Yeah, those are the ones that tell you to click on the icon in the upper right hand corner – where there is no icon. Or the icon gives you a menu that doesn’t look anything like the one the help site shows. Because in the fifteen seconds between the posting of that helpful how to, your operating system, without your permission or you even knowing about it, “upgraded” your screens such that everything has been renamed and refiled under a different menu. For no fucking reason at all.
This has happened to me so many times that I no longer want to try.
I have automatic updates turned off everywhere where it’s possible to do so. I’m still running Windows 7 on my primary computer in my study, and when informed that it’s no longer supported and I’ll no longer be getting any updates, I go “Great! Thank you!”. The only thing that updates on it is my enterprise-grade malware protection.
The GIS app I developed from scratch (10,000 lines of custom code) is going away. We’ve used it for some 15 years.
I’ll be retiring in about a year. While my app is stable, there are always gonna be tweaks ya gotta do. We are NOT going to teach another programmer the ins and outs of this code. And it’s base code/libraries will not be supported anymore by our vendor.
So we are moving forward. The developer that will replace me is duplicating my app. Well same functionality, looks different of course.
There are tools now to do this. Sort of plug and play with a little custom code.
Things change. Sometimes they have to. New requirements and new software abilities/design.
I agree about cell phones. I make calls, text and read books on mine. But that’s it really. I did buy an Android tablet, which is basically a giant cell phone. I got it because I take so many notes for work I was getting overwhelmed. On the tablet, I can take hand written notes and organize them. I prefer that to taking notes on the computer.
I also do personal notes on it. I really like it, probably not for everyone.
I got an Android tablet to read pdf formatted books for a contest. I could load them on my Kindle, but it was just too small.
We have a new Roomba, and we loaded the app on our phones and tablets. In assigning names to rooms and sectors we found that it was nearly impossible on a phone, but easy on the tablet.
My daughter reads on her phone. I can’t imagine how. I have a big monitor for my laptop for a reason. I use my phone for playing music, GPS, reading email, and that’s about it. Oh, and calls every once in a while.
Eh, I read on my phone when say waiting for something. But otherwise use the Kindle. My wife and I both have tablets and laptops. And we are going on a big trip in 10 months, many countries. We are not thinking about taking laptops. May not take our Kindles either. Just each have a tablet and phone. I don’t want to carry around 6 computers. That’s silly.
If that’s a response to me about books, I’ve got that on my tablet. The tablet is basically a clone of my phone (KIndle), but with the important difference that I can write and organize notes on it.
Even THAT is getting out of hand. I have a dozen folders for different stuff with my hand written notes. But, I don’t have to carry a bunch of paper notebooks around. That’s a life saver.
I used to carry 3-4 notebooks around. That sucked. Very confusing, and a general PITA.
I think a lot of it has to do with that unlike most things historically, the rules are constantly changing.
I mean, for example, my FiL is great with cars, devices that I have never learned to service myself. If he gets an old car, he can find a manual for that specific year, make, model, and make it purr like a kitten.
But get a computer or smart device, and all of a sudden, even within the year, make, model, there’s countless OS versions, software, setting, all of which can be terrifyingly different and unique.
So your frustration, fear, and panic are utterly justifiable. While I don’t share them, I find a lot of the “comfort level” has to do with how willing you are to experiment. If I have a problem, I’ll look online, and keep trying different options until I find one that works, or at least, works enough that I don’t want to keep trying. But if you aren’t comfortable with that lack of surety (and LOTS of people aren’t) then that’s off the table. Or if the frustrations make you literally tremble with anger (this is my dad’s response)? How can you experiment when all you want to do is smash it?
One thing to consider, is that if you have people you TRUST (big, Big issue) is that Teamviewer, or other remote desktop applications can be a huge help. But lots of scammers will use that or the equivalent to absolutely destroy you. I mean, I have one person I trust in who I call upon when even I get overwhelmed, and I use that software to service my Father and Mother and Father-in-laws systems when I need too, but giving it over to even a friend on the SDMB would probably freak me the hell out.
