Slashdot Mirror
The Hard Drive Is Inside the Computer
davidmwilliams writes "Those of us who work in technology have a jargon all of our very own. We know the difference between CPUs and GPUs, between SSD and HD, let alone HD and SDTV! Yet, our users are flat out calling everything 'the hard drive.' Why is it so?" As much as I hate to admit it, this particular thing drives me nuts. You don't call the auto shop and tell them that your engine is broken when your radio breaks!
I also get the term "modem box" frequently, in reference to the tower.
Belief? Hope? Preference?The Existential Vortex
It's one of the few components they routinely hear about which is usually referred to with words rather than letters and is therefore easier to remember. Since it becomes the only known (though not understood) technical term, a certain class of users will invoke it at every opportunity they get to make themselves sound as if they know what they're talking about and thereby deserve some preferential treatment.
This is not something specific to computing. The same type of people will constantly refer their mechanic to their "carburetor" or their plumber to their "ball cock" ;-)
OMG!!! Ponies!!!
I completely understand. If our users had a better grasp of technology, they would be making all the numb skull mistakes. The same mistakes that are ranked Level 1 importance, when in fact every else on my plate is actually more important.
If they used the proper terms, I wouldn't have to carry around a mini shop in a bag.
What I am have a problem with, is when they get offended by you asking them questions that could help me fix it right now, over the phone. Saving them time and, most of the time, money.
Film makers are the reason we pull our feet back when something brushes against them.
Think of the issue from the point of view of someone who has no interest in the technical aspects of a computer. They see the entire desktop amalgamation--display, keyboard, mouse, and box of chips--as the computer. Now consider the first time that the computer, as a whole, caused them anxiety or stress: for most people when a document was lost, or when the system failed to boot, or when the system began malfunctioning. That anxiety was not caused, most frequently, by the CPU, or the motherboard, or by the memory, or the monitor, or the mouse. The source of the anxiety was something that happened with the hard drive. In their struggle to appear to know more about the computer they have managed to identify that there is a significant component called the hard drive. It's a default setting. If the word they are looking for is not the entire computer then, by default, it must be the hard drive.
People do know the difference between the radio and the engine of a car because, for many people, the radio is every bit as important as the engine and, should the radio go out, it would cause them just as much anxiety as the engine going out.
Another poster mentioned 'modem box'. Those people, obviously, have had their largest and most stressful experience with the computer when the modem was no longer working properly. Blame that one on AOL.
the NPG electrode was replaced with carbon blac
And if I hear the phrase "now, I am computer illiterate..." one more fucking time....
The best therapy for that one though, is to mentally change illiterate to ignorant.
Trust me, those people are fine. It's the ones who pretend to know what they're talking about, that cause the headaches.
$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
Well how about this. You, as an IT knowing guy, tell your friend, the retard, that his hard drive is broken. Instead of buying a new hard drive, he buys a new PC, on your recommendation. Language is language and it's important that we are all synced.
Well, if you tell him the hard drive is broken, and he buys a new computer, then logically he _had_ to buy a new computer because that person would have never, ever been able to buy a new hard drive and to get his old computer with the new hard drive to work. The guy's only choices were to buy a new computer or to pay someone to fix it.
I think the problem is actually that the computer field didn't come up with a proper term themselves. I remember way back-in-the-day some computer enthusiasts calling it "the CPU" which is also highly misleading. Nowadays, computer people will call it, "the tower", "the machine", "the box", or something like that. But let's face it--these are actually not very good terms. We don't actually have a precise and universal term that refer to it. The situation was muddled by the fact that there is no standard form-factor for a computer (we went from big servers, to boxes laying down, to boxes standing up like towers, to all-in-ones like iMacs, with all kinds of variations in between...).
Now this isn't a problem for computer people. We know what "power cycle the system" means and we can be precise by saying "press the button on the front of the case". But because amongst ourselves we don't consistently use a precise term, other people just picked-up on whatever term sounded right. We kept referring to "the hard drive" while pointing at (actually inside) the box, so people thought the box was "the hard drive". It's understandable.
The whole situation is funny, but not the end of the world. You just have to keep in mind that when someone uses precise terminology (like "hard drive" or "operating system" or "internet") they could very well be using it wrong.
A CFO at a local community bank once told me (I was the manager of network services for the bank):
"I don't want to know how the watch works, I just want to know what time it is."
That put my job into perspective.
-ted
Try the "computer as kitchen" analogy.
System memory = counter top; where stuff that's being worked on now is
Hard drive = refrigerator and cabinets; stuff you want to keep/use, but aren't using now
CPU = oven
Programs = food processor, blender, etc.
I've found it to work surprisingly well.
Loose things are easy to lose. You're getting your hair cut. They're going there to see their aunt.
Because this friend knows so little about computers that they're going to end up asking the Geek Squad, or a similar outfit, to do it for them. They're going to need their hard drive swapped out ($100 for the part, $50 for the labor), data mirrored ($160), they'll probably get convinced they need their operating system reinstalled ($130), primary office suite reinstalled ($50), and antivirus software ($30). Of course, all these numbers are presuming they still hold the disks and license keys the various software started with. At a cost of $520 for a machine that's probably at least 2 years old, they might notice in the store that they could just get a brand new system for less than that.
I think that "Shit" works in that sentence. Although I think that the second instance of "Shit" could have been replaced with "crap".
Why is it so hard to only have politicians for a few years, then have them go away?
Um, send them a URL to Newegg of the thing they need to buy and then make them buy you dinner when you install it? Jeez, all this social networking and nobody knows how to have friends anymore.
Just wanted to say thank you for doing this. That is an example of excellent customer service and excellent sales tactics. Informed customers are happy customers, and happy customers come back to you. I wish more businesses would take the time to do what you do. So some karmic kudos to you, sir. You deserve them. :-)
Here's to hot beer, cold women, and Glaswegian kisses for all.