmate came to me and requested me to demonstrate to him how to use a thumb drive.

“Poke it in lah! The how?” I replied.
“Poke where?” He asked.
“USB port lah!” I replied again.
“Where is the USB port?” he asked once more.

By then I was like -_- liao. And he though I was purposely teasing him…but seriously, how do you really teach someone how to use a thumb drive? Just POKE IT IN!

Audio
iPod seemed to the latest “in” thing now. But personally, I feel that its no big deal. The price, audio quality, features, services and support turned me off totally. The form factor used to look cool but after so many generations and their appearance everywhere on the street, iPod no longer look as cool as it was.

So why “non-geeks” stick so close to the iPods? Simple, cos everyone has it! Cos Apple put in a lot of advertisement! Everyone say its cool means its cool!

“Huh? Sound quality? I always used 64kbps wma de! Save space mah! 54 and 192 where got difference? Ogg? Whats Ogg? I dun care I want ipod, so sleek and chio!”

Once a gal was looking at me tuning my equalizer. She came over and asked whats that. I told her its an EQ. “Whats 16, 250, 1K, 4K and 16K down there?”. So I told her those are frequency bands. Immediately, she though of changing the frequency of the sound (as in making a guy sound like a gal by increasing the frequency that sort), so I exprained to her im making certain frequency sound more prominent so that the music sounds nicer. Well as expected she was scratching her head having no idea what im talking about.

They neber understood why I need so much bass on my mp3 player. They neber understood why I will spend $44 buying a KSC75, since the iPod stock earbud sounds like heaven to them (frankly, you can throw away those stock earbuds most of the time). The “non-geeks” never consider battery life, durability, features and whatsoever when they get their mp3 player. They just wanna be in the herd.

And please, its not a “mp3 player”, my player can play more format than “mp3”. I uses ogg myself. And seriously, 64kbps wma or mp3 is totally unbearable to listen. Might as well dun listen to music liao if liddat.

Software
“Why must I use Firefox??”. Of course then use IE? Do you know that the chances of getting virus when using Firefox or Opera is much smaller than when you use IE? So dun come kao pei to me when you tio virus.

“What anti-virus you using?” Im using AVG Free personally, and I rarely tio virus despite all my ahem ahem. A lot of people thinks that a good software must be a payware. Not necessary lor, SpyBot Search and Destroy is free and one of the best anti-spyware. MSN Plus can be chose to install without the sponsor program is free and the best MSN Messenger add on. Gaim is free and im using it intead of MSN Messenger. Thus a free software is neber confirm a lousy one.

And please, dun relate EVERYTHING to virus. A lot of times Windows somehow got corrupted, might even be the user’s own problem. And then Windows will start becoming slow and some bugs and error will surface. Users do not shut the comp safely or do disk defragmenting. And everytime “non-geeks” blame all those problems to be a virus attack.

“how you download stuff?” - this is a line I heard umpteen times liao. What it should means is “what P2P software do you use?” If I go on and talk about BitTorrent and how its better than kazza, how files are spreaded out and you are downloading while uploading…It will take 10 years and they wun understand.

So I tell “non-geeks”, use BitComet lor, safer and faster than kazza! (Kazza seemed to be the only P2P then know of)

When it comes to gaming, “normal people” are always restrained to WarCraft, The Sims, Championship Manager. Little do they know that there are far nicer and better games then those old skools they are playing. "Non-geeks" seldom keep track of the latest game, like HalfLife2 ("huh? I tot only got CS?") or maybe even FEAR.

Even worse, they dunno that their system cant play most of the games at a lot of times. So still, they get stuck on their World of Warcraft, DOTA and CS…

Conclusion
So now we can see…how the “normal people” or “non-geeks” or computer noobs deals with all those IT stuff.. so next time, dun expect them to do things that you yourself expect to be.

"Aiya, i dunno lah", "I computer idiot lah", "I noe you pro lah", "my computer beri lan one", "HUH?" seemed to be the most common responds i get from "non-geeks".

Imagine now those "sports geek" come over and tell me about simi Zidane simi Beckham, i tell them "huh? I dunno lah." and it seems that being a "sports-non geek" is quite unacceptable in AJC.

The next time someone call me to train up, i shall tell them to brush up on their creativity. So in all, who is the geek?

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