Slashdot Mirror
The Tech Support Generation
prostoalex writes "Newsweek technology columnist Brad Stone is looking forward to the Thanksgiving dinner with his family next week, spending time in candle-lit rooms, preparing holiday shopping lists and... let's admit it - fixing the folks' computer. 'We are the Tech-Support Generation. Our job is to troubleshoot the complex but imperfect technology that befuddle mom and dad, veterans of the rotary phone, the record player and the black-and-white cabinet television set. Next week, on our annual pilgrimage home, we'll turn our Web-trained minds and joystick-conditioned fingers to the task of rescuing our parents from bleeding-edge technology on the blink', Brad Stone writes. In related news, what other products besides Google Desktop Search, Spybot Search & Destroy, Google Toolbar and Service Pack 2 are Slashdotters installing on their parents' Windows machines?"
Firefox & Thunderbird. Saves you lots of trouble.
Debian
NOT service pack 2.
> In related news, what other products besides
> Google Desktop Search, Spybot Search & Destroy,
> Google Toolbar and Service Pack 2 are Slashdotters
> installing on their parents' Windows machines?"
GNU/Linux
Votez ecolo : Chiez dans l'urne !
When I'm showing something to my parents, I always notice that they are very slow in using mouse, clicking icons, etc, it frustrates me most.
My parents are smarter than I am.
They have Macs!
I won't let them use Windows purely because it would get trashed with spyware, adware and trojans, instead, they get a Slack 10 / KDE install and a nice low UID user with SSHd setup so I can log in as root remotely and fix anything if needed, and easily upgrade and install applications and the kernel.
She's built like a steak house, but she handles like a bistro....
...of course!
Linux.
Suse 9.1 on my parents hp.
Also on my friend's computer i built for him a couple years ago.
They use office/internet. That's it.
Why use windows? A few pros. Many, many cons.
And here is our General Fix-all-our-customers-problems cd we send out
IE6sp1 full
IE55 full
IE517 full
IE_Reinstall_bat (batch file that reinstalls ie using run dll)
IE secure site fix
Winxpsp2
winxp winsock fix (rebuilds winsock using registry)
winxp individual critical fixes
Ad-aware
Ad-aware/spybot definitions
Spybot
Coolweb killer? removal? Shredder? Can't remember offhand
AVG anti-virus (highly recommended)
McAfee AVERT stinger (even more highly recommended)
norton's varius virus removal tools (fix sobig, fix blaster, etc)
Win2k Sp4
Firefox
Thunderbird
diebold's central tabulator
and MS access in case they need practice changing votes
AdAware
Firefox
That Gator thing I love so much
Less attacks, less hassles,less viruses.
Google Toolbar
I dont install that on anything. Not because there is anything bad about it, but because then you can't disable "Third party browser enhancements" in IE... Which means that it's even easier for spyware to get in. (Yes I know this doesn't disable BHOs...)
Mozilla Firefox, without a doubt. Banish IE.
what other products besides Google Desktop Search, Spybot Search & Destroy, Google Toolbar and Service Pack 2 are Slashdotters installing on their parents' Windows machines?
Nothing. I tell them that I haven't used Windows stuff for several years and have forgotten so much about it that they are better off if they turn to (and pay) a professional that still do Windows.
If they decided to upgrade to a Linux system, I'd be glad to help them though.
)9TSS
Thats what I thought to myself when I bought my parents a used original style imac (the second generation ones with the slot loading drives...no tray to break). It's perfect for them. Not only does my mother like the blue color, but it's also fast enough for what they want to do, like surfing the net, email, and typing. The only thing I needed to do was install Mozilla. After that, no adware to worry about, no virus to protect from, no hackers getting in, no complex problems...if the thing craps out, you pop the imac recovery cd in and in 10 min or less your up and running again. And for the low cost of $300 bucks.
Show your parents you love them. Buy them an iMac. (And get it used..they're cheap and reliable and all they need.)
Don't take life so seriously. No one makes it out alive.
Then you no longer have to travel all the way there every time something needs fixing. Well... unless it's their net connection ;)
Why would I let my parents run a Windows machine? I'd get so spyware/spambot infested that they hardly could get any work done.
I'm cheap and so are my parents, but they're comfy with Windows...
.jpegs of their soon-to-be-born grandson
AVG Antivirus (grisoft.com)
IrfanView (irfanview.com) for viewing
Firefox 1.0 (mozilla.org) since it's more secure than IE and they won't know the difference
Other faves I use but couldn't palm off on them...
Pegasus Mail (pmail.com)
Shortkeys (shortkeys.com) - text macro utility (*great* when I'm doing helpdesk queues at work)
- G
Start a happiness pandemic
I usually get flamed for this, but I just do NOT do family tech support any more. The appreciation doesn't always exist for the work put in, the expectations are as high as any job I've had, and it just...never...stops... I've been through the worst of it, not having a free weekend with my friends for weeks at a time, having weeknights with my partner disturbed constantly, and feeling like I'm moving from 9 to 5 work just to come 'home' and face more of the same.
Maybe it comes from having a really large extended family of people who just don't want to know how computers should/shouldn't work, but it's just too much sometimes. Strictly my mother and sister now, nobody else.
I've found that near complete ignorance of Windows is my best defense. I've not been a serious Windows user since 1994. So when someone asks me for assistance with their Windows problem I can quite truthfully say:
"I'm sorry, I don't know how that works."
Don't get me wrong, I make my living in tech. I code in between 8 and 12 languages (depending on how good my memory is that day), can play a medium grade Linux/Solaris guru when necessary, write web apps, architect large distributed systems, operate a wide variety of service provider and enterprise networking equipment, etc. I also like helping people who are having technical problems. But there's a big difference between being the IM of last resort for various Linux/Python,etc problems and having to deal with Windows users.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
My parents were amazed at the amount of crap they had on their machine, now they run Ad-aware daily.
Dang it, how on earth did you forget FireFox? It's basicly the magic bullet that will remove most spyware related issues.
I will have your geek card back now.
Sometimes I wish I was a plumber, then I'd know how to deal with other people's shit.
However, whereas I'd like to give them a Linux box, they are used to using PCs with a WIndows 95 / XP interface from their PC and the local library. As they, especially my dad, have trouble getting to grips with new tools, I think I will have to compromise and install Windows for them.
I know that even after making it as secure as I can and giving them a quick list of don'ts (open attachements, etc) that it won't be as secure, but as they're both retired there is no business critical data there. I think that their ease of use will be more important than trying to move them away from Windows.
Extended Basic, Hunt the Wumpus, and Tombstone City.
"If you were plowing a field, which would you rather use? Two strong oxen or 1024 chickens?" --Seymour Cray
We are indeed the techsupport generation, but it doesn't have to be that way. We recently got "No I will not fix your computer" T-shirts ( http://www.thinkgeek.com/tshirts/frustrations/388b / ) at work as a fun gift. It has proved really useful. You don't have to say no, pople just stops asking you. Works great.
The only tech support I've had to do after getting (and wearing) this T-shirt, was for a really desperate aquaintaince with a wifi setup problem. I got two full-size fresh lobsters for fixing that, and I didn't even ask for anything.
I do make an exception for my own folks though, but now they are the only ones.
"There is no substitute for thinking" - Bjarne Stroustrup
I make my parents use Mozilla instead of IE and Thunderbird instead of Outlook.
These aren't the sigs you're looking for.
This christmas I'm installing Mozilla Firefox on my wifes parents computer. I tried telling them to before, but they didn't bother because they said they didn't have time to learn it. This time I will be there for 3 days, so I can move all their bookmarks and settings across, make them use it for a few days and then tell them they get no more help with problems caused by internet explorer.
I will also be installing Yahoo messenger, because they are always complaining that we never answer emails - now they can see when we are at the computer. Perhaps I shouldn't do that one...
A latent existence
The easist way to avoid support calls is to simply buy a pair of good quality scissors and then offer to fix all their problems. Note: a knife may also work but may be a bit dangerous.
Proceed to go round to the users house and cut the plug off anything more comlicated than a spoon. If you feel like trying to change the world mail the plugs to your favourite manufacturer to difficult to use electronic equipment with a note telling them why they are recieving plugs.
I suspect that should fix the problem
I used to have a better sig but it broke.
"So, what sites you've been surfing lately, gramps ? "
I'm going to upgrade my Mom's system to XP Pro, from XP Home, and get her used to running as a limnted user, vs running as Admin. She's already got everything she needs for apps. I've tried to get her into using PGP and OpenSSH, but she refuses to "fuss" with so much, as she says dealing with the firewall and IE Zones in the past is enough of a headache.
;)
I just got her into using Firefox a couple of weeks ago, after installing an earlier version months ago, only to see it was not being used. She must have read about the release, and finally bought into what I'd told her about IE becuase I started to get little help question emails about 'How do I.....", and "Can this...". She up and installed 1.0 herself and, in addition to all the IE>FF Q & As, she started to ask me about 'Extensions". I was blown away.
She's also become a digital camera shutterbug and loves to share her photos of vacations with friends and family. I hooked her up with TV set-top Flash Card reader w/remote a while back that runs slide shows of photos on her TV.
She now wants a multi-platform flash card reader and USB port card added to her system, one of the units that you can install in a 5 1/4 bay "she specified" as she emailed me a cyberguys catalog entry. I guess the only other thing she's bugged me about is having a RDP connection to her den pc from the kitchen where she has her old music computer. I wish I'd never taught her about all this. I'm sure she'll figure it ut eventually.
Ad-Aware instead of Spybot.
this is not my signature.
My girlfriend runs a Mac, my parents run an old P2 machine with Fedora installed and locked down and when asked to support friends computers I tell them "sorry, but I don't work on MS Windows machines".
I will (for free) wipe MS Windows and install Linux on any friends machine but my days of providing free support for Bill G are over.
I find this cuts down on the support calls and I can then enjoy Thanksgiving.
Ed Almos
Budapest, Hungary
The more corrupt the state, the more numerous the laws. - Tacitus, 56-120 A.D.
Here's what I install on my friends machines who are having trouble with spyware/adware. First, install and update Ad-Aware and show them how to run it. Then I install a nifty little program called Spyware Blaster which, from what I can tell, is supposed to block active x controls with certain strings from running. It works pretty good. You can grab a copy from http://www.javacoolsoftware.com/
Don't take life so seriously. No one makes it out alive.
Actually all the members of my family think they are the best at computers while they think I'm the most stupid guy ever (it's true!).
- What are you doing? (said with a condescending tone)
- I'm writing some assembly language on Linux.
- Pff, this sux, I can do better with my WindowsXP. Look, I'm clicking on the mouse!
- Thanks, leave me alone now!
- Look I installed Gator, I'M THE BEST! I don't need to go to college like you!!
