As always, xkcd is on the case.
And ironically, today a professional mechanic diagnoses many car problems by connecting it to a computer and reading the error codes.
Understanding the technology takes study time and a mind that works in a certain way. Many people lack one or both of those attributes. What are they supposed to do? I think we’re all vulnerable to being taken advantage of in some areas of our lives, because none of us can fully understand all the tech we work with. (A person may know a ton about computers, but how much do they know about cars, for example? Or home repair? Or medicine?)
And just how much understanding does a person need to have before they’re no longer regarded as a computer-illiterate? Many of my coworkers seem to regard me as some sort of computer guru because I have more than one browser on my desktop and and know a fair amount about the internet - but I know if my work PC develops a problem I’m going to have to call the IT Help Desk for assistance, because I have no idea how to fix registry problems, etc. So am I computer-literate or computer-illiterate? It’s all relative.
Several years ago, when floppy disks were not yet uncommon, at an Internet cafe in Thailand the two female college students sitting next to me held up a floppy and asked if the protective bag would protect it from viruses. (“Bag” and “condom” share the same word in Thai.)
They said it with a straight face. That it was a very weird pick-up line seemed unlikely given that septimus was nearly thrice their age.
Rigamarole, it does sound like the person in your OP might have a somewhat below-average level of computer knowledge. So what?
She didn’t know that the space where you type the name of the website is called an “address bar.” So what?
As an IT professional, isn’t it your job to help people who are, you know, not IT professionals? In fact, I’d say a pretty basic description of what you get paid to do is to help people who know less than you do. Some may know a little less, some a lot less, but I don’t get how that makes any of them worthy of your ridicule and scorn.
I think I kind of hate your attitude.
On the topic of older people and technology, I think some people just fall behind and are lost by technology, too, even if it’s similar to something they’d learned. My grad school advisor told me about the classes she took in Fortran and Pascal computer programming. Decades later, what was one of my jobs for her? Printing out her daily E-mails, and replying with the handwritten notes that she’d make on the printouts.
He didn’t get ripped off. He was charged $30 for a $2 cable, a free driver installation, and the application of skills he does not have and was unwilling to acquire.
This is certainly true. (And, on edit, so is Sundrop’s post.) In the case I mentioned in my previous post, most of my frustration came from trying to explain to this person exactly what he needed to do to fix his problem, but then having him decide that it would just be easier to go pay someone at the computer shop to do it for him. I guess that’s a reasonable decision in some cases, but I really feel like he just sort of decided, “this is computery stuff and I’m not interested in learning about it so I’ll just go pay a guy.” Well, an additional part of my frustration was in spending 30 frustrating minutes trying to walk him through doing this, and then finding out later that he just paid a guy anyway.
Look at it this way, MsWhatsit. He didn’t get rooked. He got an oil change.
I mean, I agree with you that he didn’t need to pay that at all, and analogy-wise what he had to do was even easier than an oil change. But I, personally, don’t feel any particular feeling of shame or being ripped-off after paying $20 for an oil change when I could have spent $5 on the oil and done it myself, even though I know a lot of guys not much older than I am think that it’s just as much a scam as charging $30 to install software. I think LSLGuy is pretty much on target.
Yes, I suppose the lesson to take away from this is not to attempt to provide tech support for this guy anymore. 
Oh give me a break. I am always exceedingly patient, professional, and courteous with those I work with and I don’t begrudge anyone for not knowing as much about computers. But the total and utter obliviousness you see on a day to day basis when you do this kind of thing can make anyone sigh in exasperation from time to time and that’s all I was doing.
Sounds like the same thing that passes through my mind when my car starts making a funny noise. I’m smart enough to learn basic auto mechanics, but why bother? I have no real interest in the subject, and the time I’d spend learning it is better used doing other things. I think that’s the way a lot of people view computers.
Now I can certainly understand that! (Especially after recently spending about an hour on the phone advising my aunt on potential laptop choices; she hasn’t bought a new computer for over a decade, and is someone who thinks a Mac LC from the mid-1990s is still a FINE home computer. Antivirus software? Printer drivers? Firewalls? WPA encryption? What the heck’s that stuff? I might as well have been speaking Mandarin. I don’t know what she ended up with, but if she succumbed to the lure of low prices and bought a Windows laptop, I foresee many trips to the Geek Squad ahead…)
OK. I guess the point I was trying to make (perhaps harshly) was that when something is second nature to you because it’s something you do for a living and/or have a particular passion for, it can be easy to lose sight of the fact that not everybody shares thast passion and/or knowledge.
If you’re a mechanic, I’d say an appropriate analogy might be that your customer didn’t know how many cylinders her engine had. Probably something she should know, sure, but it doesn’t really affect her ability to operate the car. But you were making it sound like she didn’t know where the brake pedal was. Seemed a bit over the top.
(On re-read, I think that without the thread title and opening paragraph, I’d be right there with you. You came out of the box disproportionately pissed for what followed.)
I know a guy in tech support who has the same things to say as most people here about computer illiterates. He bitches about them all the time. He, on the other hand, makes good money (about $40K - he’s young), and yet completely trashed his credit after college by maxing out numerous credit cards for the newest computing shiny objects and travel to nemerous “cons” around the country.
Now he pays his credit card bills (95% interest, 5% principal) with payday loans. When I try to explain the most basic ideas of personal finance, he shuts down and says “It’s no big deal, I just pay it off when I get my next paycheck.”
It’s all relative.
Is that a joke? 
Are we playing six degrees of disability?
I hereby award this the best post of 08/05/10 (05/08/10 for you Aussie retards.)
Yeah, no fucker except for the thousands of Brits who line up at the Australian embassy, who overstay their work visas, and who do just about anything they can to move to Australia.
I have very little patience with computer-retarded people, but unfortunately my girlfriend is one of them.
What’s most frustrating to me is that most “non-computer people” won’t even attempt to troubleshoot or help themselves when encountering a situation they’re unfamiliar with. Most difficulties can be solved by mousing over the appropriate button or typing your problem into the help menu.
But instead people get a frozen pop-up window, throw up their hands and call me eight times in the middle of the night. :mad:
Oh, I dunno. Stranger things have happened over here.
Quoth Ferret Herder:
Do we have the same advisor? OK, I’ll grant that my advisor is 60-something, and so should be cut some slack, but her thesis basically consisted of a huge Fortran program for modeling neutron star interiors. Her career is built on computers. But there was a time when she had an appointment with me and a couple of her other grad students to meet in the computer lab so she could show us how to use her program, and she had to postpone the meeting a week. Why? Well, she lost her reference sheet that told her how to turn on the monitor on that computer.
I’ve also seen her scroll up through literally hundreds of commands in the command history in a terminal window, rather than re-typing a single seven-character command. And every single time that I sit down at the keyboard instead of her and know what to type, she’s absolutely amazed.
On the other end of the scale, it is actually possible to learn, even at a late age. A dozen years ago or so, my mom was at the level that some folks here are talking about: She didn’t know, for instance, that one could position the typing-cursor in a word processor with a click of the mouse. And she’s never liked computers all that much. But she sees how useful they are, and so she’s made a conscious effort to learn. Nowadays, when she encounters a new problem she hasn’t seen before, her first step is still to call me, but if she can’t get ahold of me, then she sits down and tries to figure it out on her own. I was so proud a few months ago when I returned a call I’d missed from her, and she said, “Oh, Matt (my nephew, about 3 years old) messed up so-and-so, but I poked around and fixed it by doing such-and-such”.