• Iunnrais@lemmy.world
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      12 days ago

      Non-technical people will sometimes refer to whatever piece of plastic or metal that contains electronic components of any sort but does not consist of an LCD display or obvious input device as a “hard drive”. This includes desktop boxes, external modems, docking stations, UPS systems, teleconferencing platforms, and far, far more. If it has das blinkenlights anywhere on it you can expect it to be referred to as a “hard drive” at some point. It will save you a headache if you just mentally translate their “hard drive” to mean “hardware” instead.

      Alternatively, if it is a display device (an LCD monitor), expect that to be called either “the computer”, “the server”, or “the internet”.

      • DaleGribble88@programming.dev
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        11 days ago

        Tech support has evolved since I got out. I don’t remember this specific point of confusion. However, during the last job I had that involved any level of help desk support with non-technical people, Obama was still in office.

    • jasory@programming.dev
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      12 days ago

      Probably the desktop tower. I’ve seen many people call it a hard drive, but I’m actually not sure how common it is to have speakers in the tower.

      • PoopingCough@lemmy.world
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        12 days ago

        Technically most motherboard has a piezo speaker for POST beeps. Not sure you can route meeting audio through it though.