My dad spent 3 days emailing and calling to find out why ABC wasn't downloading anything after a power cut. I talked him through uninstalling and reinstalling it, trying another client, re-checking his ADSL settings, all sorts of stuff. All international, all without remote access. Eventually, he emailed me to tell me he'd solved the problem - ABC wasn't downloading because he'd run out of disk space. He saved stuff to a different drive and now it works perfectly...
I thought that was people like me who worked the holidays, not spend them with family.
When VCR's are outlawed, only outlaws will have VCR's.
In related news, what other products besides Google Desktop Search, Spybot Search & Destroy, Google Toolbar and Service Pack 2 are Slashdotters installing on their parents' Windows machines?
Firefox of course!
You know, there are countries where coding and manufacturing are cheaper than in the USA and most of Europe, yet we still reduce the tech industry to these repetitive tasks by removing all incentives to provide user friendly products. As long as we keep patching up the broken designs for free, why would a company invest in making a product that can be operated by a non-techie? It's cheaper not to and the customers don't care because there's always the techie next door who will keep the ensemble of lowest price hard- and software running. Stopping or at least reducing free tech support would also help with educating users about the minimal amount of willingness to learn new things that is required to operate a modern consumer electronics device. Right now it's too damn convenient to have us repair things that should not be broken in the first place.
I'm sure this Thanksgiving I'll be asked about the broken CD player. While I'm sure it's remotely possible to fix such things my canned response is, "You know you can buy a DVD player for under $50." This is almost always followed by, "You know you can put CDs in a DVD player, it's not a problem". I'm sure I'll be asked about the broken DVD player, which again the canned response of, "You know you can buy a DVD player for under $50." I guess it may be different if they already have a cheep-o model that takes standard atapi drives.
When asked about people considering a Bose Wave CD/Radio my canned response is, "You know you can put CDs in a DVD player, it's not a problem." This is best for people with existing surround sound DVD players.
When telling the children I feel like a broken record, they ask, "What's that?"
There is no sanctuary. There is no sanctuary. SHUT UP! There is no shut up. There is no shut up.
Basicly, that.
You HAVE to install SP2. You have no choice. Over the years WinXP has exposed serious flaws in it's design and implimentation and SP2 is a partial fix.
But a partial fix is better then a no-fix.
Your better off trying to install SP2 and blowing your system away, then not installing SP2.
There are several very serious exploits that can be used on IE and WinXP that require no user intervention. If somebody trusts you to keep them safe and you refuse to install SP2 for them, then your screwing them over potentially.
I don't like it, but then again I don't use crappy software either.
Here is what I'm installing.
My Greasemonkey scripts for Digg &
at least if you fix their computers they are less likely to make you mow the lawn!!
before you criticise someone
Firstly I don't do work on a Windows machine for free. If it's for friends I let them buy me a meal or treat me to something nice. If it's for family I tend to do some quick cleaning for free but then arrange to sort out the rest of the mess at a more convienient time at a set block of time in the near future. I recommend getting a Mac to everyone I deal with, as when i show them my 17"PB and tell them I've never had a virus, trojan, worm, spyware or anything resembling the 100+ pieces of crap I've just extracted from their machines they become more receptive to the idea. for windows users I install firefox, spybot, XP SP2 (if on XP) and all the other bits and pieces required. It's got to the point that I have all this (and some product key tools) on my usb pen-drive on me all the time.
At least my parents listen ;-)
;-), and guess who gets the blame then.
/way/ too expensive.
I've given up supporting anyone using Windows except for my parents, whose machine I have remote control over via UltraVNC and SSH (and only when I ask them to load it up - ZoneAlarm has to be given explicit permission to allow it through).
These days, working on a Windows problem is a bit like doing emergency heart surgery in a disease ridden hospital: you know you don't have a choice, but you know there will be more problems to come. And the patient may still die despite your best efforts (with costs like private healthcare
I have better things to do with my time. I've converted a few people to Linux by letting them play with Knoppix for a while. When they felt comfortable enough I've switched them over, and the only ones that have ever had a problem with that were gamers. Fix that and there's no real reason to run MS anymore. It's unsafe, unstable and
You definitely *need* a monopoly to sell it..
Insert
PearPC?
My mother's computer is a constant source of disputes. As soon as I've started helping her, she decided she could entirely rely on me and I started to waste my week-ends fixing her computer.
Usually, people think a computer is like a wash machine. They refuse to learn, they just want to push the button and it should work; if it breaks, call the mech. My mother lost several times files because she didn't take the pain to save them on a floppy disk or on a CD-ROM.
Well, after a few weeks like that, I finally told her that in order to drive a car, you need a licence, you don't ask others to come over and drive your car each time you want to go to the supermarket.
On the bright side, my 90 year-old grandfather has bought a computer last summer, and I spent a week during holidays teaching him how to use the basics of mail, wordprocessing, saving, printing and net surfing. We wrote together a complete 12 pages course together (with screen prints), and I'm proud to say that he can use these tools alone now.
Once the whole PC thing is a generation old the problem should go away. In my case this happened this year when my son got a car. Now when my parents call with a PC problem I call my son and tell him it's time to pay his grandparents a visit ;-)
Seriously. This isn't that hard people.
I use GoToMyPC. If I am at my parents house on Thanksgiving and they start griping and asking me to fix it I will go to there machine, log onto www.gotomypc.com , log into my account, download the java app that it runs on (I forget the size but it is small, 15 minutes on a 56k connection), install it and turn it on.
I will then go back to them and tell them to call me some evening next week and I will log on and fix it. This is Thanksgiving and I am not interested.
Ditto for the rest of the family. I have talked numerous people through the installing the app phase over the phone.
Of course if you have a family that fights (I am blessed that my family gets along) then maybe fixing the PC is a good thing.
Create a new admin-account, and make your parents restricted users. Too bad there's a lot of software that cannot function unless you are running with administrative rights.
Try Firefox,Thunderbird,Ad-aware SE & XP Anti-spy for starters. ,games.My daughters wants Unreal Tournament(she was #2 in the country at 1 time) and others.
After that,of course
What else? Latest versions of Nero,Decss and Peerguardian,along with Winmx 3.54 beta.
Now,I will also be busy with the Computers for kids project( I have a 30 Ft. tandem truckload of older donated machines to check out.)
The holidays are busy for the Booger Man.
What do I get in return?Plenty. The smiles of the kids that benefit from the volunteer work,some of Jennifer's home made turkey stuffing(My mother's reciepe) and being able to forget,for a short time,the criminal idiot the occupies the white house that the non-thinking public reelected.
Happy Holidays!
Geek Hillbilly
I'll be upgrading them to Mandrake 10.1 official - they are already on Mandrake 10 and are extremely happy with it. Mother in law is on Mandrake 9.2 ,uncle in law Mdk 10, and my aunt is on - yes, Mandrake 10.
Just wondering - if lots of other Slashdotters are doing this kind of thing, are we now seeing the growth of the Linux desktop amongst non-tech users, which just isnt covered by Gartner style estimates.
My mom doesn't have a computer and probably never will (she's 80).
My in-laws have a Windows box, but they don't bug me about it because my father-in-law has this very corporate mindset about service contracts, etc. They have a subscription-type agreement with a one-man "geeks-to-your-door" outfit where this guy comes to their house periodically and "checks on the computer". I would assume he runs anti-spyware and anti-virus programs, checks for Windows updates, etc., but for all I or my in-laws know he could be installing a key stroke logger or Back Orifice. Fortunately, they hardly use the computer for anything other than email. Specifically, they are afraid to shop online and don't use Quicken or anything of the sort.
Macintosh. Seriously. I got my mom an iMac to replace her ailing / failing Toshiba laptop last Christmas & other than installing Firefox (Safari wasn't rendering some sites correctly) I haven't had to touch it since I set it up.
Jaysyn
There is a war going on for your mind.
With all the problems, patches, spyware, spam and all around complexities with PCs - I shudder everytime I think about having to add anything to my own computers, let alone my parent's computer. Instead, I look for products that make their (and my) lives simpler. For example, instead of buying them a photo printer last that hooks up to the computer and uses some half-assed complicated software and drivers - I bought a stand alone model with a small LCD screen that prints photos directly from their camera. Life made simpler. For all parties concerned. 2nd Example. Web-based email. Specifically Yahoo. Lots less problems. Any other examples that tend to bypass the PC and their Programs?
After giving them an Apple for Christmas,
you can enjoy your family time without interruptions of tech support-itis.
No more rebuilding virus flattened computers
No more uninstalling 30 spyware apps
No more fighting BSODs.
You still might have to call 'dibs!' on the turkey leg!
I know there's all the Windows hating going on here, and I think it's adorable sometimes, but there's a lot going for Windows that means I won't be giving my parents some flavour of Linux for a while. I know, I know, "an unpatched Winblows box will be hax0red in 30 seconds!!!111", but the fact is it won't be unpatched because of the auto-updates. I stuck it behind a Netgear Router/ADSL modem/WAP/Firewall and put some AV software on there. There's been no problems. They don't even get spam, and I don't mean they don't get it after going through Bayesian-Freudian-Pseudomatronic filtering, I mean they just don't get it. Unless the occasional monkey-drinking-own-urine email from an acquaintance is considered spam, and I like to think it is.
Even if they need to do something really difficult, like install new drivers, it's just a double click on the setup file. I tried installing ATI drivers in Mandrake a few months ago. I'll let you all know how it went when I figure out how to get X working again. I can't even get my parents off IE and onto something much better, like Firefox, because it's still not quite there. Example: My Mum had to fill in this great big form to submit an offer to a potential client, and Firefox couldn't do it because of the javascript involved. Okay, that's probably shoddy coding on the form's part and nothing to do with Firefox, but my Mum doesn't care about who's in the wrong when she's got to do something vital for her business and it won't work. My dad has been working for what was ICL in the 70s and he's still got limited, at best, technical ability. But when he gets into Excel or Visio he knows how to do all the graphs and charts, so who am I to take that away from him? How's he going to figure out how to do an organisational chart in calm pastel management colours in something else? I know I could use Crossover Office or something, but why go to all the hassle of setting up Linux to emulate Windows, when I can just use Windows without a problem.
I don't like MS all that much, and they get up to some pretty dodgy stuff sometimes, but there's a reason why everyone keeps buying their stuff aside from the fact that they bought up all the competition. Some of it is actually fairly good.
This comment was formatted for readability, but I forgot the line break tags
I wish my parents listened, they just said I'm paranoid, bought a new computer, and won't give me the password.
Best free software out there, if you ask me. Just make sure you set it up to never die (windows service options: on fail, reset..)
No more running home to fix anything... even printer diagnostics can usually be fixed via phone (unless its some weird HW anomaly..)
I won't set up a dependant (on me) user without it.
Oh, and don't forget cygwin & sshd... helpful for when you don't have crazy bandwidth, and its a simple fix, checkup, whatever..
Codito, ergo sum.
