vanblah

How do people learn to drive a car? I mean, come on, learning to USE a computer is a lot less difficult than driving. I'm not talking about how to repair computers or deep registry editing or anything like that.

For instance, the laws and signs and traffic are different in every state and yet MOST people can handle driving in almost any state. Some states have difficult roads to navigate and you may take a minute or two to adjust. But adjust you do and you are on your way to your destination.

But computers ... what is so difficult about click on this and type this in and hit enter? I've never had a problem with it. I wasn't born with the knowledge. Yes, I know that some people are more interested in it than others ... but if you're going to be a secretary in an office you should at least have a modicum of knowledge when it comes to computers. I'm so tired of the people who just don't seem to get it. It's laziness.

If you can drive a car ... if you can cook a T.V. dinner ... if you can fill out a 1040EZ form ... you can operate a computer. There is no mystique about it.

Oh well, our helpdesk guy is out sick today so I've been getting some of the calls. It sucks ... I remember when I did helpdesk several years ago. It sucked then too.

/rant

Coppertop

ID-10T errors rock, along with EBKACs.

portwineboy

Hush! Not true. It takes unusual and arcane knowledge to operate a PC.

/doesn't want to lose any freelance work...

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vox_rox

As a former IT support person, I absolutely feel your pain. My gawd, I had people calling me up asking waht to do when they get error messages like "file not found." What the fuck, can you not read? What do you THINK that means. Geez.

Anyway, the funniest call ever while I worked in IT was when my co-worker was called to this lady's offic ewho was complaining that the cursor, every once in a while, would just take off and keep moving, even if she was not typing.

Thinking that it was an obvious problem, my friend made his way to her office to find a rather, um, shall we say "top heavy" young lady sitting there, and when he asked her what was going on with the keyboard, he realized that as she typed, she would get closer and closer to the desk until her breasts began resting on, you guessed it, the spacebar.

She had just moved to this office, and she had this crappy little desk and a useless chair, and she needed to sit like that. Don't forget, this was before the days of ergonomic anything.

Anyway, to your post, you just have to be patient (more patient than me, god knows!), and deal with the questions as they come. I feel the same as you when it comes to basic knowledge. My Mother (for whom I am a dedicated tech support person), still can not tell me the difference between and application and a file. I can tell her 17 thousand ways what the difference is, and nothing. Go figure.

Anyway, hope your day/week/month goes better, good luck.

Peace,

Pierre

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There is no such thing as strong coffee - only weak people.
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vanblah

As soon as the helpdesk guy gets back from Flu-ville I will be happy.

splck

I deal with people that have no interest in computers and don't give a shit if they learn or not. They learn the absolute minimun they need to in order to do their job.
Things that come easy to you may not come easy to them.

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nice line eh?

jonjon42

they are a good source of income...used to charge 50 bucks to fix them (usually very little wrong)

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A damn dirty hippie without the dirty part....

Shirtninja

I truely hate people who use the phrase "computer illiterate". The hate as grown so much that I want to hurt someone. It isnt that hard to learn basics, but I swear some people would rather remain stupid and have someone else just do it for them then actually take 20 minutes and humble themselves long enough to learn something new.

welshbyte

I had a week of insanity last year where a few people in a chat room i frequent all had the same "problem".

"That bar at the bottom of the screen moved to the side of the screen and it wont move back!! It must be a virus or something because i didnt do it!!"

And when i told them how to point, click and drag it back to the bottom of the screen they all told me how stupid it was that their computer did it all on its own. Yeah right.

Odd how they all did the same thing in the same ~week though.

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viejo gringo

It is like the first day of school---the fear of the unknown...

but once they learn, the fear is less and they remember more and more...just don't do it for them...make them do it...and speek a language they can understand....remeber the KISS system
Keep It Simple Stupid...

Craven Morehead

You know, if computer illiterate people could post on a forum, they'd probably start a thread like this about us.

vox_rox

That's funny.

In fact, in high school teachers' rooms all over North America, computer-clueless teachers are gossiping about us right now. Or in lunch rooms in large coroporations. Or anywhere there are groups of people who just can't quite seem to get "the knack" of computers.

Yup, I feel my ears burn. I'm a loser, and I know it, but at least I know how to load/run/fix my computer without saying "that little thing that goes around the screen keeps changing shape and disapperaing, and the thing I'm working on doesn't look the same" or some such fucking moronic statement that I've hear a million times.

