I continue to be amazed at the level of my dad’s inability to master simple tasks on a computer. He mostly has the hang of email, but sometimes can’t figure out that he can respond to more than one person at a time and that he can respond to the entire email at once instead of sending separate emails to address each point of the original. he has no idea how to download attachments, and he uses AOL. It’s been a while, but don’t their emails with attachments have a button on them marked “download attachment”? I send links to Yahoo! photo albums. He can’t figure out that if you click the blue underliney thing in an email it whisks you away to another place. he can’t figure out that if you click on the little picture it makes into a big picture.
Today I check my snail mail and there’s a birthday card and a check. Written in the card is a note from Mom. “Daddy couldn’t figure out how to shop at Amazon so we’re sending you this so you can get what you want.” I had emailed him a link to my wish list. What amazes me about this is that he’s shopped Amazon before. he knows how to do this stuff on a one-time basis but the knowledge just doesn’t stick in his brain. He’s not dumb, but really, his level of incompetence astounds me. It’s just computers, not rocket science!
My mother can’t turn on her tv.
My sisters are going away for a week, and they have written detailed instructions so she can watch it in their absence.
My dad has not ever, and likely never will, touched a personal computer. The closest he has come is entering numbers into a datapad when working a high-tech welding machine, ironically in a clean room construction for Motorola.
About four years ago, I asked my dad, when he and my step-mom started RVing, to e-mail a “diary” of their adventures on the road.
So he got a free e-mail account through Juno, and when I was wishing him bon voyage at their house, I asked him if he could check his e-mail, since I had sent him something.
I went to go turn on their desktop, and my dad said, “No, that’s not the computer we set up the e-mail account on,” and proceeds to drag out his laptop.
I think I explained things, and now he is happily attaching digital pictures of his adventures along with his diary.
Oh, I know this condition exactly. My father is just the same way. He’s a very smart guy, but the computer stuff just doesn’t stick with him… though he remembers enough to download all those nifty Flash animations his friends send … onto his desktop, where he will watch them maybe twice, and never delete them… sigh.
My extent of my father’s knowledge of PC’s is just as pathetic. He knows how to turn one off; not by going to Start - Shut Down, but by holding the HUGE powerbutton on my computer down for 4 seconds so it just powers down.
My dad’s solution to his PC literacy problem is simple and nearly foolproof: whenever I start to explain something about how his computer can be used or should be maintained, he winces and says “go tell that to your mother.”
It’s got to be some kind of age-related thing. I think there’s an age where your ability to work with new electronic devices just cuts off and your brain marks new information as Dump Immediately.
My grandparents can work up to a TV just fine. My parents can work up to a VCR just fine. But they all shut down outside their “era.”
I don’t know about that. My 87-year old grandfather emails me on a regular basis, and has looked up friends all over the world. True, he does have to get my dad to come help him trouble-shoot things now and then when he gets bogged down in installing new things.
My old man was kinda the opposite, but in a “Three Stooges” sort of way. He was always on the leading edge, but some of the subtlities kind of passed him by. Heres the story:
Several years ago (early 90’s) I had a computer that worked just fine. I only used it for games and maybe some light word-processing, resumes and stuff. It came from the dreaded Radio Shack. You plugged it in, hit the button and it worked. Period. No muss, no fuss, no hassle. Sure, it had one 3 1/4 floppy and a small hard drive, but it did what I wanted. Totally and completely user-friendly and convienient.
“Oh, no!” cried dad! “You have to have a more powerful machine! You gotta have at least a 486! I have an old one here you can have. Bring yours up and I’ll set it up for you and we’ll give yours to your sister.”
So, I take it to his house. He moves all my saved shit to “The Better Machine” and wipes the Tandy’s harddrive.
I take it home. I turn it on. It doesn’t do anything. I find out I need to use a “boot disk”. And the mouse driver and game card don’t work with my mouse or joystick. Even after re-installing the drivers, the mouse won’t work in any of the games. (still won’t to this day, despite having the smartest computer dude I have ever heard of try to make it work) Yeah, this is really a better deal. Thanks Dad. :rolleyes:
Visited my sister some time later. Saw my old Tandy sitting there. Hit the switch. Nothing. Need a “boot disk”! The totally simple operating system with all the programs and icons right there was gone. It was transformed into a large, ugly paperweight.
Neither one of us have used either computer since. Kind of a shame. I really liked my flight simulators.
Maybe. I think it’s much closer to being lazy sometimes. Why should mom learn to use the computer when dad is happy to print up emails and send replies (typing, a task she’s always hated) for her?
I work with a few people like this. A few of them can’t even learn how to use a mouse. There’s only one computer out in the warehouse. And there is 3 programs on the computer that different people have to use. All of the programs are open. A few people will constantly come up to me and ask me to help them get into the program that they need.
All I have to do is bring the mouse down to the bottom of the screen and click on the program. That’s all.
At first I would try to teach them how to do for themselves, but they always come back to me asking for help. Its frustrating.
Well, it could be worse… your parents could be constantly be calling you for free tech support.
At one time, the Former Gestation Chamber known as Coleen would call me about yet another self-inflicted problem and would want me to walk her through it step by step until it was fixed. If she was trying to recoup the money spent on raising me, she did that and would owe me the cost of a Porsche were I to have been charging.
:rolleyes:
Luckily that’s all behind me. There are perks to disowning family members that are not readily apparent.
Though to disown someone just because they are technically illiterate and desire mega handholding is extreme. But it can be tempting… very, very tempting.
I’ve explained the “blue underliney thing” to my mother more times I can remember.
“It’s a link, Mom.”
“I don’t know what a link is.”
“Yes, you do. Click on it. Put your mouse right over it, and click. It’ll take you right to the website.”
“Well, why didn’t you ever tell me about that?”
“I have told you about it, Mom, lots of times.”
:rolleyes:
Just a few days ago, I sent her “blue underliney things” to a couple of white pages sites, so she could look up phone numbers online, and explained (for the millionth time) how to save it to her Favorites. She tried looking up an old friend out-of-state, and called me, saying it found who she was looking for, but that it wanted either $9.95 or $29.95 or $59.95 to give her the info. I kept telling her she was entering the name in the wrong place, and was trying to do a Background Search, and she needed to look more carefully and enter the name somewhere else on the page - she could definitely get phone numbers for free. She never did get it, and I was on the phone with her and online at the same time, and at the same site. I’ll end up having to go over there and show her exactly where it is.
A happy side to this… My Dad never even tried to use a computer. If he needed something, he would get Mom to do it. Mom btw “knows” just enough to get herself in serious trouble, to my continual chagrin… Anyway, I figured my Dad for this same kind of illiteracy. I have been very impressed lately tho. He took a Continuing Ed course on computers and e-mail and now he is quite the independent surfer. He surfs (and downloads and prints) articles about bass fishing, his old navy ship association, e-mails some of his old friends and his sisters. And never once asking me to “fix this damn thing.” I’m quite proud of him actually!
This isn’t really so much computer incompetency, more like not paying attention and looking stupid. One of my friends was complaining to me that her computer was not turning on. I looked over. She was pressing the button for the floppy disk drive.
I’ve explained the “blue underliney thing” to my mother more times I can remember.