Computer Misconceptions by Age

What misconceptions did you have about computers when you were younger?
>10: Benchmarked all computer solely by their amount of RAM.
>15: Benchmarked all computers by whether their processor was "an i3, an i5, or an i7" and assumed they were all created equal.
>18-to-present: Vaguely understand the complexities of processing power, but still internally assume that an i7 is "about 2 better" than an i5.

Nothing. I actually read about the stuff to know what the fuck I was doing.

I knew jack shit about computers until I was 18. I went from winpleb to Gentoo user in about a year.

*tips fedora*

Used to defrag weekly because I thought it sped up the pc (also liked the animation). DOS 6 days.

>I grew up with the internet
OK kid, you're smart, thanks for contributing.

I thought 1kb equals 1000 bytes

Google would like to have a word with you.

I thought you can download ram xd

You could "break into" anything without ever having a modem or anything like it. It was '82 or '83.

Kibibytes literally didn't exist when I was younger.

I don't know the ages but
>Thought only ram mattered
>Thought Linux was trying to compete with windows and macos
>Thought resolution didn't mean anything

>Thought resolution didn't mean anything
This.
>This monitor is bigger, so it's better/has more pixels.

>10: Benchmarked all computer solely by their amount of RAM.
heh, i did the same thing, thought that by upgrading my old 486 to 32M ram, i'd be able to play a new 3D game that required 32M ram (.. and a pentium, and a 3d accellerator, but what the fuck is that amirite)

Fuck you

I'm still waiting for Pentium 5.

in halo 1, at the start of the game, there's an ad of someone selling their computer on the board opposite the window in the bridge, and one of the specifications is a pentium XI or thereabouts (forget the exact number)
i figured it was likely

That RAM doesn’t necessarily make your PC faster.

not everyone here is so young that they had internet access at 10 years old

>Didn't know shit about specs, all that mattered was "can it run crysis ?"

Grampa.

when i was 12 i thought you could distribute viruses as a flash file (supplemented by cheesy animation)

history showed that i wasn't that far off

Not much. There was a very tiny period of time between me starting to give a shit about computers and me actually knowing about them. First computer I used for any real duration of time I knew literally nothing about. Second one I built myself with moderate competency. I still don't know what parts the first one had.

i did and i'm not that young.

>i'm not that young.
i remember saying that when i was 20, the adults within earshot just laughed

>download .iso file
>would always burn it to a DVD+RW to use it
Didn't learn about virtual drive mounting for years

>angrily hitting against the computer helps when it froze

I was greatly surprised the first time I opened a PC to find the vast majority of it was empty space. I know there are some small form factor models that manage to use up almost everything inside, but your general ATX build is half empty. I had always assumed that a motherboard was really really deep and used up every square inch.

Defragging did speed up file access though. I used to do it weekly not because it was really neccessary, but because it only took a few minutes if done regularly.

>tfw no P6 chip

How about judging video cards based on the amount of VRAM they had?
That one's kind of a natural progression because prior to 3D acceleration and 16+MB cards the video memory count controlled how far you could push your desktop res and color depth.

>How about judging video cards based on the amount of VRAM they had?
sure, why not
i don't think i was even aware of my vram size or why the limits were what they were until i got a 32M card, and by that time, that wasn't a factor in limiting desktop size and colour depth

>tfw no P6 chip
they did make P6 chips, just not "pentium 6"
P6 is the name of the later pentium 32bit architecture, between P5 (early pentium) and intel64

My knowledge of computers grew proportionally to how much I cared about how computers work. So I never really had any "dude, woah" moments with computer hardware. And with software the 'dude, woah" moment was in realizing that you can just MAKE software. You don't need super special expensive tools or anything. You just type something in and it does stuff.

Hackers is vindicated.

they told the far off future, of "a couple months from now"

>>Thought Linux was trying to compete with windows and macos

half this board still thinks this

I honestly can't think of any, I was self taught and wasn't retarded.

>32: thought I could buy a phone with a removable battery from my carrier

That wardialing was free and a good idea to do from home. The phone company proved me wrong.

> 10: benchmarked computer solely by the amount of RAM
> 12: benchmarked computer based off cpuboss score
> 13: benchmarked PC off all components
> 14: fully understood processing power, bottlenecking etc.

15: a 486-66 was more powerful than imagination could contain.