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Geekspeak Baffles Web Users

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the roflcopter dept.

An anonymous reader writes to mention a BBC article on the technology buying public's continued frustration with 'geek speak'. Despite ever-increasing adoption of high tech gadgets in first-world nations, the terms used to describe what these new toys do often elude the people who buy them. From the article: "Acronyms in particular foxed users. 75% of online Britons did not know that VOD stands for video-on-demand, while 68% were unaware that personal video recorders were more commonly referred to as PVRs. Millions of people keep in touch via instant messaging but some 57% of online Brits said they did not know that the acronym for it was IM. 'The technology industry is perhaps the most guilty of all industries when it comes to love of acronyms,' said Mr Burmaster. "

2 of 363 comments (clear)

  1. It's not just Acronyms... by XNine · · Score: 5, Insightful

    My parents get the idea of Memory (RAM, or to save those who don't know this acronym: Random Access Memory) for a computer crossed with "memory" (HDD or Hard Disk Drive). I tell my mother "you need more memory" and she instantly freaks out with "I HAVE TO UPGRAD ETHE HARD DRIVE AGAIN?!" No, mom. I still love her.

    --
    Never monkey with another monkey's monkey.
    1. Re:It's not just Acronyms... by Skadet · · Score: 5, Insightful
      You know, back in high school when I sold computers for a chain, I came up with this helper:

      Let's say your computer is a kitchen. Your hard drive is the cabinets, and your RAM is the countertop. If you have lots of cabinets and a small countertop, you can still cook whatever you want, you'll just be cleaning up and putting pots and pans away a lot more often. If you have a large counter, you can cook and cook until you're done, and clean it all up at once.

      Nothing earthshattering, but I got a lot of "Ohhhh!!"s after explaining it that way.
      --
      Sony ha