how in de hell have y'all gotten to this point?!?!

never once have i've visited this site and gotten bad info---what have you folks studied to get to be experts in this field? comp science? time and research on computer? as the sayin' goes; better to teach a dude to fish than to buy him captain d's-----thx, steve

 

Wow. I totally misread this the first time I replied.

Reopened and with my sincerest apologies.

 

Bump.

I started as Microsoft support 14 years ago. Since then I earned a BS in Software Engineering and an MCP in HTML5/CSS3/JavaScript. I am working towards my MCSD.

 

On-the-job training, courtesy of the hardware company I work in tech support for.

 

I am here to learn. I do that by reading the Support Forums, there is a wealth of knowledge there if you take the time to read it. Use the search option in the forums to look things up you want to know or ask questions and following the advice the Geeks give. There are also several good Major Geeks Videos you can watch. Like Adrynalane mentioned you could always take classes.

 

10 years military working with Novel, Unix, NT, IBM systems between 1993 to 2003. Got out and worked at a local shop for repairing computers, then got into my current awesome job working county IT. Full on virtualization with servers and desktop VDI (virtual desktop Infrastructure). Going to be upgrading our vdi solution soon, looking forward to our new servers. I could go on, but I'm not.

 

Got my first computer when I was in single digits a ZX spectrum 128k, my first PC when I was in my late teens a pentium 2 350MHz, I'm now in my mid thirties.

I'm a gamer, the more I know about computers the better I can make my games run.

If I didn't game I'd probably still be using my Pentium 2 beige box.

 

I'm a wizard.

Actually I'm usually pretty sure where the problem lies on the hardware side, or I have the ability to find similar issues and distill a solution from that on the software side. Plus I let the smart people answer first so if my solution is correct I look really good and if they answer it first I don't look bad.

@MA: Yeah, but plugging it in is electrical work and thus a completely different union. You should know that.

 

First time I sat at a computer was back in the early eighties. A friend of my uncle's who worked for BASF plopped me down at about five years old to play a game where you had to land a rocket ship between craggy rocks. Then came Atari 2600, and I was admittedly hooked. Like musksnipe, I've always had a natural curiousity, and had been taking things apart since I was a kid. Thankfully I got better at putting them back together as the years passed. :-D Saves me money at the mechanic shop, and I worked as one for a few years too. I tend to do most of my own work except tires, windshields, and tranny rebuilds. Some things are better left to the pros and expensive tools/equipment.

Later on came Apple and Oregon Trail, then DOS programming in middle school, and encountered Novell in high school. Went to school for electricity, solid state technologies, PLCs, and sometime in the early 2000's started raiding what they now call "e-waste" for anything useful. I've been passing out cobbled rigs and refurbished laptops to people who couldn't really afford one for quite a while now.

Trust me when I say that building "Franken-PCs" will teach you plenty.

I was researching a hardware issue almost six years ago, and tripped over this site. I'm not so sure about being an "expert", but I've been here learning more and more ever since.
:major

 

Pretty much most of us started when computers were first coming out, and were not as popular as they are now. I remember shaking my head when companies were advertising their business on the web, and now it is everywhere.

Whether you learn DOS or Linux (even apple), with new operating systems coming out left and right, if you know the basics then you should not have a problem.

 

Thank you all for your responses. Luckily, I'm not yet at the point to have just enough knowledge to be dangerous. All my help and info has come from you good folks. Got some questions with multiple issues on the basic running of my laptop, so I'll see you over in "software." Thank you again.

 

I think we all probably started this way at one time. Someone guided us on the right path.