-6

Some highlights from my mom's experience with computers.

"Hey Will, I need you to come up to the office, the computer won't turn on."
"Is it plugged in?"
"Yes"
"Is the electrical outlet strip turned on?"
"....Oh. Whoops"


(After a power surge which she had to reformat her computer)
"All my email attachments are gone!"
"Well, yeah, if you had to reformat all the stuff on your hard drive will be deleted"
"They weren't on my hard drive, they were in my emails"
"...I don't understand"
"I won't be able to get to my email now that the hard drive was wiped clean"
(Me getting even more confused) "Wait, are you talking about your yahoo emails? You'll still be able to access them, you twit. That's email, that isn't part of your hard drive"


(After one of our employees retired and moved to Dallas)
"I need to send an email to Patterson, but he won't be able to get it"
"Why wouldn't he be able to get it? Does he not have internet access yet?"
"No, he has internet access, but he's now in Dallas"
(Confused as all hell) "So why the hell wouldn't he be able to get your email?"
"Because I used to email him when he was in Austin, but now he's in Dallas"
(Flabbergasted) "What on earth does where he's living have to do with him being able to receive an email from you?"
"I figured that since he moved to another town, yahoo wouldn't know where to send him the email"
"Mom, are you being serious? Are you really this clueless?"

I'd do more but I now have a headache

heheh, no moms above a 3 yet...

lol stoopid wimminz

true, but i don't think a 3 is all that bad. i bet most americans fall between 2-3. i would think a 3 to be someone competent enough to use a good amount of programs on a basic windows-based computer with general internet usage. possibly knowing how to download music, but not smart enough to recognize bogus stuff and would probably shit their pants and pay geek-squad big bucks if they got a virus.

most techsans are probably 4+, extensive knowledge of just about everything on a normal computer and some other advanced software programs, able to find just about anything on the internet, torrents/downloading, troubleshooting, maybe mods/electronics stuff. i'd be surprised if 95% of active techsans couldn't build their own computer.

I think we have differing definitions of 3. I would think 3 would only use geek squad as a last resort, and probably have basic antivirus, albiet probably something shitty like (*cough*don'tbanmeLance*cough*) McAfee.

heh, my parents have too much antivirus protection, to the point where it seriously affects the computer's performance.

i think i get what you're saying, but i'd say the jump from a 3 to 4 is pretty significant (same with 4 to 5).

yeah well no doubt people defined 1-5 slightly differently, i was just comparing the moms to the dads