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GNOME for Grandma
An anonymous reader writes "PCWorld colmnist Matthew Newton has written an interesting two part article titled "In Search of Linux for Grandma", in which he shares his thoughts on introducing computers to a 75 year old PC neophyte (through Linux).
He discusses the new spatial Nautilus that he is planning to unleash upon grandma, and quote from the article - "Grandma is never going to learn about "opening a file manager" to "navigate her way" to her documents. They are all going to live in plain view in folders on her desktop. And when she opens them, there won't be any surprises."."
That's easy... a garden gnome.
Next
Casual Games/Downloads
for myself. :B right now i'm battling my first red hat installation...
My grandma's a command line hacker. She thinks GUI's are weak. :/
ack...must...pull...hands...from...keyboard...not. ..strong...enough...to...resist...
I don't see anything spatial about the new nautilus
Dang...
/* oops I accidentally made a comment, sorry */
As a 48 yo grandmother, I am offended that people equate being a grandmother with having a low level of technical competance.
ROCHESTER, MN--Karen Widmar, 33, who for the past two months has been trying to teach her 60-year-old mother how to use the Internet, called the endeavor "a Sisyphean ordeal" Monday.
Above: Lillian Widmar attempts to e-mail her daughter.
"Jesus Christ, you have no idea," said Widmar after yet another unsuccessful lesson. "Every single thing I show her, no matter how simple, totally freaks her out. She's still afraid to click on pictures because she doesn't know where it's going to take her."
Widmar said she introduced her mother Lillian to the Internet at her request.
"It's funny, I was always trying to get her interested so I could e-mail her," Widmar said. "Then, one day, she called me up and said she was watching Today, and they had a guest on who made potatoes, and the recipe was online, and was that the same as the Internet? When I told her it was, she got really excited. Maybe I should've lied."
According to Widmar, the troubles began immediately.
"Trying to show her how to use the mouse took almost a week," Widmar said. "For some reason, she got it in her head that you had to hold the button down to make it move. Then, when I explained that the computer communicates over the telephone via her built-in modem, she kept asking where you hold the receiver. And she wouldn't stop calling the keyboard 'the typewriter.'"
Still more complications arose when Widmar tried to show her mother how to navigate a search engine.
"For practice, I logged onto Yahoo! and had her search for cheesecake recipes," Widmar said. "She got totally confused by the fact that we were searching within a web site for other web sites. She kept typing her keyword searches into the Internet Explorer address bar, not into the Yahoo! search bar. Then, when she accidentally typed 'cheesecake' into the Explorer box, it actually worked, because there happened to be a web site called that, so that just confused her even more."
After nearly a month, Lillian had finally gotten to the point where she could log onto a web site on her own. Almost every time, however, something unexpected would occur, causing her to panic and call her daughter for help.
Above: Karen Widmar with her mother Lillian, who continues to struggle with Internet use.
"It could be almost anything," Widmar said. "She goes apeshit whenever a pop-up window comes up. And one time, she paged me because she got a message about accepting cookies. She was all freaked out because now she thought she was being charged for actual cookies."
Widmar said her mother still does not grasp the difference between the Internet and e-mail.
"Whenever she wants to send me an e-mail, she says she's going to Internet me," Widmar said. "I think that's because we use AOL, so she has to log onto the Internet to do her e-mailing. Then there's chat rooms, which she thinks is e-mail. I just pray she never finds out about message boards. That'll throw her whole world into a tailspin."
Despite knowing next to nothing about computers or the Internet, Lillian will frequently attempt to troubleshoot problems using new terms she had heard.
"Every time she hears a new word involving computers, she incorporates it into her questions," Widmar said. "Last time she called, she said she couldn't get her e-mail working and that there must be something wrong with her firewall. I tried to explain that she didn't have a firewall, so she said her Java must be broken."
Widmar said her mother is a fairly anxious person in general, and that her recent forays into Internet use have only exacerbated those tendencies. Among her mother's greatest fears, Widmar said, is that she will be the target of computer crime.
"Last week, she freaked out because she got a porn spam," Widmar said. "Now she thinks they're targeting her for stalking or kidnapping. She wouldn't go near her computer for four days. She was also convinced that because the computer could send photos, it was capable of taking photos of her, maki
Sounds like...Linux...XP? =D
___ In the words of Gen. Douglas McArthur: "I'll be right back."
Where's the CowboyNeal option?
Grandma got run over by a penguin
Mmm....
Yup, I introduced my grandma to spam, viruses, a trojan horse that allowed some kid to pop up gay porn on her screen and open and shut her CD tray, a continuously quitting internet connection, and finally, the Blue Screen of Death... Windows eventually gave my grandma a heart attack.
How do you sleep at night, Bill Gates? Oh, yeah, that's right. On a bed of money.
But then again, now that Grandma's dead, so do I. Thanks, Bill! Now I know why everyone buys your stuff!
I'm not normally an irrational zealous dickhead, but I figure "When in Rome..."
What you don't realize is that Grandma deliberately breaks things because, damn it, you don't come over and visit enough.
Just who do you think sets up the troubleshooting section of the RHCE exam?
And when in hell are you going to give her some grandkids?
Only Women Bleed (Sex, Sharia remix)
...presenting windows 3.11 for Linux.
What if my Grandma had been, oh, let's say Grace Hopper?
It was a joke! When you give me that look it was a joke.
One of my grandmothers started using MacOS when she was about 78. She joined the local Mac users group, and was everybody's favorite. She had them photoshop pictures of herself and remove the waddle under her chin. Yeah, vain, I know.
My other grandma is strictly mainframe.
"I know all about computers. My first job was running a computer. What the hell do I need a computer for?"
She ran a database system for a police department. On punch cards, in 1954. She would probably use vi, if we ever got her near a PC.
There are no trails. There are no trees out here.
what your grandma needs is for her windows to burst into flames when she closes them.
K.
Happy she is
Works for her, does it?
"Teachers leave us kids alone
If you mod this up, you're sadder than I thought.
If you mod this down, you've no sense of humour.