So the only tech support I have to do is explain how to use applications. I don't need to repair or rescue anything.
Back before the Internet became popular, I used to preach about backups, about how the "easy" way was to listen to me; the "hard" way was to lose something vital.
All smiles, nods, agreement. Not a single person acted on this though.
I gave up when I realised that most people simply Do Not Learn the "easy" way.
Both my parents run Mandrakelinux so I don't have to install any of that junk:)
Or, not installed. Tried to get my Mom on the Opera kick, but didn't work. She didn't like the looks of Firefox either. But I did get her the hell out of Outlook Express, and she doesn't mind Pegasus Mail. Mostly what I do is make sure she's getting the latest patches downloaded for her XP system, she's always months behind! I gave my sister a computer a few months ago, just built from spare parts I had lying around. I put Mandrake on it, and made sure it'd connect to her dial-up and all that. She never asks me to fix anything on it, she never tries to download any software (all she wanted was an email client and a web browser with all the plugins, plus she's addicted to Circus Linux) and just loves it.
Of course, an ISP like Comcast will lease you a (wireless) router for $5 per month and set it up for $200 (2 users) or $300 (3-5 users). Ugh.
TO START
PRESS ANY KEY
Where's the 'ANY' key? I see Esk, Kitarl, and Pig-Up...
Talking about digital photography - if you've got a family member who's got Windows and a digital camera but finds the included software overly slow and/or complicated, give Picasa a try. Standard disclaimer - I'm in no way affiliated with the company, just someone who was really impressed with how straightforward Picasa is to use.
Non-patronising, doesn't spam the user with constant hand-holding, but incredibly simple - importing photos, organising them, printing and emailing them (even from Mozilla Thunderbird), it's a very impressive program. Plus it runs remarkably well on older computers - my mother has it running on a 333MHz K6-2, and it feels much faster than iPhoto 4 on my iBook...
Highly recommended!
Tedious Bloggy Stuff - hooray?
I was one of those who opened up my big mouth last Thanksgiving and the hostess asked me to look at her computer. So while everyone else was having a good old drunken fest, I was the one hunkering over the machine, diagnosing that her 2nd hard drive was dead, trying to fix it, when after a while she came in asked how I was doing. I told her it was dead and she said: "Yeah, it keeps giving me an error on the E: drive and I never even use it!". I yanked out the dead drive and re-booted the machine and it was all good. All of that work and all I got was leftover Turkey. Good times.
--- There is a man in a smiling bag.
I let my family members run Windows if they want, but I tell 'em that if they do, I can't help them with it. I haven't used Windows since '96 or '97, and even then, I only used it for games, and wouldn't allow it to install the modem drivers, much less connect to the internet. I have no idea how to make a Windows system safe and secure, nor do I have any interest in learning.
So, instead, I have a standing offer. Anyone in my family who's sick of viruses and spyware and the other ills of Windows can get my help setting up and maintaining a Linux box. So far, only my completely-computer-illiterate aunt has taken me up on it (after a major fight with viruses), but she's been so happy with the results that I think some others may come around soon.
Since the install of Slackware 9.1 (and remote updates) with OOo and Mozilla, I've not needed to do ANY work on my mum's computer! She likes Slack better than Windows (I settled on Slack years ago, when my wife hosed her system, got pissed and wasted precious rum shorting out computers by dumping it in them, after kickin' them over).
This year, she's wanting me to "look in on" her updating the desktop to 10.0, but since she's fresh installed it three times already -- on other computers "to practice" -- I don't think I'll have to worry.
behind firewall
My grandfather programmed computers in the Navy. I was born in 1971, my mother worked data entry for an insurance company and I got to see the machine operators marvel over ascii art at 3 or 4. My grandfather was early into home computers and so was my dad. I have never had this problem of technology impaired older relatives. When I did a stint of tech support on the phone my retort to the elder people saying they didn't know what to do with the machines because of their age, was it isn't age it is just experience and I would point to my grandfather as an example. They liked the fact that I wasn't a snobbery kid telling them this technology was for my generation, but letting them know it was possible for all. I have always found comments like this just a bit naff and almost disciminatory. It is not age that makes a difference it is exeperience. Their are people younger than me immersed in technology that can't make it past hitting the power on button on their ps2 or xbox. While I am still baffled by the linear menus of my mobile phone, mainly because I equate mobile phone to 24x7 work and try to avoid touching the thing as much as possible so I do not have the experience to navigate it quickly. It is all experience and we put in the experience to learn based on what we hope to get from the techonology.
Anyway I am lucky Christmas and Thanksgiving I will be eating food, checking out my brothers dual G5 Mac (he is the music producer go figure), talking to me dad about the 70 foot illuminated cross someone put on their land that happens to fill the view from my parents bedroom and keep the room well lit at night. All from the comfort of my home in the UK while they are in their happy house in PA.
And I won't have to explain to them how these little chatty things work or how to get the webcam facing the whole family and not just the forehead of my brother.
I was thinking of the immortal words of Socrates, who said: "I drank what?" - Chris Knight (Val Kilmer)- Real Genius
I'm one of the latter end baby boomers being 52. However, it is not my son or daughter that fixes my PC problems I am the one that fixes theirs. The original post left out some of the better tools which are Adaware, spywhareblaster, spywareguarder, CWSshredder and Hijackthis! (To name a few.) PCer since 83. Mom and Pop aren't always the Clampett's
``what other products besides Google Desktop Search, Spybot Search & Destroy, Google Toolbar and Service Pack 2 are Slashdotters installing on their parents' Windows machines?''
Ubuntu Linux. Debian, user-friendly, beautiful, and full-featured. Now if only Linux had better wlan card support...
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
Chris Rock (Butters): You don't get that with my mother's phone! D-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-four! D-d-d-d-d-d-five! Oops, I messed up; I have to start over. D-d-d-d-d-four!
(Ok, paraphrased - movie quote pages skip over this part of the quote)
It would be cool if it didn't suck.
This trip up to the folks house (they live 200 miles away), I will be fixing their computer AND I will be installing a DVD player. Though I am not leaving until the middle of next week, I have already started planning and getting tools together.
When I say installing the DVD, that means that there isn't space for it in their cabinet with the TV unless a shelf is moved. So I will be bringing my RIDGID drill and some wood screws, a full set of regular tools (hammer, etc.), and a full set of software tools for updating them from OS 9 to OS X.
I'm installing a key logger with a tunnel through their wireless router!
Tyler: You don't know where ive been, Lou. YOU DONT KNOW WHERE IVE BEEN!!
I install Hijack This, CWShredder, AdAware, Spybot S&D, Avast free edition, TDS-3, and Process Explorer.
I'd been thinking about looking into it just to see how well it works. I use Gallery on my hosting account, and run Gallery Remote to upload images.
I also use Adobe Photoshop Album 2.0 (as does my Mom), and am looking into running a perl script that will allow me to upload albums directly from PS Album to my Gallery Installation.
Thanks for the tip on Picasa. She might prefer it over PS Album.
But the main thing is I need to pound into his head that he needs to read and respond to any messages that pop up. Whenever norton pops up that box telling them to update virus definitions, they never do it. It clearly explains it needs to update itself and there is a connect button, but this is beyond what they understand. I'll try to explain, but I'm not too optimistic.
My family has interesting misconceptions about my capabilities, and I assume this is true of a lot of people here. I have a degree in CS, I make my living programming computers, but I don't know jack about troubleshooting Windows. I run a Mac at home because it's simple to fix when it breaks. The skillsets of a good programmer and a good technician don't overlap nearly as much as people think. Yet, everybody thinks I should know how to fix all of their Windows problems.
So, I tell them that I'm like an engineer. I do the computer equivalent of building bridges, designing cars, etc. What they're asking me to do is the computer equivalent of repairing their car after the engine compartment started smoking. They wouldn't expect a bridge designer to be able to fix their car engine, and so they shouldn't expect a programmer to be able to fix their computer. Once they get the idea that I might be able to do something, but it's really not the kind of thing I'm good at, everybody is a lot happier.
Mod down posts with a "Free Mac Mini/iPod" sig, they're spam!
To top it off my Mum must have a thing for the kid at the local apple store. She's gone to most of their little classes and drug me by to meet him when I was in town recently.
Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.
My father is an academic in electrical engineering and can look after himself (or so I assume, anyway).
Danny.
I have written over 900 book reviews
Same, I take care of my immediate family's machines (I still live at home), but that's it. Laregly, that's because most of my family's incredibly tech-oriented - at least half of my extended family are IT workers (mostly sys admins, but a few have other experience). What this means, is that everyone has either a parent, husband, or wife to look after their computer, with the exception of one uncle who's capable of doing anything I can direct him to do over the phone. Therefore, most of the time, the only questions that get thrown my way (I'm a software engineer) are generally questions about hardware (I've got far more computer-building experience than anyone else), and software related questions that nobody else can figure out.
It's free and does a pretty good job. Norton antivirus kept bringing their P3-1ghz/512mb RAM machine to its knees.
I agree with a number of other posters that I'll likely just pave over my folks' hard drive next time and install some desktop version of Linux to cut down on the crap support calls. Then I'll only get called when the VCR is blinking 12:00....
After the most recent iteration of fixing problems with my parents machine, I gave them a Knoppix cdrom and told them this will be their next OS if they break their Windows install again.
I have a Mac. My mum has a Mac. I have a Wintel box, but's got Win95 installed, and I generally vacuum out the dustbunnies before booting it. My mum hears tales of woe from her bridge-playing cronies about 'worms' and 'viruses' and 'my computer broke, and I have a man in once a month to clean it up, how about you', and after two years still doesn't quite understand what's going on well enough to have developed MacOSX smugness.
[1] Installing *on* Windows? Generally by the time I get called in, any machine I get to see is so smashed by viruses, worms, spyware, descents into DLL hell and so on, that the fastest way to clean it up is to back up, wipe, and reinstall. Sometimes I add a bigger hard disc.
(Tip: Ma/Pa has probably lost their Windows CD key. I found you can get these back using Belarc Advisor, http://www.belarc.com/ -- but this won't help unless Ma/Pa still has the original CDs.]
[2] Ad-Aware SE is my favourite spyware killer -- http://www.lavasoftusa.com/
I also generally nag about keeping antivirus software up-to-date, and also point out how many ways their USB ADSL modem can stop working; far better to fit an ethernet card if necessary, and get a combined modem/router/hub/hardware firewall. But I'm usually flogging a dead horse by this point.
I got my Dad an eMac.
The result?
- No more support calls
- The first computer my Dad's enjoyed using
- No more rats nest of cables
The other result is when it was time to get a laptop for myself - after using OS X, it had to be a PowerBook.
Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
You insensitive clod, not all people want NT 4 SP2 on their win 98 boxes.
