Overheard in a nationwide computer retail store:
Customer: “Now what does this 512MB of RAM mean on this PC?”
Salesman: “Umm…RAM is what slows down your PC, see it rams into your processing power, causing slowdowns, thus why it’s called RAM.”
Customer: “Are you sure?”
Salesman: “Who’s the expert here?”
I couldn’t stop laughing.
I was in our University Bookstore the other day looking at software when I overheard a salesman talking to a lady about an iMac.
Salesman: “It has a built in color monitor and comes with a mouse and keyboard–”
Customer: “Does this thing come with a battery backup system?”
Salesman: “No, but we have one over there for $99.00. Do you have problems with power outages?”
Customer: “No, but I don’t want to lose all of my Microsoft documents everytime I turn off the computer!”
Salesman: “You don’t need a battery backup for that. That’s why it has a 4 gigabyte hard drive.”
Customer: “A hard what?”
Salesman: “A hard drive. It’s like a whole bunch of floppy disks inside your computer that you can store documents on.”
Customer: “I want the battery backup.”
Salesman: “You don’t need it.”
Customer: “Why?”
I was in our University Bookstore the other day looking at software when I overheard a salesman talking to a lady about an iMac.
Salesman: “It has a built in color monitor and comes with a mouse and keyboard–”
Customer: “Does this thing come with a battery backup system?”
Salesman: “No, but we have one over there for $99.00. Do you have problems with power outages?”
Customer: “No, but I don’t want to lose all of my Microsoft documents everytime I turn off the computer!”
Salesman: “You don’t need a battery backup for that. That’s why it has a 4 gigabyte hard drive.”
Customer: “A hard what?”
Salesman: “A hard drive. It’s like a whole bunch of floppy disks inside your computer that you can store documents on.”
Customer: “I want the battery backup.”
Salesman: “You don’t need it.”
Customer: “Why?”
I was repairing a broken PC and had finally narrowed the failure down to a dead COM port. I didn’t have a spare I/O board in stock, so I headed down to the local PC shop, which I had avoided as much as possible up until now — too many horror stories about them were making the rounds.
At the counter of the shop (which, by the way, “specialized” in PC repairs and upgrades) I asked for an I/O card. The person behind the counter just stared at me blankly. I rephrased my request and asked for a serial card. Still the blank look. Just then, someone walked up from the back room, where he had been jabbing at the interior of an open PC with a screwdriver.
“This guy wants a serial card,” said the first one to the second.
“Oh, no problem. We’ve got plenty of those around here somewhere,” the second person said. I was relieved that I would be able to get the system online that day instead of having to wait over the weekend for a replacement part in the mail.
After ten minutes of searching high and low, he brought me the “serial cards” he was proud to have found. It was a 10-pack of the aluminized serial number identification tags that you can stick to your system for inventory control.
I looked at it, turned, and walked away without a word.