Norton Rant

Latest Articles

Norton Rant
Page Previous 1, 2

Downsizer Forum Index -> IT Matters

Author

Message

Northern_Lad

Joined: 13 Dec 2004
Posts: 14210
Location: Somewhere

Posted: Tue Jan 11, 05 10:31 am Post subject:
Can you not change her profile to stop her installing stuff?

joanne

Joined: 28 Oct 2004
Posts: 7100
Location: Morecambe, Lancashire

Posted: Tue Jan 11, 05 10:31 am Post subject:

It struck a chord with me as well

My mother uses me like "IT Support, Trainer and General PC Dogsbody" all rolled into one - rather than actually learning how to use the PC properly, if there is something she doesn't understand she just rings me - whether its a field on a form on a website or how to underline stuff in Word - drives me absolutely nuts because I've lost count of the amount of times I've very patiently taken through how to do stuff - She just doesn't listen

My Dad's even worse though - he won't ask for help (thats his natural personality - he never ever asks anyone for help in anything - he waits for people to offer!!!!), he tries to muddle through and ends up on some seriously dodgy websites with no idea how he got there and usually makes things 10x worse than it was if he'd just asked me - for instance the last time I deloused their computer when I installed AVG it had 40 different Spyware programs and 20 virus-like infections

Then add-in my brother who thinks he knows what he is doing but really hasn't a clue and I wonder why under the Black and Purple Hair dye I'm almost completely grey!!!!!

To make things worse, they've all now discovered eBay

Joanne

jema
Downsizer Moderator

Joined: 28 Oct 2004
Posts: 28235
Location: escaped from Swindon

Posted: Tue Jan 11, 05 10:53 am Post subject:
I'd rather not change profiles, I'd like to avoid classifying anyone as a 2 year old But this is almost the last straw. jema

tahir

Joined: 28 Oct 2004
Posts: 45670
Location: Essex

Posted: Tue Jan 11, 05 11:47 am Post subject:
I used to have similar experiences with my FIL, given up completely now

sean
Downsizer Moderator

Joined: 28 Oct 2004
Posts: 42219
Location: North Devon

Posted: Tue Jan 11, 05 11:50 am Post subject:
Just tell him that computers are made by foreigners and he'll probably refuse to touch one ever again

tahir

Joined: 28 Oct 2004
Posts: 45670
Location: Essex

Posted: Tue Jan 11, 05 11:52 am Post subject:
Check out today's Daily Mail headline "Popadom madness"

Treacodactyl
Downsizer Moderator

Joined: 28 Oct 2004
Posts: 25795
Location: Jumping on the bandwagon of opportunism

Posted: Tue Jan 11, 05 12:28 pm Post subject:

jocorless wrote:

My mother uses me like "IT Support, Trainer and General PC Dogsbody" all rolled into one

My mums not that bad, and I've used her as a trainer for many things over the years.

I sometimes think PC sales people are often to blame as they sometimes ship packages that never work together.

joanne

Joined: 28 Oct 2004
Posts: 7100
Location: Morecambe, Lancashire

Posted: Tue Jan 11, 05 12:58 pm Post subject:

Treacodactyl wrote:

PC sales people are often to blame as they sometimes ship packages that never work together.

Ahh you see thats the problem - I sourced the PC and put together the package (which at the time was a really really good deal) but now nearly 5 years later, of course it desperately needs upgrading and try explaining that one to my Mother!!!! - Alot of their problems come from the fact that its a Gateway running Win98 Millenium Edition and doesn't have a CD or DVD writer so I can't back it up and give it the format c:\ option to clean it out which I'm really itching to do

Joanne

jema
Downsizer Moderator

Joined: 28 Oct 2004
Posts: 28235
Location: escaped from Swindon

Posted: Tue Jan 11, 05 1:05 pm Post subject:

jocorless wrote:

Treacodactyl wrote:

PC sales people are often to blame as they sometimes ship packages that never work together.

I have taken to getting quite ruthless with :

format c:\

I do it to a lot of people. With a really fubar machine, getting it sorted without this measure, can be finger in a dyke measures. Only works in fairy tales.

jema

Treacodactyl
Downsizer Moderator

Joined: 28 Oct 2004
Posts: 25795
Location: Jumping on the bandwagon of opportunism

Posted: Tue Jan 11, 05 2:40 pm Post subject:

jocorless wrote:

I run a laptop with the first edition of Win 98, almost impossible to get anything modern to work with it. Broadband was fun installing

No CD writer or anything like that (hence my new PC post

)

mrutty

Joined: 28 Oct 2004
Posts: 1578

Posted: Tue Jan 11, 05 7:02 pm Post subject:

The problem is the mis selling of IT kit. These are complex machines that were built for engineers.

There is on this forum a person that has more qualifications than I and in no way dumb that asks me a number of questions per month. That person can run rings round me in a number of areas, but I won't ask this person to strip down my washing machine and fix it or to overhaul my car. PCs are sold with the understanding that they are easy to use and to understand. Lemmingware has not helped as many people can click but have no understanding of what sits under the hood. Most people have more idea of how a car works than a PC.

Real IT engineers are the ones that say that they are only a .......network engineer, software engineer, etc. No one in the industry (except maybe Billyboy) thinks they know it all.

Oops

slipped in to rant mode there

jema
Downsizer Moderator

Joined: 28 Oct 2004
Posts: 28235
Location: escaped from Swindon

Posted: Tue Jan 11, 05 7:09 pm Post subject:

mrutty wrote:

Real IT engineers are the ones that say that they are only a .......network engineer, software engineer, etc. No one in the industry (except maybe Billyboy) thinks they know it all.

I was saying just the same myself on the forum to Sara

"real all round gurus" are very rare, the field is just too wide.

I am a pretty good all rounder myself

I can build them, program them in more than a dozen languages, I know much about configuring several operating systems on them. I have enough networking knowledge to resolve a lot of network issues. I do web design. I can cope with a number of graphics packages and so on.
But I will still get stumped by things. In this case Norton AV. I do not like AV packages, and certainly would not know off the top of my head why a particular package would fail to install. No one can hope to know half of it.

jema

Treacodactyl
Downsizer Moderator

Joined: 28 Oct 2004
Posts: 25795
Location: Jumping on the bandwagon of opportunism

Posted: Tue Jan 11, 05 7:44 pm Post subject:

Things change all the time with PCs, with a few others at Uni I helped build one from scratch, soldering, wiring, EPROM programming with logic gates etc but after a couple of years I found you get left behind. Conversely, spend a few days at work learning something new and you can get labelled and expert but all I do is read some help files and have a play.

Also because there is no one point of sale as with many products you get the "it's the PC, no it's the BIOS, no it's the OS no it's the package, no it's the PC..." syndrome.

I have sometimes helped with PCs that are shipped with everything installed where two packages cause each other problems - so even the big manufacturers often cannot get things right.

The good news is that there's often someone who has been there and done it, so help may be just a post away.

mrutty

Joined: 28 Oct 2004
Posts: 1578

Posted: Tue Jan 11, 05 8:23 pm Post subject:
The worst one is treating Firewalls as a piece of network equipment and allowing network teams to manage them. Network engineers allow things to talk to one another, Firewall engineers stop things talking to one another

Treacodactyl
Downsizer Moderator

Joined: 28 Oct 2004
Posts: 25795
Location: Jumping on the bandwagon of opportunism

Posted: Tue Jan 11, 05 8:36 pm Post subject:
As a home user I try to block everything I can

	Downsizer Forum Index -> IT Matters	All times are GMT Page Previous 1, 2
Page 2 of 2

View Latest Posts