Seriously though, the first thing which goes on is the latest McAfee Stinger. When that's wiped out most of the viruses, I uninstall their out-of-date Norton - so many people don't realise that the major antivirus vendors are on a rental model and just buy the product and expect it to last forever. Then Avast! Personal Edition goes on, and the PC is fully scanned. After that comes Spybot and Ad-Aware. I use both because each product has its stregths and weaknesses. All of this is done form a CD burnt with the latest patterns so no internet connectivity happens until their PC has been cleaned. And then Sygate Personal Firewall completes the mix of security products.
After that comes Thunderbird and Firefox, The GIMP and Audacity (if they are into that sort of thing. And of course we musn't forget IrfanView.
After installing Windows on a computer (with at least with Firefox, Thunderbird, Office, (Norton) Antivirus and Winamp, I change the default locations for 'My Documents' / 'My Music' / 'Desktop' etc. with TweakUI (great utility!) on d: or some other partiton then c:. After that, i'll make a ghost-image of the first partition (C:) and put that on the second partition. At last, make a win98-boot-floppy with Ghost on it and let it auto-execute the ghost-command which put back the ghost-image on the first partition (with a 'Are you sure'-option!). So if anything goes wrong, just let them put in the floppy and let them run Windows- / Office- / Virus-update (which you could also add to your ghost-image registry items).
Not least because they have a very good support forum. Pattern updates are very timely too and its impact on the performance of the boxes I've put it on is minimal.
What distro did you use? I have been trying to determine which is the best for the computer illiterate, but have yet to find the most reliable one :(
A bad analogy is like a leaky screwdriver.
I installed Xandros on my parents computer and haven't had to fix it since. I wrote about it for LinuxWorld. Yes, I know that switching OS seems like a huge step and frankly it is. But Xandros is the perfect distro for many computer users (basic office apps such as word processing, Internet, etc). The Xandros Deluxe edition includes Codeweavers CrossOver too so installation of things like Quicken and full version of Microsoft Office are possible, though Xandros includes OpenOffice.
It seems as though most Windows users that I've talked to don't care about the *name* of the program so much as they care about it just *working* and being compatible. OpenOffice is a great example of this. Show someone that they can read their old Word docs and that they can even save directly to PDF and they'll be an OpenOffice user. Yes, yes, yes. I know that there are things that OOo can't do but many (most?) users won't ever encounter those issues. Likewise, show someone that they can get their work done in much the same way and don't have to settle for IE's constant string of security holes, even post SP2, and Windows' poor performance and constant, never-ending critical updates and they'll be a Linux (and/or Xandros) user.
Since I installed Xandros on my parents computer I don't have to worry about my parents getting the spyware/adware/malware du jour or about the OS crashing for no good reason. They don't have to worry about clicking something they shouldn't or about their computer being "down" when they get yet another virus. I chose Xandros as an upgrade from XP Pro on their computer and it helped everyone concerned.
If I ever had to do tech support, which I'm just guessing I will at some point, Xandros is based on Debian which makes my life easier. At least I won't find myself in the position of having to tech support Outlook Express, a program I've never used, or any of the other disappointing, unconfigurable, security-hole laden programs that come from Microsoft.
I finally figured out how to simplify all this tech support for the family stuff.
When they start belly-aching to me about how fucked up Windows is, I hand them a Debian installation CD.
I offer unlimited free support for family members running Debian. Support that I can for other distros like RedHat and SuSE. And nothing for anything Microsoft.
Debian is my distro of choice. But my brother runs with SuSE right now. It's been a few years since he started using Linux and he may never become some uber-geek, but he and I stick with it and I help him all I can.
My in-laws are all MSFT fanatics so I don't talk to them about it much. They bitch about virus and spyware problems and I smile. They know my position and if they ever cared to try it out I would spend weekends with them.
I even gave my daughter a notebook PC on the grounds that she only runs Linux on it. She didn't care, it has some cool games and does what she wants it to.
But until then, I get to enjoy the turkey and stuffing and good company all tech-support free!
..would people ask me to come hang up their pictures? Level their doors and floors? Build their shed?
Would they do it without offering to pay me?
Unable to read configuration file '/bigassraid/htdig//conf/14229.conf'
Geocrawler error message.
Last year, around christmas, I had a full on tech-related mental breakdown. During a tech support fit of rage helping two geographically separated family members setup their wireless networks (both of which I had bought for them as christmas gifts) I managed to desroy my own ill working 48x CDROM and destroy a cordless phone that had stopped giving me the ability to hang up. After this point I realized that I was done giving free technical support on things that seemed to never sink in.
I took a three month hiatus from it and let them suffer. After which point I set ground rules that my time cannot be spent running myself into complete nervous breakdowns over miniscule problems that they're having. The other ground rule is that I won't do techsupport about end of year holidays. Hopefully this will ease my end of year stress.
That should be your cue. My daughter is great at them, but she's 10. She's lived her whole life with a GUI there, and learned them before she was 3.
Asking older people to rewire their neurons to handle the spatial requirements of scrolling windows is not simple. I'm glad the change happened when I was 20 rather than 40, in other words.
Maybe old DOS applications would be more useful for the older set.
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
Firefox, Thunderbird and Ad-aware.
I am the Barber of Seville.
Make then pay you. The deal with my dad is, he pays for my ADSL line and I do his tech support.
I like muppets.
I do my girlfriend (ha ha) because she's right here and I can control her system with my own firewall (Shorewall is nice...).
I keep my sister and her husband taken care of, because they do _exactly_ what I say and do not mess with the configuration.
I do the next door neighbor because her and her husband are dumbasses and won't fuck around with it. He wants to surf porn, she wants to do the online banking. So I make both of them happy.
I refuse to do anyone else because I don't go there often enough to check the situation, and my stepfather likes to play and get other guys in to mess with his system - I don't want any responsibility for that shit.
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
A while ago I installed Gentoo linux with kde, firefox and evolution for email on my parents' computer.
My parents love it and they think the kde patience is better than the one in windows.
What's in it for me?
In related news, what other products besides Google Desktop Search, Spybot Search & Destroy, Google Toolbar and Service Pack 2 are Slashdotters installing on their parents' Windows machines?
My parents run Gentoo Linux. I'll probably do emerge sync ; emerge -Duv world while we're having dinner. Then again, I can do it from here so why waste quality family time sitting in front of their computer? It's not like they've had any problems with it in the past 2 years.
Hal Spacejock: Science Fiction with Nuts
My wife is a field rep for a company that services retailers, and my sister is going to her husbands' family for the actual day. So we just managed to have our own Thanksgiving two weeks early. I already did my maintenance work for them.
I installed all the following on my mom's computer:
Firefox (1.0, she already had an earlier one), Mozilla (1.5 to 1.72), all the OS updates she'd blown off, an Office service pack, and her shiny new iSight camera so she and my dad can videoconference with us up here - or more specifically with our toddler.
She's got an eMac. But even my Mac-using parents still tend to blow off updates unless I do the updates for them. It's just that the consequences of blowing off updates on MacOS X are not generally too severe - at least if you're behind a NAT router like they are.
If an update is critical I'll use ARD to remotely apply the update for them - it works pretty well even though 1.2 is kinda kludgy over a WAN.
-- Josh Turiel
"2. Do not eat iPod Shuffle."
I do not install WinXP Service Pack 2. Why? It has too many problems with it, it closes few security holes and opens some more. Not only do PCs stop working more often if they have Spyware and SP2 compared to without, even the basica firewall causes problems connecting.
The best protection I've found is, as everyone else has said, switching the users to Linux. I think I'm going to bring over a SuSE 9.2 Live cd to my mother-in-law's the next time I see her.
Sygate's Personal Firewall and TightVNC.
I log on to my parent's PC via TightVNC at least once a week. So much easier than fixing things over the phone or IM.
Dr.E
by systematically refusing to touch unhealthy windows boxes and commanding my friends and relatives to install sane operating system instead.
There you are, staring at me again.
How the hell is this INSIGHTFUL? There's no insight here, just parroting what's been said about 6 or 7 times above here....sheesh.
Spares me the pain of diagnosing broken software. When my dad needs help now, its always a hardware problem.
my sister uses debian, and I visit her every 4 or 6 months, and everything is in the same good state as before: she writes documents in openoffice, prints then, downloads videos with mldonkey, watches them with mplayer, burns them with k3b.
but she wants games for her son - so I allowed debian to dualboot with win95 (grub). and I don't touch win95 on her computer at all. She uses a husband of her friend for that. He reinstalls it every few months, to get the games running :>
I don't have time to run wine with directx support on her box, heck I even didn't done that on my machine, let alone someone's else machine.
#
#\ @ ? Colonize Mars
#
I'll clean the virus and update your system. While I'm doing that you can change the oil in my car, rotate the tires, and hey, how about freshening up the wax job while you're at it? And don't forget to vacuum out the interior and rub on some armor-all.
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
My father still tries to control his PC with the stereo remote.
Reminds me of a word of a friend: "The Internet is only then ready for the masses when my parents can easily manage to access what they want with a remote". (He is ~50 and in IT and Counseling with UI evaluation experience).
Basically, this boils down to that developers should adapt to human behaviour basics (cave: are there any - I am not so sure - but still).
CC.
TaijiQuan (Huang, 5 loosenings)
(no text)
I tell my family that I won't help them with Windows. Sure, I could help, but I won't. I turn away people who offer to pay me for help with Windows - why on Earth would I do the same work, on a holiday, for free?
Oh sure, they do the same to me. My brother refuses to help me maintain my nuclear reactor, even though I know he could do it with one hand tied behind his back.
from when people first got cars and the mechanically-inclined relative was expected to help keep it running. The price of knowing what to do is being asked to do it.
The Mongrel Dogs Who Teach
Well, whilst waiting for ad-aware to pick all the rubbish out of my mum's old-skool win98 machine, I thought I'd have a quick gander at /. on her newly installed firefox. I'm glad I did: word must have got out about what I was doing! I've heard that you can find everything you need on an Internet, but wasn't expecting to find it all as the lead story on /.! Fantastic stuff - really helped.
:/ (un)fortuantly she doesn't get enough junk/email viruses etc to change her mind (yet). I can't just discontinue support though, even though I feel like it at times, although sometimes the arrangement doesn't work out too bad (she paid for my journey, and feeds and waters me all weekend).
Spent last night doing all the updates and stuff, office updates etc etc, norton updates, zonealarm, adaware, firefox, blah blah. However, upon perusal, I may well have a serious look at avast and sygate's personal offering.
There is no chance I could ever get mum to switch away from windows, just as there is no chance I can get her to switch away from OE
and then they will not take your expertise for granted:). After hooking up my entire close and extended family with computers for free (I usually pass my old computers (+$100 for reasonale upgrades) to them when I buy new stuff) this is what I found out:
0. Don't waste your time explainig to them what the problem is because they don't have the patience to listen to the entire explanation you are more than willing to give to them.
