Technology is irritating

[Misery]

Yeah I just wanted to state that, for the record. Bloody computers, never quite working right, stupid Windows, interfering so much that it even interferes with itself (how does that even make sense?) and just... uuuuuuuuuuuuuuugh

Yes, I'm having one of those days, with this stuff. Been surrounded by computers and tech in general all my life. I have easy command over most of it (except my phone, I dont like phones). But still, drives me staight up the wall some days. And across the ceiling. And into the ceiling fan. Lots of spinning, thrown out the window into the place where sanity is no more.

ugh.

How about you guys, any particular frustrations with tech of any sort? Got any funny stories about it or whatever? I tend to think that tech mistakes can be pretty hilarious sometimes.

 

[Knower of nothing]

The one I love to share, though it's only half a tech reason, is when some kind of mystery issue made it so that when I turned on one of the bathroom lights, the internet would no longer work if your pc was in the bedroom next to the bathroom. Just made me go "????" but I confirmed over and over and it's just what happens. The connection stability goes straight down when the light is on and back to normal the second it's off. No other computer in the house had the problem, just the one in the room next to the bathroom. No other issues other than net stability were found while the light was on.
We never solved this either, we just ended up using that room for something else so there's no pc there for anyone to notice it.

 

[Raggamuffin]

My computer is starting to get long in the tooth. But it's over 5 years old now. Although the SSD is less than 2 years old.

Going to get a gaming laptop once the van is done. But they scare me. They don't seem to last as long as a desktop.

Funny stories? Lost a game and slapped a flight/joystick on my old family PC and it snapped. Quite easily I might add.

Same PC kept crashing, so I rapidly hammered the on/off button and broke the connection to the motherboard (apparently, according to IT shop).

What don't you like about phones? I have the previous gen flagship of the Samsung and I bought it for the 108MP camera. It allows for nice photos which can be obtained far quicker than faffing around with my DSLR, lenses, settings etc. Plus, you can do basic cropping, editing and enhancements on the go. Also, phone screens dwarf the tiny one's you get on a DSLR to check your photos with.

Ed

 

[Forest Cat]

Smartphones are awful. Maybe they are useful but the small screens, the tiny keyboards, the endless menues and endless settings and things that doesn't work right, it makes we want to throw them into a woodchipper. I have heard that hell is a waiting room where you have to sit and try to figure out settings and find menues on a smartphone that doesn't work, for all eternity. The tiny keyboards are especially maddening, when I type I hit two buttons and have to correct spelling mistakes in every word all the time. I have one of those Galaxy phones now, hate is a strong word but I think I actually hate it.

 

[Gerald Wilgus]

With technology I hate that you are forced into thinking how the programmers decide that you must think and behave. And the winners are not always the best. I hate MS Word especially as it is nearly impossible to edit functions, unlike the much better Word Perfect that it displaced.

 

[Misery]

Ooh, I just remembered a story myself.

So, I had a PS2, right. Well... no I had a lot of them. Accursed things broke easily. Slimlines, mostly. Terrible quality, those.

Well, I had one that PARTLY worked, the one that lasted the longest. But it only worked if you used The Boot.

I dont mean "boot" as in "boot it up" or some other computer term. I mean an actual freaking boot. You had to put the disc in, close the drive, and then put the boot on top of it. If you did not do that, the thing would do nothing at all.

Normally, I'm a huge fan of retro gaming from any era. But I make an exception for PS2 stuff. It's the only console where I actually got rid of my collection instead of holding onto it. I knew, for absolute sure, I wasnt going to play any of those again.

What don't you like about phones?

Everything. Absolutely everything.

I disliked phones even before they were portable. After all, they're used to make.... *spooky voice* ... phone calls. I shudder at the very thought.

And these days? Well... I see them for what they are. Just another stupid way for corporations to shove ads in your face. After all, that's the main use, aint it? Social media?

It's funny, I'm the technomancer of the family, but my PARENTS are the ones that are always glued to their stupid phones. I complain at them about this regularly.

 

[LadyS]

I was thinking this yesterday. In particular the volume control. With many newer things they want to get rid of buttons altogether and put all controls on the screen. But they don't think of the lag in function that happens when the computer can't keep up with what you're trying to do. Example of trying to quickly turn down the loud volume which lags in time, super annoying. Seriously bring back buttons and physical controls...these stupid computers cannot keep up...

 

[velociraptor]

Yeah I just wanted to state that, for the record. Bloody computers, never quite working right, stupid Windows, interfering so much that it even interferes with itself (how does that even make sense?) and just... uuuuuuuuuuuuuuugh

No issues with tech. The Internet especially has massively improved my quality of life as I can socialize in ways that suit me now. I'm also kept alive by a pacemaker so I'm a fan of medical tech as well.

