I just took a picture with my laptop!

The BBQ Pit
1

I am so extremely ignorant about computers these days that I’m afraid to mention that 30 years ago I was considered an expert. :smack: The contrast between the skills I once had and my recent ignorance is unbelievable. I do not blame creeping senility however; I still solve difficult programming puzzles, etc. Rather part of the problem is a difference in old and new ways to document or interface. I’d like to start a general thread on the topic in BBQ Pit, but I’d end up the target of the flames!

Case in point. Someone insisted I mail them a picture quickly; I didn’t want to drive to nearest FAX machine, so wanted to take picture with my laptop camera. I think I did that easily once, a year ago, but couldn’t remember how I did it. (Maybe it was on a different laptop.) I tried some paint and gimp programs looking for Images from Webcam but to no avail. So I Googled

How to take a picture with my laptop webcam Windows 7?

Lots of hits. (“Download me.” “No, download me!”) It seemed absurd I’d need to download more software – my son can see his picture when he’s playing.

Finally, I went to this webpage. That webpage had no trouble accessing my webcam! (It asks permission, but I suppose the Javascript could ignore the answer.) I didn’t figure out how to access the image it created, but used Screen-dump, which I did know how to do.

This all struck me as so ironic I posted here. A trivial task, local to my own machine, for which I used a remote webpage – one possibly exploiting a security loophole at that!! Yes, there is probably a trivial way to get the image using one of the hundreds (thousands? millions :smiley: ?) of clickable Microsoft doodads in my control panel, etc., but the bizarre way I did it was the easiest way presented to me.

I don’t even complain about poor documentation anymore. “Don’t you know how to Google, dude?” is the inevitable response.

I went ahead and posted this in BBQ Pit anyway. Join me in my protest, if you can figure out what it is. Or, more likely, just flame me. :smack:

2

FWIW, I have the exact same problem. And many many more laptoppy problems. And many incredulous remarks about my ignorance. I feel your pain.

3

Oh, this brings back memories. :cool:

I used to solve hexadecimal dumps (always start with the registers.)
I could type punched cards on a hand-punch if there was no time to get on the punch-card machine.
I remember being impressed when the first Macs reached the UK - those icons were a big step forward.

Now I don’t even have a mobile phone. :eek:

4

I don’t know, it seems like you found something that should require software that you don’t have (or once had, lost, whatever). Normally, that means you need to go get the software. In this case, you found an online application that did it for you. I’m not seeing the problem.

Are you upset that because, back in the day, you could have just driven to Radio Shack and had a discussion about what software you needed to buy from them?

I built computers back in the early 90s, none of the crap came with much in the way of directions then either.

5

:confused: :confused: Does it seem plausible that a laptop sold with a webcam and Windows 7 would have no way to save or display the camera image? When it obviously can employ the webcam via Internet?

If this really does seem plausible to you, I’m going to suggest, since we’re already in BBQ Pit, that your model of what software is easy and appropriate is ignorant.

6

Darth Panda’s viewpoint reminds me of the gap in understanding between those familiar with computers from a programmer’s viewpoint and a naive viewpoint. This, I think, is key to the rant I’ve not bothered to fully articulate. I will give another example:

Once, to illustrate the power of Unix, I mentioned on a message-board that

  • tr “[a-zZ-Z]” “[n-za-mN-ZA-M]” *
    was all that was needed to perform the “rot13 encryption.”

A Windows user responded “So what, there are free-ware versions of rot13 available for download on the Internet!” :smack:

7

My windows 7 laptop with internal webcam can take photos and videos. I rarely use it as it’s not that great and my external webcam is HD but I don’t remember the internal as being very difficult to use.

8

I often find the easiest way to figure out how to do something in Windows or MS Office is to Google the question instead of trying to find out anything in the so-called “Help” functions of those programs. Pretty often they just tell me “You can do such and such in MS Office,” but give no usable instructions on how to do it. Or else they refer me to a pull-down menu or button that isn’t there when I try to follow the instructions.

9

In the start menu in Windows 7, there’s a search bar. Type in Camera or Webcam there and see what programs pop up.

10

Just to clarify, my partial rant was not a plea for help about my Webcam. In fact the Webcam was irrelevant: it was just a springboard to denounce a philosophy, now ubiquitous (though Microsoft still provides the best examples).

But, on the matter of my laptop’s Webcam:
[ul]
[li] While Googling I saw a mention to the effect that “Toshiba [my brand] unlike most laptops doesn’t provide out-of-the-box Webcam.”[/li][li] My son pointed to a Webcam Max icon and mentioned that there were other icons that would also work.[/li][li] I’d have asked him for help at the time, but he was at school and I needed to send the e-mail’ed image immediately.[/li][li] I might have stumbled upon “Webcam Max” by myself … except that the website to echo Webcam image appeared on Google-search and became the fastest route for me.[/li][/ul]

BUT, to be clear, the MS Windows O.S. obviously has no trouble accessing the Webcam – it lets any Browser get there, via afore-mentioned website, via, presumably, a simple Javascript call. If anyone agrees with Darth Panda that a facility readily accessed via Javascript should require downloaded software to access off-line then … I agree to disagree. :cool:

11

I really suspect that all you needed was device drivers for the webcam but I could be wrong.

12

Again,

(There’s nothing magic about Javascript.)

13

shrug

If an online application can take a picture, then you should be able to do it offline. I understand that you’re peeved and a little incredulous. I am extremely doubtful that there wasn’t a way to do what you needed without going online.

14

My wife was a computer genius… well, a mainframe genius. Now the kids and I have to help her with the simplest things on a PC.

Uh, oh, does that mean all my PC/Mac expertise will be for nought when everyone has the Google Implants?

15

The is true of practically any software out there now. It is not that the Microsoft documentation is bad but google can look things up faster and better than people can.

16

Skimming is a scum tell. :smiley: I already mentioned that my son showed me an icon to click.
(That application might have been installed at store when we bought laptop … or downloaded by son as part of game-playing. Still unknown is whether the virgin Windows stuff had an appropriate clickable.)

ETA: This son I consult is 11 years old. 35 years ago I was called the “best microprogrammer in Silicon Valley” and flying around the world diagnosing mainframes no one else could fix. :smack:

17

Thirty-five years ago, while you were tinkering with mainframes, if someone had come up to you and said, “Back in my day, I was the king of slide rules! We didn’t need no pretty lights to tabulate our results. We just did [some arcane slide rule shit that wasn’t relevant any more]!” - would you have been impressed?

18

Yeah, it is that the MS documentation is bad, and maddeningly non-intuitive (at least for me). I’m usually not “looking up” how to do a task in MS, I’m going to Help and entering what seem to me to be logical search for how to do it. The results rarely locate the instructions for how to do a task; or else they are so jumbled with non-relevant results that it’s difficult to search through them. You would think that MS should be able to look things up within its own documentation as fast as Google can, but it doesn’t.

19

I have zero training with computers, so I have learned to ask Google for help. I tend to only learn just enough to complete whatever task I need the computer for, usually simple tasks like downloads or uploads… and then I forget it. MS help is often confusing.

When my Wi-Fi goes down though, I do have to put the old brain to work!!

20

Everything requires software. You lost yours and had to find a replacement. I’m still not seeing how that’s my fault.

I suppose you could have written your own code in Javascript, but it would still be software, just like the Web application is.