1. After fixing a problem you are blamed for ALL the other problems that will happen following the origial problem.
2. Unless a speed improvement is more than twice on a benchmark, people over 50 will not notice it, so don't waste time and money switching them from ATA66 to ATA133.
3. Any CPU over 1.5Ghz + 512M is an overkill.
I am RIPPING my folk's music collection and putting it on a Linux box to serve a Slimdevices Squeezebox.
I will also be adding a lot of free live blues and jazz shows to their collection from sites like archive.org and easytree.org.
I have been using a Slimp3 to play my collection for about 3 years and it has changed my life. I have probably listened to more music in the last year than in my entire life pre-Slimp3. Funny thing is, it isn't the studio stuff I bought over the years (and am completely tired of).. It is the live music.
They bring their busted boxen. Need I say more? ;-)
Well, I'm old enough to have watched my parent's black and white cabinet TV, but young enough to have gotten into computer programming and hardware for my profession. This week I'm going to be loaning my sister my TiPowerBook, to replace her pwned Windows box. She's completely disgusted dealing with regular tech support, and just wants to read her mail and do some document writing and photo scanning. I've helped her and my brother when I could, usually with setting up their computers and installing software. She's a fairly competent user, my brother is pretty much clueless, but I love them both! :-)
By the taping of my glasses, something geeky this way passes
Installing a hosts-file will make your parents browsing experience a lot more pleasing to the eye. The non-internet generation seems to get a lot more distracted than us slashdoters by blinking ads in the visual field. It might save you from some trojan URLs as well. And while you are at it, remove shockwave flash.
so how about Win VNC?
Rather than asking what to put on to protect them, how about "What can I put on my family's computers so they won't notice when I change the OS to Linux"?
I have my parents already running OO and Moz, and they don't really use their computer for much else.
If not for that goddamned "Chip's Challenge", I could change them over to Linux today and they wouldn't even notice.
Anyone know of a Linux port/clone of CC? A Flash or SW version would suffice...
This Christmas I'm going to introduce my Dad to Linux, either Debian or Slackware. He uses XP and actually runs it very securely, w/ ZoneAlarm, anti-virus, and soforth. My Mom always complains about how much time he spends trying to install new programs designed to "optimize" the computer and then fixing the settings that broke on install. I figure that if we get Linux on their old computer, he can have something to tinker with while leaving well enough alone on the business critical machine.
I started to nod when reading the article. I too, do tech-support for my parents. The cool thing is, I've convinced them to run Linux. My father use Linux on his laptop - and will be doing his first upgrade for himself next week (up from SuSE 9.0 to SuSE 9.2). My mother also use SuSE on her stationary.
;)
The only time I do windows tech-support is for the bicycle workshop I use to get my bike fixed. The deal is quite excellent. I update/fix his computer while he fix my bike. I don't charge for my work, he doesn't charge for his work - but we both have to pay for the hardware (i.e I pay for new tires, he pays for more RAM/disk/CPU/whatever).
Some would claim he is getting the better deal, but remember that I get my bike fixed "at once", while other customers have to wait up to a week to get their bike fixed.
"Rune Kristian Viken" - http://www.nwo.no - arca
My parents have Macs, too. I bought them for them on the theory that they would be easier to use and require less effort to support.
Unfortunately, they still require a lot of work to support: printing has all sorts of problems, software tries to update itself and fails, Apple software tells you to buy the next version, etc. The Macintosh UI is remarkably unintuitive unless you are a Mac-head. Macs are a little better than Windows overall, but mostly just because they have bits and pieces of UNIX left in them.
A huge disadvantage of Macs is that they keep complaining that all their other friends have all this great Windows software that they can't run.
Linux is good enough now that their next machines are probably just going to be Linux machines: it's easier to maintain than either Macintosh or Windows, and Linux comes with huge amounts of software out of the box, software that, even if you have the money to buy for Macintosh or Windows, is a pain to install and maintain on those other platforms.
O you think thats bad. I go to a small Private school with only about 100 students. I AM tech support at my school. Im constantly being brought out of class to fix the principles printer(reinstalling drivers), or to swap the CD-ROM drive of an old win-95 machine with one of the many defunct computers donated over the years, and even once to reset a admin password because the guy never came back and there server went offline. Im 16 and will be graduating next year and one of my requirements is 90 hours of community service, which im getting day-by-day. O, and to be on subject, i've turned all the schools computers onto firefox, and my principle loves that tabbed browsing!
When I read about the evils of drinking, I gave up... reading.-Henny Youngman
A lot of my family members and friends use Microsoft Windows and over the years I must have spent months fixing their systems myself or telling them on the phone what to do. I am tired as hell of playing the pro bono Microsoft support tech and I no longer offer any kind of support for anything Microsoft related to anyone. Period. My immediate family members now all have a dual boot system with their favorite version of Microsoft Windows and FreeBSD 4 with the following free software:
Keep in mind that all of the software above also has versions that run on Windows, so there is no need to use one application under Windows and another under FreeBSD. Great integration, no confusion, easier transition.
The raw Windows partition is backed up in an image file created with dd, so if there's any Windows related trouble they can't fix on their own they just boot the special FreeBSD floppy which employs a simple shell script (using dialog) to let them backup or restore the primary partition image. If you need something more complex like Norton Ghost then I suggest you use the absolutely free and cool replacement called PartImage.
If they have any trouble while using FreeBSD they just click a special icon named "Call for help" which starts a shell script that sends a number of specially crafted packets to my computer's static IP, where such packets are logged in a special file which I see on my desktop (tail -f), so if I'm available I can log into their system via ssh within minutes of any sign of trouble and they do not even have to bother to email me, let alone use the phone to call me. It works like a charm.
I feel sorry for the people who buy Microsoft Windows and then call me to help them out when things go wrong, but I just can't afford to waste my life fixing what should not have been broken in the first place. Enough is enough.
in related news, what other products besides Google Desktop Search, Spybot Search & Destroy, Google Toolbar and Service Pack 2 are Slashdotters installing on their parents' Windows machines?"
...
...
Adobe Reader - solves the "I got this attachement and I can't read it" problem
Picasa - solves the "I can't find the picture of the grandkids you sent"
MS Streets and trips Nothing says "get lost" like mapping software and it solves all sorts of arguments on the best route
yahoo messenger so my mom can IM me at work (this is a bad idea - but now that she knows about it, can't not do it)
And last, don't forget to bring tools and other crap because mom may have went out and bought a new graphics card or some other piece of equipment (firewire card, usb2.0 card etc) she wants you to install
... SpywareBlaster as well, of course. And a small personal firewall like say, ZoneAlarm or something...an then an anti-virus package of some kind if they havne't got that already. Oh, and make sure to run those windows-updates too.
So, for running one program (IE) you need to install at least four others and run them every once in a while.
I put ultraVNC on every computer I work on .. if I was there once, I'll be there again.
:)
I don't install it as a service, so people are secure knowing I can't just connect, but at least that way if I want to connect, it's available.
it's a real time saver, and it has enough 'wow' effect that people are in awe of my god like control over computers, which is also nice
We emerge from our mother's womb an unformatted diskette; our culture formats us. - Douglas Coupland
....I go to a small Private school with only about 100 students. I AM tech support at my school. Im constantly being brought out of class to fix the principles printer(reinstalling drivers), or to swap the CD-ROM drive of an old win-95 machine with one of the many defunct computers donated over the years, and even once to reset a admin password because the guy never came back and there server went offline. Im 16 and will be graduating next year and one of my requirements is 90 hours of community service, which im getting day-by-day. O, and to be on subject, i've turned all the schools computers onto firefox, and my principle loves that tabbed browsing!
When I read about the evils of drinking, I gave up... reading.-Henny Youngman
Go here first... http://www.vorck.com/remove-ie.html
Then FireFox, Thunderbird, and the media player that came with the CD-ROM.
No problems after that. Enjoy the free meal. Truly, no one misses IE and Outlook express if they don't find it.
I was tech support at my school too, before I want to high school.
Bear in mind that this was a network running on NT4 with Win98 machines. I wasn't the one who set it up, obviously. There were no access-controls on anything, anyone could change any settings, they all had IE.
And all 650 of us were sharing an ISDN.
Hmm. My brother has been living at home for a few months, so I'll be needing to clean off porn dialers and crap like that, if history is any guide.
Adaware, Spybot.
Maybe put Firefox on and change the icon to the big blue E icon.
Check to see if Norton has expired, and bump them to a new version if it has.
If things are too awful I'll pull it in and do the backup and repave thing.
If she comes I'll be giving my sister a PII set up with Win2k, to replace an old W98 beater I gave them 2 or 3 years ago. No modem, no Internet.
How to make a Windows system safe and secure:
1. Install a firewall
2. Don't run anything you shouldn't run
It's pretty much the same as with Linux really, except most people are too busy with their heads stuck up their ass to notice this. Yes I use Linux, but damnit people, Windows is not that bad.
... what keeps some machines running Win+IE is actually that some internet-banking only works on IE... i mean..... of all the things that just shouldn't be IE-specific... banking! ...sheesh...
I recently got called out to a friend's because her computer was shutting down after 30 seconds online. She only had dial-up. She runs XP with the so called IP filtering turned on.
I ran a virus checker, she had 217 viruses/worms and wotnots on her computer. She only dials the internet to pick-up mail. I cleaned up her PC - some of the viruses had to be deleted by hand including munging around in varous points in the Windows registry.
I then installed Kerio Personal Firewall v2.16. Configured it for her apps then ran Shield Up! to see if there were any leaks. I explained about all the attacks that were happening on her computer while we configured the firewall. She's a lawyer and thinks Bill Gates should get his assed sued for selling such deficient software. Way to go!
I was tempted to add Firefox but... well on my dad's machine it just isn't as stable as IE so I thought it would just cause problems.
All that took about 4 hours, but I'm not a windows expert.
Whenever anyone asks me about how they can stop viruses I tell them to buy a Mac. You'll pay more but get less problems in the long run.
No way would I install any version of Linux on any of my family or friends PCs - I would have a job for life just supporting them and telling them why their MS Office applications etc won't install.
Holidays do seem to be the time to spend spending warm loving moments fixing the computers of mom, dad, my teenage brother, my friends...everyone I know...some people I don't...ah man!
This year my father has been listening to the anti-virus hype and has been complaining about wanting anti-virus on his computer. I could go install something free but that would be a band-aid solution. I'm going to go put Mandrake on his computer and tell him he can leave it on as long as he wants. And like someone said, SSH'ing in to fix it would be a lot easier than getting flak over the phone on why "a popup thing comes up with an error when I try to read my email!"
I have a deal with all my friends. If they give up their PC and buy a Mac they get free tech support for life. It works out pretty good for both of us.
There's a really simple solution I use for both my customers and my family members. Just don't give them administrator privileges!