 

[maycontainthunder]

W10 22H2 has landed. Run! Run for the hills!!!!

Stupid update caused part of my security software to fail. When I tried to re-install windows blocked it.

That noise you can here is my head repeatedly colliding with my desk.

 

[Forest Cat]

W10 22H2 has landed. Run! Run for the hills!!!!

Oh no!

 

[Outdated]

I agree with both Misery and Forest Cat about the phones. I hate them and they hate me, I put my finger any where near them and multiple things click at once. I also need my other glasses in order to be able to see anything on them.

I used to have the same sorts of computer problems that others have mentioned here, but I started drifting away from Windows back in about 2004. Back then we were calling WinXP Windows Extra Problems.

Linux. It took me a while to get used to and for quite a few years I was running dual boot, but that was only because of games, most of the other software in Linux I prefer over Windows. Especially the office suite. Now Linux has caught up with gaming compatibility I no longer even have a copy of Windows.

The main thing I love about Linux - it's stable. Every time I turn it on nothing has changed, nothing plays up, it just works exactly as it's supposed to always. If there's an issue it's nearly always a hardware issue, the system itself just stays the same.

 

[Judge]

Some five years ago my nine-year old Samsung Series 6 FHD LED tv began to turn off and on in a loop. Back then I came to the conclusion that it was in some kind of recursion based on an interrupted online update. So I took apart the tv so I could disable the network connection that I assumed was interfering with the tv running properly because of a botched upgrade.

Once I did that it seemed to run just fine. Too bad I never bothered to google this issue, or I'd have found that disconnecting network access did not actually fix it. That in fact, it is a power issue where simply unplugging it for a few minutes stopped this weird recursion making it seem like my tv had an evil mind of its own.

Well, four years later a few weeks ago the same problem began to pop up again. Exasperting to say the least. Though this time I realized that it couldn't have been a network issue as I disconnected my "smart tv" from both wired and wireless access several months ago. No longer needed it as it was inferior to my Roku device that uses an Ethernet connection to get online. So I felt like I had to start all over.

It was a bit disheartening this time around, as in fact I began to search through the Internet to get a concise answer, and found numerous possible explanations. One by one I was able to deduce what didn't work. I though I had fixed it with disconnecting the power plug for five minutes, but the recursion came back like a day later. Pulled the plug again and the problem popped up in a matter of hours. Arrrrrgh! Eventually I came across some explanations online that were far more descriptive. That it wasn't just a matter of unplugging the tv, but rather relocating that plug to an outlet that did not use a surge protector, or was connected to multiple plugged devices. Up to now my tv was connected to the same surge protector shared by five other devices. Which probably was creating some kind of voltage irregularity that my Samsung tv's capacitors were beginning to object to.

So...I used an extension cord (still a bad idea by Samsung's perspective) that connected my tv from another outlet shared only by my Roku device. Plus I did one other thing. I wrote down the numerous settings of my tv and chose to do a "hard reset" in accordance with instructions I found. Seems so far the problem has not popped up again, but I'm still a bit skeptical about it all. That all said, so far, so good. (crossing my fingers)

Why not simply buy a new super-duper 4K widescreen tv? Because I have a large library of dvds that all thrive on upscaled 780 to 1080p resolution. Perfectly functional, yet outdated technology that does not bode well on a 4K screen. Not to mention that despite the problem with my Samsung tv, after nine years it still puts out both superb sound and video quality IMO. So....if I have to periodically unplug my tv to stop it from suddenly turning off and on by itself, so be it!

Much like my perfectly running nine-year old desktop computer I built, I am NOT going to rush out to buy or build another one just to appease Microsoft and their effing shareholders. I've had it up to here with the whole "2.0" crap where everyone must upgrade their hardware after so many months or years just to make corporations happy and buy the latest and greatest nonsense. Nope-nope-nope. Oh yeah, I'm on Linux Mint right now. So much for Microsoft....

And I still love my "obsolete and inferior" 1080p tv. My bad!

 

[Judge]

W10 22H2 has landed. Run! Run for the hills!!!!

Stupid update caused part of my security software to fail. When I tried to re-install windows blocked it.

That noise you can here is my head repeatedly colliding with my desk.

Yeah. It is disturbing to observe. Though in the case of my third-party security software, it still works and manages to keep Windows Defender at bay. However I've learned one thing for sure. That when Windows boots up, it still takes some seconds/minutes for Windows to acknowledge my third party security software. That if I start doing keystrokes right when Windows boots up, it's likely to interfere with how it acknowledges my security and warns me that it's not recognizing that software. Oh brother.