Then again, I haven’t been here long enough to have the same sort of bonds as others have, and I do not mean to cast doubt on many of the posters here. But it’s a big risk given the sort of information many of us have on our phones and computers.
Just last week, my work gave me a new laptop because my old one’s keyboard was getting wonky. As our IT guy was failing to get it set up, I couldn’t believe how strong the urge was to fling it against the wall! I’m going to try to come up with anything else in my life that makes me so irrationally insane.
I told them to keep the new laptop, and I’ll stick w/ the wonky keyboard. Thought about setting up a line to insert in everything I type saying, “Read this as though my keyboard produced the number of Ts, Es, and Rs I typed.” But it would likely come out as “Reed his as tthough my keeyboarrd…”
I had a cheap laptop that started doing this. After determining the most likely fix was to replace the keyboard (which would have been a tedious DIY project), I bought a cheap USB keyboard and connected it to the laptop, Problem solved, at least until I got all my data off the cheap laptop into a backup drive. Then I bought another laptop.
I don’t believe I’m unusual in that I am happy to experiment in an arena where I know how the rules operate, and I know how to extract myself from jams I could get into.
None of that applies to computers. Absolutely the dead opposite, actually. I will never know the rules, and if I managed to learn them they will have already arbitrarily changed. So the reward in learning them is nil.
I don’t want to know how my software works. I just want it to do its job. That, is what it generally doesn’t do.
Buy a couple, they’re cheap. My keyboard is wireless also - it and the mouse communicate to the computer through a dongle plugged into a USB port.
Mine is a bit large but I have another smaller and lighter - but not as comfortable.
I wear out the marks on the keys long before the keyboard fails. But I’m with you, I hate even non-klunky laptop keyboards.
For me at least, it does apply to computers, at least more so than it does to anything that involves interacting with human beings.
But then, I’ve been doing stuff on computers since before they were connected to the internet, and almost nothing you could do on a computer could hurt it (or you)—just turn it off and then on again if things went awry.
First of all, don’t be hard on yourself. Many people have a phobia that drives them into a panic but that would only be an annoyance to most other people. If a situation arises where you cannot avoid your phobia, meet it head on with a plan.
If at all possible, give yourself plenty of time to accomplish that computer task that you dread. Research what you have to do and get as much help and instruction as possible BEFORE you tackle that dreaded chore. If it’s still a problem, get more help to finish it successfully. Help is out there in the form of friends, or their tech precocious teenagers, or on line FAQS or tutorials.
I remember when my SiL lost her passport a few months ago. I posted here and got what can only be characterized as a wealth of information and suggestions.
For me it’s the unpredictability that’s the worst. Most things I want to accomplish are very basic, supposedly all laid out and vetted procedures. For example, right now I can’t bring myself to sign into my eye care insurance website, which I have never been on, and figure out how to get reimbursement for glasses. My former optometrist did all this for me and the new one doesn’t. According to my experience, there is at least a 50% chance something will go awry, I won’t be able to fix it, and I will face a long long long hold for customer service, which may or may not be able to do anything. These odds are daunting for me.
The feeling of helpless rage and the prospect of ultimate defeat is very unpleasant. The knowledge that such things are well within the capacity of our society to make straightforward (like they were within my memory), but for reasons I can’t imagine, they no longer are.
I’m thinking they want to make you give up so you don’t get the financial compensation you deserve. Since I voted early, I spent Election Day getting 4 new tires. When settling up, I was given a couple of sheets of paper telling me I could get a $50 rebate if I just went on line and followed the bread crumbs. Wow! I’m going to settle in with a cup of coffee tomorrow morning and work through that maze! I think they want me to just give up and say the hell with it.
True these days. When I was in high school I used an old computer with a drum as a rotating memory. We were told that unless you turned it off just the right way the head would crash and it would cost $5000 in 1968 dollars to fix.
I spent at least one weekend fretting about if I had done it right. I had.