:-)
1. Create a "user" or "limited" account for every family member.
2. Install firefox, thunderbird, spybot, openoffice, trillian.
4. Turn on automatic updates
3.Create an "administrator" account that's password protected and talk to the most conservative person in the family about the evils of installing new programs. It just happens that in my family that individual is also most likely to forgot the administrator password
I'm all set for another year. Next time I see them they just give me a couple of cd's with reader rabit and winnie the pooh games to install and I'm all set!
joystick-conditioned fingers?
FireFox | Thunderbird | AVG | Ad-Aware | Spybot | HiJackThis | ZoneAlarm maybe, but it causes enough heachaches that I'm happy with SP2's firewall I've got a slick little business runnin' in the Cleveland, Ohio area. It's strictly word of mouth and I'm amazed at how well my name is spreading. I call myself a headache manager becauase that's basically what I do - fight viruses, spyware, and hijackers. I started the company to train and help people learn to use computers better, these days it's just a fight to get the computers in a usable state. Off topic, anyone else out there take the next steps from a single person operation to a 2-3 person tech services company? I need to hire another tech and an office manager, but I'm a geek, not a very good "business person".
Do or do not. There is no try. --Yoda
I think I still have a copy of Microsoft Bob somewhere...believe it or not, it'll run on XP! :P
You're using her as bait, Master!
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Ah, that's not enough :(
:)
Just by browsing the web you can get infected.
@I#E$ ^E%X$P#L-O=I~T` +N_O&W$
Actually you're infected now
The second I said to a friend of the family I know about computers they immediatily decided to say "my PC is slow". Cue normal story about adware/no patches/no firewall etc. However of course it doesn't stop there. I sorted that out but now have a reptuation. Of course it now means people assume that I know everything about everything. I mean why would I know about the ebay signup process after I did it once 5 years ago. Why is the email slow and so on
Rus
Cheap UK and US VPS
I've helpted my parents with their Windows box a lot of times, but the worst experience was stumbling across dad's p0rn stash with mom looking over my shoulder, then having to make up lies, like a bribed expert witness about how a hacker probably put them there, and I've seen that stuff happen before etc. Followed up with tutorials on clearing browser cache/history etc. which my dad was overly interested in.
As heavily as I use SpyBot and Ad-Aware, there have been few preventative measures until I found SpywareBlaster. It behaves somewhat like a hosts file, and also blocks cookies from websites. It even works nicely with Firefox/Mozilla.
BHODemon is pretty helpful too, though it's finely focused on BHOs, but that's enough. Works with SP2 just fine (it detects SP2).
My folks are able enough with computers, but I don't plan to put HijackThis in their hands anytime soon. If it's something that safe mode, SpyBot and Ad-Aware won't fix, they'll need to call me anyway.
Also check and see if the game is supported on the Game listing on transgaming.com. I've found that all the major games I enjoy playing work.
None.
Seriously, though...my family all runs Linux now thanks to some convincing on my part, and now I can go home for a holiday from school and actually have a holiday...not a computer fixing party.
To quote my girlfriend when I asked her about it:
"It's easy to use. I haven't had to restart it because of freezing, windows don't close for no reason, and I don't get error messages. Why mess with something that works?"
-Jay
I don't have the lack of heart to force my rents into Linux. Life is about compromise. They both use Firefox. My father gave his best shot with adapting to OpenOffice but it didn't work out. I was happy to see that he tried. My mother uses Kodak photo crap for her camera. She loves it and I have no inclination toward upsetting her groove. She has a Windows 98 machine but she listens to my precautions. It results in minor technical support during the holidays.
Linux does not equal Open Source Software. I've got lots of people sold on Open Source but until Linux is painless in the area of printing and wireless, I'm the only one that will have a Linux petition. Getting people to understand Open Source and using Firefox (not Thunderbird) to keep the concept simple is the path to cracking Microsoft's dominance.
Linux is currently a little too cruel to stick on the folks. Without a doubt, they showed me the same compassion in many areas growing up.
Laws are for people with no friends.
I go just to eat turkey. Of course that was last month being that I am Canadian.
"Sure an ISP can offer a modem with NAT, but they run the risk of having to support it. After all they provided the damn modem. But if they offer direct access without NAT, they don't necessarily have to support anything that isn't connection related."
So one way or another. People are their own worst enemy. No wonder people don't want to get involved in that mess.
"My family has interesting misconceptions about my capabilities, and I assume this is true of a lot of people here. "
That's not just a computer thing. As an EE/ME I get to fix all the electronics, and mechanical things around the place.
Last year I was over at my grandparents for thanksgiving and of course I worked on their computer. Did their windows updates for them (sigh), installed spybot and adaware, then when it was all said and done, my mother suggested I fix their neighbours who was also having trouble. Since that day every time my family has called with computer trouble, whoever it may be, I tell them to either pay me or pay a professional. It's cold and harsh, but its time they understand that we can only take so much before we just don't enjoy it anymore.
Why would I want to install Google Desktop Search on my parents computer? Or any computer for that matter?
A few years ago, Dad was struggling with a nearly full 250MB hard drive on his old 486. My brother and I usually have a one-upsmanship rivalry when it comes to helping out the Parental Units with computer problems, which he usually wins. (Damn CMU Graduate) This particular year, I happened to have the ultimate trump card in my back seat, a nearly complete system that I was playing around with, including a 1.2 GB Hard Drive, which I loaned to the cause. Despite the howling cries of "what a geek!" from him, I was the one that got first choice of the drumsticks that year.
I am glad that my wife finally gets it. It took her years before she learned that when I say I work on computers for a living that it does not mean Windows computers. I work as a software developer for Unix systems. I looked like an idiot trying to fix something on a Windows machine because I do not run one or own one. Now she just says that I work on Unichs, with no mention of computers, which raises an eyebrow sometimes.
Click here or here.
In related news, what other products besides Google Desktop Search, Spybot Search & Destroy, Google Toolbar and Service Pack 2 are Slashdotters installing on their parents' Windows machines?
In a familiar theme...Gmail.
This is a little off-topic, but allow me to rant. I do home computer support professionally, which means that these days I'm basically a professional spyware cleaner. I've come in numerous times after techie family members supposedly cleaned up a machine, only to find they didn't do a very good job.
So please, if you are going to clean spyware up for your family, you should know the following:
1. As good as Spybot and Ad-aware are, neither is comprehensive. Run both. And you're still probably going to be missing some things (see #3 below).
2. After getting spybot and ad-aware installed with the latest updates, set a system restore point (if the OS supports it and system restore is working), and then *reboot into safe mode*. Running the cleaners in safe mode is much more effective than with all the junk running, and you won't end up rebooting and re-scanning to get open files. If you get warnings that there are files that can't be cleaned because of a running process, use a boot cd of some sort to delete it manually... much faster than running a re-scan.
3. After Spybot and Adaware *think* the machine is clean, use the "advanced" tools in spybot to examine the BHO, ActiveX, Startup and LSP lists to be sure. Don't recognize something? Google it. Chances are, if it's not in google, it doesn't belong. If it's a startup item, be sure to delete the target file (or files). The Spybot ActiveX deletion feature doesn't work so well... delete those manually from the location referenced. This usually is necessary to get the trojans and viruses that Adaware and spybot won't warn about.
4. Reboot, connect to the Internet, and then go back and check advanced tools in spybot to see if anything got added to the startup, BHO or other lists... changed entries are bolded, so it's easy to tell.
Then, and only then, will you know that the machine is clean. Keeping it clean is another issue, but at least this will get it done.
-R
People can afford a new cheap PC and a tech support contract for what a new Mac costs.
You have been doing an excellent job of educating your Mom. Now its time to get her a copy of "How to Repair and Upgrade Your Computer". In a few months, she may well be doing Tech Support for you.
I used to be a paranoid, now, I'm just a noid.
Relatives? Friends? Actually, you are describing all of our former clients!
The profile is even worse, in that: If they fit your description, you can also expect their account will end up in collections. Fortunately that ends the "relationship".
I had a long talk with the tech support for Citibank. I found out that they don't suport Safari. Nasty, nasty people. They said they support IE and Netscape Only. Lucky for me Firefox works perfectly.
I used to be a paranoid, now, I'm just a noid.
Trauma :(
Me too! I don't support windows, but I always offer to install, say Mandrake, and depending on their needs leave them a LiveCD of some sort.
;-) Perhaps $100 just to take a look? :-)
:-) Haven't used a windows box in 3 years now...:-)
My life has been heaven since then. I just tell windows users: go to support.microsoft.com. It's microsoft's problem, not mine. Although I will take a look at it for the same price as microsoft support
I run a linux lab of 20 machines, and a couple of servers, and it's heaven on earth, while I watch the constant windows battles around me.
I converted my entire family (5 PCs, 1 laptop) to Linux when MSBlast and then Sasser caused major tech support headaches. For me, that was the final straw. I had barely started using Linux as my main OS for 2 months when this happened, but it was enough to convince me that Linux was much more capable for daily use than Windows. That's 5 PCs and 1 laptop I barely have to touch again, and I can finally relax when I visit the family.
Sorry but my mom uses and Iopener and my support for this is walking her through resetting the phone/dialup numbers when she moves it to another room( unplugs it ). That's it.
;-) So migrate them this Thanksgiving so you can enjoy the rest of them for years and years going forward.
I've also migrated 4 friends off Microsoft Windows and onto Linux in the past 1.5 years. Support for them is typically with doing stuff in OpenOffice or setting up GAIM. Oh, once one purchased a new printer and I walked her through that but now, they are all setup with icons for starting/stoping VNC so I can help them remotely if needed. But that's now a rare occurance.
2 friends actually purchased new computers to fix the fact that their old one was so infected with Microsoft targetted spyware and viruses. They know I don't do MS Windows so I wasn't able to "help" them with Linux before they purchased new computers. They are running FireFox now though.
So, as the subject says, "Sons don't let Mom's use MS Windows" and that goes for friends too.
LoB
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
I uninstalled SP2 on my folks' computer. Software compatibility problems, general annoyance, and as the final straw SP2 was not compatible with the installer program for Microsoft's own Office 2000.
I'm reasonably happy with XP+SP1, but SP2 was a giant step backward.
"We have to go forth and crush every world view that doesn't believe in tolerance and free speech." - David Brin
I wound up with as admin on my school's network. Come lunchtime, every other PC got locked out of the ISDN line.
Quit whining ya bunch of babies. Your parents gave birth to you, raised you, clothed you, sheltered you, and fed you almost three times a day!
Going home to fix your parents computer every now and then is no different from 50 years ago when they (or their parents) had to go home to help their parents fix the car, a clock, hang a picture, move something heavy, or even just open a jar. Just be grateful that your task is to sit in a comfortable chair and clack away rather than shlep boxes around in the dusty basement.
