The holidays, the consumers, how I feel sick....Why I love you guys...

[Shockwave]

Ok, this is just a way for me to blow of some steam. I seem to have forgotten, today is the day the entire free world goes X-Mas shopping. Bad mistake. I browse through some papers @ work, find a good deal on a joystick I want, and figure hey, I'll go get it when I get off work in the morning (11 pm - 7:30 AM) CompUSA is opening at 8, great! SO I go there @ 7:30, and theres a line. Oh well, I go stand in line with 15 or so other people. The guy in front of me is tryin to be Mr. Tech to some other poor sod beside him. Talkin CD-R drives...Says, Ya, I have a 4x, but we can never use it at 4x, but at 2x is does great!! The other guy is just soakin it in. Really? Wow? Oh ya...Sheesh. So then he's all, if you have a 100 or 133 bus, you'll be fine, but with a 66 bus speed, its hard to burn 4x..WTF!?...Then they look throught the advertisments...Oh hey, a burner for $79, thats a good deal, oh hey, a 8x burner for this much....And then, I transcend to realm as yet unexplored in my thoughts...
The average consumer doesnt know dick about hardware. He looks at the biggest/lowest...Biggest number (CPU speed, burner speed) for the lowest price. No wonder he cant burn at 4x!! Prolly sharin same channel as his HD!!
And thats why I love you guys. Its great to come someplace where people actually know about hardware and software, where we can get opinions, ideas, troubleshooting tips, whatever!

Ok, sorry to waste your time. Thats it, love the polls, love the threads.
And love Anandtech!

 

[HaVoC]

You are absolutely right. Unfortunately the tech-marketing really emphasizes misleading numbers such as Mhz, 8X DVD-ROM, 32MB RAM.

One of my favorites is video cards that are SOLEY JUDGED BY HOW MUCH RAM THEY HAVE and nothing else, especially the chipset. "Chipset...what's that? Some sort of golf shot?"

Numbers make for a quick and dirty comparison. X is greater than Y, therefore X is automatically better.

 

[Erasmus-X]

Oh god, you don't even know how bad it is unless you actually get to WORK at a retail store on Black Friday......

People kicking each other in the shins over a $79 KLH DVD player, nimrods coming in 4 hours after the 7am opening and getting pissed off because we're out of a cheapass $199 Pro Logic receiver and speakers package. WTF??? Oh yeah, and it was difficult to even walk in the store for the first couple of hours. Makes me wonder why I still work at Best Buy....oh well, I did the smart thing by working in the audio department instead of computers I can handle rednecks who want a smokin' deal on a ghetto home theatre system, but I think I'd have a migrane dealing with tech idiots (not the impaired; I'm talking about the misinformed ones who have this "friend" who told them that DVD burners did exist in the consumer market).

I guess that goes down in the memoirs, hehe.