Mama’s little help-desk
The BBC’s got this amusing feature on how parents so often rely on their children for support with the computers they presume their children know so much about (IT Support for your Parents). I’ve always been the most “into” computers in my family, but my interest has been intermittent – I went straight from a Sinclair Spectrum, to an Amstrad PC in 1989 (the Amiga and ST passed me well and truly by), to various other PCs and tinkering with Unix at college, to Linux and then a Mac, and didn’t have much access to them while at boarding school (the school had one Amstrad PCW word processor computer for general use) and never got the in-depth programming experience I think I really needed.
There was one time my mother was impressed at how I gave someone advice on how to use Windows without the mouse. Windows has a very comprehensive keyboard substitution; for example, you use the Alt button to trigger the pull-down menus, and you can use the Tab key in any well-designed program to move from one data-entry point to another in a “dialog” box. It was even suggested that I go get a job in a call centre, a suggestion I resisted because I had heard of the dreadful working conditions in some of these places (“phone farms”, as one newspaper exposé called them).
Most recently, the questions are often about getting rid of Windows viruses, which always provokes a bit of a yawn. My way of getting rid of this problem was to use Linux and then get a Mac, and yes, I know that not everyone has the spare money to get a Mac or the know-how to install Linux. And the result of this is that I can’t offer much good advice to anyone afflicted with the latest Windoze virus, because I last connected my own Windows machine to the Internet a few months ago, and it got hit by several viruses. My anti-virus software solved this problem by deleting the affected files, which included Microsoft Visual Studio which I was using for my college project. All I can really offer is the standard advice of get the latest patch and keep your anti-virus software up to date. But these viruses spread because of the insecurity of Windows, and these patches will be effective only for as long as it takes for the virus writers to discover new ones.
I couldn’t help pulling out this quote from one of the readers of the article I linked above (which is actually the reason I blogged this):
Several years ago when I was a student I was returning to Manchester after Christmas at home in Ireland. As I am walking through Manchester airport to collect my bags I hear an announcement on the intercom: “Could Thomas Smith please make his way to the nearest information desk”. A message to call my dad. I immediately worry.
– Dad its me – is everything ok?
– No – I’ve lost everything and its gone blank?
– What?
– The computer, everything has gone blank. I can’t find the internet or anything.
I can’t repeat what I said but the staff in the airport information desk were surprised.