Back in my day we had to walk up hills, both ways, through the snow, carrying our parents on our back so they could yell at us without getting winded. We were forced to milk the cow, kill it, skin it, tan the leather, carve it into a strap and hand it to our parents so they could whip us if we didn't do all that fast enough.
Now go pull your lips over your heads, get to your parents' house and fix their computer which MS has done such a wonderful job of breaking.
My assistance to family members now consists of a single CD/DVD that boots to Ghost and automatically reimages their system to a pristine state. They're instructed to save their data files to another partition that isn't hosed during the Ghost operation. I'm just not dealing with it any more.
I'm just there for the food.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
What self-respecting geek son or daughter would allow their parents to continue running IE (the only browser supported by this silly piece of software)? I simply teach them to type searches into Firefox's integrated search field. Very simple.
As I found myself being help desk to many colleguages, friends and family, I thought long and hard about a solution. In due course I started a bsuiness, producing visual help.
It is not a solution to all problems, but it works for most types of frequently asked questions about software. According to my research, most "help" is written by computer experts (including tech writers here) for computer experts. Not that this is all bad, but it leaves out the vast majority of computer users. In my opinion, it is about time to seek solutions that reach the end users, mine is visual help.
K<o>
P.S.: Don't mean to SPAM here, by promoting my business. I just think this is relevant to the topic.
Busy helping non technical users of OpenOffice.org - http://plan-b-for-openoffice.org/
Shame on whatever moderator(s) are going through this thread marking anything that mentions Macs as flamebait and troll. There's nothing flamebait or troll about this post; if you don't happen to personally like Macs, fine, but they're a perfectly valid alternative to Windows machines.
Next time the have a problem, they can simply call you. And you guide them by phone trough the ghost restore. You could also write a small howto.
--> Insert Funny Sig Here
that geeks will start using TS:TNG t-shirts? :P
In this column: http://msdn.microsoft.com/security/securecode/colu mns/default.aspx?pull=/library/en-us/dncode/html/s ecure11152004.asp/
Micheal Howard presents a small utility that can be used to launch applications with reduced permissions.
With it, I can let my family and friends run Windows as Administrator (since it's such a hassle to run as a "standard user" that they always end up coming back to admin within a few days...) but configure their shortcuts to start internet apps with "standard user" privileges.
Basically, instead of running limited and "RunAs-ing" to admin when needed (which is badly implemented in Windows), you run as Admin but drop rights when starting some apps. Kind of back-assward, but still better than using MSIE/OE as Admin.
I've been trying it out since yesterday and it works pretty well.
As a simple test, try to save something from the browser in the %SYSTEMDIR% folder. Or use Process Explorer from SysInternals and check out the Security Tab for the processes.
If you're good at tech support, how about changing jobs? Like... ahhhhh tech support for the family. Finally a rest from those darned pixels in photoshop! :)
Why exactly are we copying and posting newsgroup posts on Slashdot?
I fix my retired dad's computer, he is unlikely to ever learn enough to deal with all of its peculiarities. I teach him a little more each time, and some of it sticks. He fixes my car, I neaver learnt about cars when I was young, unlikely to spend much time doing it now. He teaches me a little every time he fixes something, a little sticks each time.
Seems like a fair trade to me. Even disregarding the total care and support I got for the first 18 years of my life and the continuing partial support ever since.
Our desktop workstations all already run much of the software prior mentioned, including Firefox, Ad-aware, Spybot, etc. I'm not updating to XP SP2, however, since that hosed one of our machines (including the physical hard drive, it's a long story).
All of them are locked down and logged in as a standard Windows "User". It works, pretty much. (Judging by the uptime of about a month and a half on both of them, rebooting only for maintenance.)
New things I plan to do:
* Rebuild two Windows 2000 Professional desktop workstations
* Install Windows NT 3.51 Server (yes, it's properly licensed, don't ask how I got the software media and licenses) on an old 486 (I finally got sick of trying to make Samba work as a PDC for our workstations)
* Install Debian/Samba on a giant PowerEdge 4100/200 with SCSI RAID (the REAL file server)
* Install Debian/Samba on a dual Pentium 200 MMX I built out of parts
* Get Linux fax services running (HylaFax, anyone?)
* Set up Webmail (maybe SquirrelMail or if I feel lazy, we'll go with Everyone.net's Webmail)
* Get an old PowerMac to play with
* Attempt to install Windows NT 3.51 Server on the AlphaStation, then give up and install NetBSD on a Digital AlphaStation 250 I scrounged out of the trash from the CS Dept. at U.Va. (yes, it runs NT beautifully, but nothing else)
* Upgrade our wireless LAN to WPA from WEP 128-bit with obscenely random, long keys
* Black Friday, too.
Oh, I forgot...study lots of discrete math so I get an A in that class...gotta love being a compsci major.
I worked a few months for Washington Mutual Technical Support but quit in disgust. "Technical Support" was pretty much the same, IE and Netscape latest versions, clear your cache and cookies, if that doesn't work change your password. You say you could log in with that password an hour ago? Well sir, that error message definitely means you've entered the wrong password two times and you're about to be locked out of your account.
The reason you can't use Safari is that it is doesn't have 128 bit encryption. I heard "technicians" tell customers that more than once. What horsecrap! Safari worked just fine properly configured.
The ENTIRE problem was Washington Mutual "upgraded" their servers from Solaris boxes to Windows crap boxes. The site was down hard a couple hours a day, and the rest of the time it couldn't handle the login requests during the middle of the day.
Their site wasn't rated, so you had to turn off the Content Advisor in IE. Most of my 70 year old customers didn't know the password because their grandson set up the computer. Pretty much the last person I talked to was an older gentleman that needed to access his account, but couldn't because of the totally fscked up mess. Obviously crying, he begged "isnt't there a registry hack or something you know that can reset the content advisor password?" Of course there was, but Washington Mutual wouldn't let me help him, beyond clearing his cache and cookies. They had phone nazis listening in on the calls, and if you were caught actually helping a customer you got a major ream job.
I installed firefox on my inlaw's computer and made it the default browser. The next time I visited they had mild complaints about what's this firefox thing I'm so confused. I just shrugged my shoulders and said it's better. I would have put IE back as default if they asked, but they didn't, so I left it.
A couple of months later, the subject came up and my brother in law said "remember when he installed firefox? We were confused and mad but then we figured out it blocked popups and did this and that and it's awesome!"
So sometimes evading the issue while the software speaks for itself is the best course of action. Go on vacation or get "real busy at work".
Just installed Norton AV 2005 on a Win 98 laptop (don't ask), and it scheduled a process called "Symantec NetDetect" to run periodically (shows in "Scheduled Tasks" list), which checks for/automatically download new defs. Nice because it doesn't complain if there's no network connection (just retries later) as the machine in question spends most of its time on a dial-up.
About a quarter of the PCs we see in for service have been "afflicted" with SP2. Laptops in particular, having all sorts of problems including loss of sound. I believe it was Toshiba that issued a statement saying that SP2 was -not- supported on their laptops and should not be installed. Those frequently lose their sound if you SP2 them.
But then I suppose you're screwed either way... mess up your own system with SP2, or let someone else mess it up without SP2?
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
I usually get flamed for this, but I just do NOT do family tech support any more.
Penny Arcade said it best.
This Thanksgiving, prepare a CD that contains your favorite tools, making sure you load heavy on the spyware and AV stuff and bring it with you. While everyone else is running around getting the dinner ready. or sitting and watching the football game, or the parade, settle down in front of the computer and just do it.
Also bring a Knoppix CD (and leave both CD's behind).
Then when you get the call, you know the one, have them boot the Knoppix CD.
Most certainly NOT SP2!!! It fucks way too much stuff up
Sorry but linux is not easy to use as a desktop.
I'm going to set her up with my old eMac with Panther and 1GB Ram on it and load Office for Mac 2004. We can get a .MAC account for her to setup and share photos with relatives and use the Virex anti-virus software to protect the windows owning relatives for macro viruses in office documents she might send/receive.
Oh and all this crap about software not updating. I call bullshit. I've only had that happen to me with the IM manager proteus because I had not kept up to date with it but that was only with the check for updates function. Installing an updated version is as simple as going to the website and downloading the dmg disk image and dragging the app package into the Applications directory.
No problems with printers either, you don't need to have a desktop printer to print from applications.
Jesus was a compassionate social conservative who called individuals to sin no more.
The two things I've made certain that everyone I might have to troubleshoot uses are Ad-Aware and Kerio Personal Firewall (anti-virus software already having been taken care of). Between these two (and those whom I've convinced to use Mozilla/Firefox/Thunderbird/Eudora) I've reduced the level of problems to mainly the ones that they're going to cause on their own by messing with things rather than the easily preventable sort.
Now, troubleshooting the wireless network I installed for them that keeps having problems... that's a whole 'nother story. Forget apartments, it's the suburbs with small lots and lots of clueless people buying WiFi without knowledge of how to configure against collisions that are the real problem.
I know which family members know nothing and which can handle themselves. The ones that are truly computer illiterate, I administrate their machines as if I owned them. They make no choices except what to use it for on a day to day basis.
They get Win2k or XP, all patches, up to date drivers, they pay for Norton AV, adaware and spybot run weekly as scheduled tasks. They surf with Firefox and select extensions, they use Gmail. If they have broadband they use CAT5, not USB. If they have dialup they use Dialup Networking, NOT AOL. They don't have at least a router with NAT, they run ZoneAlarm. Nothing gets "yes'd" in ZoneAlarm without my go ahead. They break any of the (extensive) rules, they find someone else to mess with it. No exceptions.
For $39.95, you can buy XP Lite, a commercial product which uninstalls Internet Explorer and lots of other Microsoft crap you don't need or want. Once they can't run IE, life becomes far simpler.
Hmm much of this thread rings very very true. I get calls that start with "That piece of *%^# computer did ..."
After ten minutes I still don't know what the actual problem is.
Also "everyone else can't be having this problem or no one would use a computer"
Response "Not everyone goes to casino web sites and gets several hundred spy ware programs"
The other side of the family's computer works better until the grandkids get ahold of. It is never the same after that. I am reinstalling an OS
over the holidays because of it.
Sigh...
They need a full cleaning of the computer from spyware. They bring it here same day and wait for it to be done.
I need a serpatine belt on my car and it takes 3 weeks...
I guess I love them anyway...
box
Besides Google Desktop Search, Spybot Search & Destroy, Google Toolbar and Service Pack 2, I install the following on relatives Windows systems:
r
SpywareBlaster
MRUBlaster
CCleaner
RegCleane
AdAware-SE
Clam AntiVirus
DrTCP
SafeXP
ZoneAlarm Free
Custom startup Batch/Cmd
InfranVeiw
AbiWord
FireFox w Adblock, ImageZoom, and WeatherFox
Have not yet replaced Outlook Express with Thunderbird, but feel this step is next on my list.