Peace,

Pierre

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There is no such thing as strong coffee - only weak people.
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Kadath

I've been doing tech support for a living, more or less, since I was in college, despite having a degree in engineering. Sometimes I lose my patience with people who don't stop and listen to what you are telling them. I'm fine with people who are not experienced with computers but are willing to listen and learn, but people who take the attitude of "I don't care, just make it like it was" get on my nerves. I do find SNL's Nick Burns (Your company's computer guy) to be pretty funny, though.

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ShaniFaye

I remember WAY back in my early pc days.....mine did that by itself once it was the best thing that ever happened.....mine stays on the right hand side of my pc on any computer Im using....people will come in and say "how'd you get that over there!!" So many people dont know its movable

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Bill O'Rights

The task bar moves?!? Cooool!

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"Hedonism with rules isn't hedonism at all, it's the Republican party." - JumpinJesus

It is indisputable that true beauty lies within...but a nice rack sure doesn't hurt.

welshbyte

Last night i was helping someone out online because they couldn't get file transfers working through their firewall. I asked her "What firewall do you have". And she replied, "Well its like zone alarm, only not".

I despair sometimes.

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There are only two industries that refer to their customers as "users". - Edward Tufte

WillyPete

I had to go rush to help someone once as they were the director's PA. Big importance.

Not everyone had arrived yet so they got me to help out the support staff, the helpdesk guy couldn't figure it out.

I wandered up there for her to tell me her laptop was beeping from the moment she turned it on.
I followed her into the office and I swear to god, she'd had her purse resting on the friggin' keyboard.

Slapped the phone guy upside the head when I got back because my coffee was cold.

Smackre

i get called by my grandma and other relatives practly 2-3 times a week when im off work. It gets agravating sometimes but i go help my grandma / grandpa on stupid stuff.

Seriously one time my grandpa called me up and told me hes cd drive stoped working. I had him do a bunch of simple stuff i thouhg it could be. So then igot in my truck and drove 25 mins to hes house to notice that he had put the CD in UPSIDE DOWN. I was abit aggravted i had drove for 25 mins just for that but i didnt tell them that since they are my grandparents hehe.

Now my cusin Which i cant stand. For about 2 months strait it called me everday when he first got hes first computer and finaly i had to tell him to stop calling me. I was like if your going to fiddle around with stuff and break it then learn how to fix it ur self. Thats how i learned.

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vox_rox

Gawd, I've heard that on at least two occasions, and I still can't imagine how they think you can figure that out.

The one I remember is when I got a call from someone who was having problems with her database. At the time, the desktop app we used was MS Access, but we ran oracle on the Data Warehouse server, and there was some legacy stuff that we ran on Foxpro for annual reporting, although that eventually got phased out.

So the call goes like this:

Caller: My data is all wrong, and it won't work.
Me: <sigh> when you say wrong, do you mean the values, or the how they're displayed.
Caller: All of it, it looks different, it's not what I asked for, it's showing me stuff I have never seen before.
Me: Okay, good, let's start there. What is your Data Sources (at the time, everyone using the DAta Warehouse took a course and they HAD to know what the data source was,)
Caller: I can't tell what the source is.
Me: Look at the title bar of the window you're in, and tell me what it says.
Caller: It says Microsoft Excel Samples.xls
Me: <click>
Caller (probably): Hello? Hello!?

So, yeah. It's like a database, but it's not a database. Man, how can you NOT know what application you're using, after being told in a class less than two days ago how to run a query? And, on top of all that, she never used Excel in her job, and there was not even a shortcut for it on her desktop or in her programs menu, she would have actually had to search around to fuck up like that, then call me to tell me about it.

Sheesh, it never ended.

Peace,

Pierre

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There is no such thing as strong coffee - only weak people.
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jonjon42

yeah...I feared for my parents when I went away to school... My brother and sister both have/had no interest in the workings their computers and I had to play tech support. my router/fileserver setup was good and solid (debian-woody) but if something goes wrong with their desktops I would have alot of trouble fixing it from school. I ended up loading linux desktops for them....got all their crap working...made nice little icons (basically made a windows desktop) bought crossover office for word and other windows app's that they can't live without, and started ssh. Now I can fix all their problems from a terminal at home...


God bless ssh....

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piesen

and thanks to all you guys and you suggestions and your patience my PC is now working at 110%

thanks


Piesen

mikec

the posters in this thread should love this link: Computer Stupidities

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Until the 20th century, reality was everything humans could touch, smell, see, and hear. Since the initial publication of the charted electromagnetic spectrum, humans have learned that what they can touch, smell, see, and hear is less than one millionth of reality