The Impact of Technophobes

fsharp writes "Most of us have experience with average folks requesting technical support. I have friends and family members that would be lost without my support. I opt for a sliding scale payment plan, usually dinner. At any rate, The New York Times has a nice piece on the impact of technophobes on the Internet (vis-a-vis MyDoom and other email-borne viruses) and their technologically adept friends and family."

Comments

The girlfriend thinks computers are like her?

[LostCluster]

From the article...
Miriam Tauber, 24, makes no apologies for her lack of computer knowledge. To her, computers are like "moody people" who behave illogically.

Uh oh. Computers, by definition, are cold and logical. They don't have personalities. They don't have moods.

If users think computers do have mood swings just like the typical female human, we've got serious user education problems. They clearly don't know the basics of what a computer does, and that makes it much harder to explain how to properly operate a computer.

HERE IS THE NO-REG LINK

[leerpm]

Geeks Put the Unsavvy on Alert: Learn or Log Off

It's not just about Viruses

[shking]

Your solution is to only support the minority because minority operating systems don't get viruses?

If you actually read the post you'd see that:

1. viruses are the not the main reason that the poster only supports Macs
2. Windoze PCs are not the only systems he complains about and won't support (he mentioned IRIX for pete's sake!)

The point of the post is that you don't have to dink around for hours to get a Mac to work. Stuff really does just work when you plug it in.

Now Macs DO have the virus/worm issues that Windows currently has in the real world

Nope. There are zero known viruses for Mac OS X, none, nada, zippity-do-da. There are about 60 viruses for OS 9, as well as a few that macro viruses that infect MS Office (which runs on both Windows and Mac)