If you aren't already doing this, give it a shot. Don't do any keystrokes for at least two minutes after bootup. Then click on the security feature to see if Windows acknowledges your third-party security software with a check mark citing all is well.

Not a big deal, but then I hardly use Windows now that I have Linux.

 

[maycontainthunder]

@Judge , normally it boots and loads just fine. I have no clue what the gremlin was because right now I'm running a clean install of 22H2 with this software installed and it might be running alright.

The PC it acted up on was my original custom built in 2010. I'm going to leave it alone now it is back on 21H2.

 

[Judge]

@Judge , normally it boots and loads just fine. I have no clue what the gremlin was because right now I'm running a clean install of 22H2 with this software installed and it might be running alright.

The PC it acted up on was my original custom built in 2010. I'm going to leave it alone now it is back on 21H2.

Time for Linux.

 

[maycontainthunder]

@Judge , if Linux fixed the sound and wifi drivers so they actually worked properly (sound quality is awful and wifi doesn't work) plus added support for MS Office (don't like the free ones) then I would jump.

 

[Judge]

@Judge , if Linux fixed the sound and wifi drivers so they actually worked properly (sound quality is awful and wifi doesn't work) plus added support for MS Office (don't like the free ones) then I would jump.

Does your MB use Intel High Definition Audio with Realtek ALC887-VD drivers? Yeah, Linux doesn't like them.

I had to jump through some hoops to get my Intel HDA to work properly. Had to make three different alterations within the Intel HDA subfolders requiring root authority, plus use Alsa Tools GUI to retask my external sound jack parameters. Until I retasked my output jack, I had no sound at all!

Can't comment on wi-fi though. Had no problem with the OS identifying them instantly. Have done so with multiple versions of Linux Mint, PopOS and Zorin OS16.

 

[maycontainthunder]

Not Intel, Realtek. There's supposed to be a control panel available but I couldn't find it anywhere. Regarding wifi it can see the dongle, has the software installed but it doesn't do anything!

 

[Judge]

Not Intel, Realtek. There's supposed to be a control panel available but I couldn't find it anywhere. Regarding wifi it can see the dongle, has the software installed but it doesn't do anything!

Here's a synopsis of my Realtek solutions. Worked on multiple distros. With my MB and Realtek hardware, I have to do this with any Linux Distro I install!

A. Provide sound to external speakers:

1. Download “Alsa-Tools-GUI”. Select the feature called “HDA Jack Retask” and select “Realtek ALC887-VD”. Then check the override box marked “Green Line Out, Rear Side” - ”Internal Speaker (Back)”.

2. Check the box under “Options” marked “Parser Hints”. Then select from “Hints” and change the first line called “Jack_Detect” value to “NO”.

3. Then click the box marked “Install Boot Override” and click the “ok” prompt. Then reboot the system.

* Alsa-Tools-GUI can also be downloaded from the terminal with the following commands:

a. sudo apt-get update -y

b. sudo apt-get install -y alsa-tools-gui

Then reboot the system.


B. Fix random popping sounds and other unwanted noises:

Root Authority: Right-click file manager to choose “open as root”, then access the files accordingly:

1. Using root authority, access: sys/module/snd_hda_intel/parameters/power_save

Change the value from 1 to 0.


2. Using root authority, access: sys/module/snd_hda_intel/parameters/power_save_controller

Change the value from Y to N.


3. Using root authority, access: etc/modprobe.d/alsa-base.conf

Add the following as the last line: options snd-hda-intel power_save=0 power_save_controller=N

4. Then access the Terminal, and input the following: sudo apt update and reboot the system.

5. Download the following application: Pulse Audio Volume Control. Access “Configuration” and change the Built-In Audio Profile from “Analog Stereo Duplex” to “Analog Stereo Output”.


* These changes should not only restore speaker sound, but fix the output so the audio output no longer has any discernable audio glitches. Though it also reflects a classic reason why Linux isn't for everyone.

 

[Judge]

Regarding wifi it can see the dongle, has the software installed but it doesn't do anything!

The only thing I can add here is that I use a standard PCIe type Network Adapter with physical antennas rather than a USB dongle. Switching from one to the other might solve that problem, assuming you have a spare PCIe slot on your MB.

While it can see and make use of wifi, I seldom use it other than to run a wireless printer. Otherwise I'm on Ethernet. Living in a large apartment complex, there's just too many people in close proximity using powerful routers. Too much wireless interference...so Ethernet is a far better choice.