Sales People

the entire issue with usb cables not included "in the box" is not entirely the retailer's fault.. manufacturer's pack it they sell it. At least some sales people are decent enough to mention it, rather than the average joe going home, finding out its not there and swearing his head off at the world conspiring against him.

with the fool-proof concept on products, lemme put it this way. I work at a shop that sells tech stuff, stationary etc. and without fail every day at least 5+ customers come up to me asking where printer inks are. Now, in this store there is a gigantic sign (among multitudes of posters saying "looking for printer inks? Go to Inkworks") saying "Inkworks". 3 of those mentioned customers also ask whilst standing directly in front of them.
 
Look guys, treat going into these places as a source of entertainment. Most of us know more about PCs than a shopful of these boxshifting eejits so use your knowledge to babblespeak with them. Most of them will not understand what you are on about especially if you make up some piece of jargon - like P standard wireless networking for example.
Perhaps we could have a new thread just for the best bit of nonsense you got a salesman to believe and go and find out more about?
 
well just to clear something, Printer USB cables are never part of the kit , Yes the cable has to be purchased separatly ,
its cause the margin on printer is so less , Manufacturers dont make much profit of printers , its the ink that gets the revenue
 
You shouldn't be buying printer cables from most places you buy a printer. I've found the best places to get a USB cable (of any type) is Big Lots or Monoprice.com
 
"Look guys, treat going into these places as a source of entertainment... Most of them will not understand what you are on about especially if you make up some piece of jargon"

that's the best part :D if you get someone who doesn't know that much about pc's then you can make things up and as long as you sound convincing and know what you're on about then they'll pretend they understand :D

you could go on about ram flux or micro usb jolt failure or something (i'm making these up as i go along) and you just have to have a serious look on your face and they'll play along :D

ahhh, isn't being a nerd so much fun ;) haha


on the printer note, in the uk cableuniverse.com is a good place for cables of all sorts, from hdmi to parallel if you're feeling old school
 
An interesting element in all this turns out to be that there are equally incompetent sales erks on the other side of the Atlantic and they attract the same sort of opinion.
A long time ago, before most of you were born, I was once summoned as an expert (an ex is a has-been and a spurt is a drip under pressure) witness in a court case against PCWorld, UKs greatest box shifter. Their technical manager stated that there was no such thing as a copy of Windows 98 upgrade (from Windows 95). I said there was and produced one out of my case. The PCWorld bloke then started shouting at the judge, saying it was a fabrication and a made up job. Needless to say they lost the case. Tee Hee. Joy Unbound. Dance amongst the flowers, etc etc.
 
haha i wish i was there to see that ;)

i was around when win 95 was, our first pc had it and a 610mb hard drive and 90mhz processor :D
 
K.jacko - you are too kind!
Talking of old things - anyone any idea what this is/was? The little drive beside it is a 40Gb 2.5" - I have had the big one just for fun for years but have no idea about its capacity or what it was for.
 

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WOAH that's huge!

i'll look on wikipedia ;)

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as far as i can see it's a hard drive just really old :D does it have anything that looks like an ide connector or anything like that?
 
I think winchester drive was a generic term for a hard drive in the days when most PCs didn't have one at all. I just tried to weigh this and it is over 7 lbs wt. Did not do the kitchen scales much good....
 
google says that a winchester drive is "Originally meant to signify that the drive used Winchester technology, but many times it is used to mean it is a fixed disk drive, implementing either Winchester or Whitney technology and non-removable disks sealed in a contaminant-free housing." so basically a hard drive by the looks of it :)

on the topic of large storage media, who remembers these?
 
The thing does not have an IDE connector - it is more like the spade connector they used to use on the 5.25" floppy disk drives. I had another look at it and there are no manufacturer's marks at all.
 
i know i'm kind of bringing an old(ish) thread back but i remembered a time that i had a GOOD experience in a pc shop :grinthumb

i was on holiday and wanted to get a pcmcia usb adapter for my laptop. i found a small pc shop but didn't want to go in shouting out random computer acronyms so asked for a laptop usb adapter. the guy said "do you mean a pcmcia usb card" or something of the sort and i was a bit surprised that he decided to go saying computer acronyms at me :D i felt my geeking was appreciated in said shop haha

it was only a small shop which is probably why the guy knew what he was on about, if it was comet or pc world i expect they'd get confused and try to sell me a cd rom drive or something :p
 
I needed the same thing once in Canada so went into the London Drug store in Victoria - bloke knew exactly what I wanted ahd it was cheap too.
Great country - just wish I could live there but my wife won't let me (and she is Canadian)!
 
A friend of mine had a Pioneer Laserdisc player back in 83-84. He thought it was the greatest thing since, well, sliced bread. He had it hooked up to his stereo system, but the speakers were to far away from the tv so the sound seemed to be disconnected from the action on screen because there wasn't any center channel to localize the sound.

I remember video tape movies costing over $100.00 each
 
good ol' laserdiscs ;)

they were before my time but you can still buy them on eBay :D

i read about them on wikipedia ;)
 
I know this will probably bring the swarm down on me...

I recently went to one of the Apple Stores in a mall in St. Louis because I was interested in picking up a new nano. I told my sister that I didn't need to buy one that day and that if I got talked to like I was an ***** or if they pressured me I wasn't going to get one there. I walked in and there was a rep at nearly every table, and at every section. I started looking at the Nanos and the rep came over and asked me if I had any questions, I said no and he left me alone. Then I went over and looked at a few other things in the store and came back and told the dude what I wanted. He said ok, went in the back and brought out my Nano, and I paid for it right there. He had a credit card scanner thing like UPS and FedEx do for signing for packages. It was a very plesant expierence and suprised me, I expected the reps to be 'full of smug'.
 
SNGX1275 said:
It was a very plesant expierence and suprised me, I expected the reps to be 'full of smug'.
i was expecting some sort of big twist when i was reading that :D

how exactly it would twist i wasn't sure but i was waiting for it all the same :p
 
Well Curry's and Pc World store advisors will do anything to get you buy a computer ect... from them. lol.

Regards Jase :)
 
good point ;)

if i'd have said to them "i need a pcmcia usb adapter for my laptop cos it has no usb ports" they'd be like

"no usb ports eh? huh, how about that. why don't you buy this bargain toshiba laptop that doesn't have enough memory but looks nice!"
 
i can understand they have to make money and that but i couldn't bring myself to sell something to somebody that i knew wasn't up to scratch

btw congrats on the 700th post Jase (#47 in this thread) :) you're catching up with me ;) haha
 
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