I work with my Dad. He's not so bad with computers, he can do email, scan pdf's, web search and the basic stuff. Today, he came to me and asked if we had any big sheets of paper. I told him we have 11 x 17 and that delighted him. I wasn't sure what he was doing. Turns out, he was handwriting a huge spreadsheet. He needed the wide paper because there are too many columns for a normal sheet. He has now asked my sister, who also works in the company to type it out into Excel. Something in my insides hurts. To quote Dilbert, "I have uncontrollable urges to show people better ways to do things."
This leads me to a top ten list of tech things that seem to baffle my father's generation (and let's not kid ourselves, most computer users out there).
- There are no browsers, only "The Internet". You don't use a program to access the internet, you just use the internet.
- You cannot change your home page. Don't even try. You would have to purchase a new computer to do that.
- Preference panes do not exist. Programs come as is. There is nothing you can change.
- It is a new instance to question every time your antivirus software wants to update. Is it STILL ok to update Norton?
- Outlook viewing pane toggle buttons exist solely to frighten the user into thinking they have lost every email except those that are unread
- You can have only one program running at a time.
- You can have every program installed running at the same time and it will not affect performance.
- Everything that is forwarded to you by someone you know is true. Obama hates America and there really is a cell phone "do not call" list you can use to keep him from calling you about it.
- Don't get me started on people that print, in full color, emails and pass them around.
- Windows Media Center exists to display cat videos, Budweiser commercials and encrypt DRMed .wma's.
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