Also one must un-install - remove from startup - and/or disable countless programs, taskbar apps, and services.
Sometimes it seems so much more work than just installing Linux or BSD.
Happy ThanksGiving!
This story make me chuckle a tiny bit, in so far as it is certainly true, but also, for me, this is every day of my life, plus the pilgrimiges home, now that everyone knows I ahve access to their desktop via RealVNC. It is a fantastic application. www.realvnc.com If you use it, I admonish you to donate a couple bucks, not much, just a couple bucks, which is nothing, nothing compared to the drive to Iowa or wherever your old narrow-minded uber-conservative parents & relatives are from (like mine). Cheers. Peace.
It's an upgrade from Netscape 4.x, which my parents had been using for web and mail on their Win98 system until I recently upgraded them to Mozilla (a relatively painless upgrade).
I switched them to Netscape sometime last millennium, and recently took their computer to my house to use my high speed connection (They still have Dial-up that can't connect faster than 26.6k) to get all the latest patches and software updates installed.
I've been trying for years to get them to go broadband, and since they also have a decent XP laptop, I would like to get them setup with WiFi.
- Eric, InvisibleRobot.com
...for friends and family ten years ago. Now watch my stepdad, he's more handy with his 'puter than I am with mine (and I've been a sysadmin and programmer for 15 years). Don't help them, it's only making things worse. They need to learn from their own mistakes. :-)
Another thing: I honestly don't know how the kids today are ever going to learn how computers actually work. I mean, when I was 14, the ALU and CPU were distinct components, visible on the "mother board." (Well, the board.) 6502 assembler was so limited you had a reasonable chance of actually understanding what was going on in the computer. Hell, you could figure out some things about data transfer from LISTENING to your data tapes as the files loaded. With the online, content-streamed, specularly-shaded games of today, where to even begin? Then, who needs to know what an ALU does? *shrug* Maybe we're the first old farts of the personal computer era.
All the family gets NATed firewalls and broadband when they ask me for support. I install remote desktop or VNC for support via VPN. Since nothing is 'F'ree I always get something in exchange. Most recently my brother helped me during a busy week. Final advice consists of "do not use IE or Outlook except in case of emergency."
BTW thanks for letting the religious dissidents leave.
..."No, I won't fix your computer"
...
You just gotta draw the line somewhere...you help your parents, then their friends, then their friends friends...and pretty soon you have all these goddam FRIENDS!
You get carrot cakes and suppers and their unwavering gratitude and admiration. Your reputation grows geometrically. Helping people is great, and actually having conversations with people that aren't bitgeeks can be quite interesting.
Did you know that some of those people know about stuff like structural design, the maintenance of heavy mining equipment or how to farm nightcrawlers?
I started down the seemingly pragmatic road though. Now I only take the suppertime calls from the vp of sales for my largest client, wanting to know how to work his I-Tunes. For this and other works, I am given a sum of quatloos that provides my mate and i with dinners, a place to stay, and surplus quatloos with which we can buy carrot cake and/or 72" flatpanel televisions, or sports cars, if we so choose. My new friends never gave me sports cars or 72" televisions, nor would I care to dwell with them in their houses, so this seems the more beneficial route.
Both scenarios have their pros and cons...maybe there is another way
Imagine yourself the BitSlinger, roaming the land ridding innocent computing devices of unauthorized processes. With your faithful Indian friend Sanjay at your side, you'd roll into town, catching the eyes of the ladies as you strode through the swinging doors into the local internet cafe.
"Barkeep! Gimme a quad espresso with 4 turbinado lumps, and hold the saucer."
The room goes still, save for some awed whispering. Sound gradually returns to normal as Sanjay comes in after fueling and parking the Silver Beetle.
"Kemosabe! They wanted 11 dollars to park."
"Don't let it bother you Sanjay, these are good people in hard times."
"How do you know this, Kemosabe?"
"I did a sweep of open wifi hotspots as we drove in. Black Bart Bonzi is runnin' this town."
"Again! Can he not be not be destroyed??"
"As long as a suckers keep gettin born, we can only sweep back the tide Sanjay..."
...all these "I install Linux" are modded funny.
I installed Slackware on my 72 years old mom's computer and she just loves it.(No, that is not the computer's age). And I don't need to worry that it'll be all screwed up each time I go see her as her Windows box used to.
Why Slackware of all distros ?
It's the one I use and know.
(They all come with KDE and Mozilla (soon to be replaced by Firefox) so what does it matter which distro, once it's installed, they all look the same to a casual user.)
l/2
Truly challenging Sudoku puzzles
http://clamwin.sourceforge.net/Clamwin
http://sourceforge.net/projects/sevenzip/7 Zip, if their version of windows doesn't already have built-in ZIP support.
http://www.mozilla.org/Mozilla or FireFox, depending on their and/or my mood.
And yes, it's occasionally burnt to optical media, or thrown on USB thumb drive for my parents only have dial-up.
Even though they have a Mac, they have just as much trouble with it as most people have with windows.
And, the real Mac guru in the family lives 15 minutes away and refuses to help them.
My dad's old 10GB hard drive blew a gasket, so I had it in here a few days last month. Upgraded the machine, stuck in a 40GB drive, 512mb, semi-decent video card, and XP SP2 (because he would've clicked the AutoUpdate thing himself within a day or two, no doubt - I'd rather do it myself and make sure things work). Tossed in Norton AV 2005, PestPatrol, and Outpost 2.5, followed by MS Office (he uses Access quite a bit) and Firefox. Got rid of the IE button.
:)
A few days ago he calls me up complaining about popup windows and the machine's slow and he keeps getting weird messages from Norton and I'm sitting here going "What? How..? But I..? Dammit." He drops his machine off, I turn it on, and Lo And Behold, 4 IE icons on the desktop. Sonuva.... Guess I should have explained a bit more, rather than just saying "Use Firefox to browse the Internet instead of IE."
So a quick rebuild (plus, at his request, installing another 40GB drive as a mirror), drove it back to his place, sat me parents down for 20 minutes and told them in no uncertain terms that if they use IE (and especially if they click 'OK' to get rid of popup windows instead of 'Cancel' or hitting the little 'X') I was going to start charging them $25/hour to fix the machine.
So far so good
Dammit, I meant to post that anonymously!
she loves opera so much that she insisted that i "uninstall" IE :)
Fuck you, fuck your site, and fuck the former up the arse with the latter.
www.autopatcher.com
'nuff said
Firefox & Thunderbird. That'll more or less handle everything.
If you never make mistakes, it's probably because you're not doing anything.
I have had to resort to trickery. I have removed all Internet Explorer icons. I have changed the names of the Firefox icons to 'Internet Explorer'. I have changed the firefox icon to the first 'big blue E' in the iexplore binary. I have had no complaints since. =)
Only three things are certain; death, taxes, and apocryphal quotations - Ben Franklin.
Those condidtions mean that my time doesn't get abused too badly.
"Supper" has varied from quite a few really decent meals with nice friends to being shunted under the golden arches.
He reinstalls it every few months, to get the games running :>
Doesn't that wipe out grub? Sounds like a pain to maintain.
I also "don't do Windows" any more!
My Aunt has a Mandrake10.1/KDE system set up, which is a huge improvement on the old iMac; my Mother has a Mdk 10.1 system instead of the old W98, and my brother is shortly getting upgraded from an unstable XP system to Mdk 10.1 (I'll add XP for him, but only running under QEMU for a couple of necessary apps).
My father, however, insists on remaing with XP, and wonders why his system is always "so slow", or why Windows Explorer (not IE) always crashes. It's not a system I will touch, since invariably the next time *he* breaks something, it becomes my fault for whatever I did the week before!
Install Firefox!! I used to always use ad-aware and spybot on a weekly basis on my parents box, and they still had all kinds of crap that it wouldn't clean up. Once I installed firefox, all those problems went away. Of course you should still run ad-aware on a regular basis, but it's not AS needed as before.
I'm headed home for Thanksgiving -- and I just shipped home an old P3 800 to replace my parents P1 200 that's clugging along on Windows 98. Weak, I know.
On the P3, I did a clean install of XP, installed Office, and a registered version of AdAware that includes the "Ad-Watch" feature to block Spyware. Ditched IE for Firefox.
I've been a Slashdotter for years, but never got into Linux. Currently happy with OS X.
I like the idea of ditching XP for a linux box -- expecially for a parental web/email box. After reading through most of this thread, everyone is suggesting to go with Linux. But c'mon guys-- How about a quick rundown/tutorial of what suggested software I'd need to do that...?
Ensure Norton and Windows are updated, Firefox, Thunderbird, Ad-Aware, Spybot S&D. And defrag the system.
I convinced my folks to buy an eMac as their new computer. Everything just works for them - mail, browsing, etc. My Dad has the confidence to make his own CD compilations and DVDs. Mum just wants correspondence to be painless. It's great to see them actually enjoying the technology - the old man is currently scanning all his old photos to preserve them, touching up 'red-fade' damage, making slideshows, etc. Best of all is the ease with which he can hook up the video camera through firewire, and just start making movies - complete with background music and wipes that make me cringe.
Unlike their old wintel box, where they were afraid of breaking things, OS X just encourages them to try things. Best of all, the only problem I've had to solve is when Dad first bought a pack of DVD+Rs instead of the DVD-Rs the superdrive required. He asked me what 'RTFM' meant, and was delighted with my reply:)
Got them an iMac. No semi-annual desperate tech support. One question so far (in 3 years) "Where'd my browser icon go?"
It just keeps on working.
Wife's parents: Windows. Gone through several hardware upgrades. Finally on XP. Spyware and keyloggers everywhere. What a mess. And it crashes big time at least once a year. Games stop working. System slows down. Etc. etc.
At least I got to spend some time in The Room Full Of Old Computers, Some Servers, And Half A Kilometer Of Cable(tm)
Seemed a lot like my bedroom, actually.
what other products besides Google Desktop Search, Spybot Search & Destroy, Google Toolbar and Service Pack 2 are Slashdotters installing on their parents' Windows machines? My 82 year old Mom runs a custom version of Knoppix from CD on a PIII with 512 MB of RAM and no hard drive. The only tech support issue I've ever had with her was when she put the CD in upside down. All he CD's are now clearly marked "This Side Up"
"Straddling the sword of technology..."
My parents were very happy that I installed Firefox on there machine. They were sick of all the popups they got with IE. As for programs I install- Firefox ZoneAlarm Spybot S&D AdAware AVG or Norton
O you think thats bad. I go to a small Private school with only about 100 students. [...] Im constantly being brought out of class to fix the principles printer [...]
Maybe your parents should ask for a refund of the tuition for being yanked out of English class too many times...
I was recently charged with selecting and setting a computer for my family's business, which had previously been handled the old fanshioned way. I have already spent many hours fixing spyware and virus ridden home machines, and had made numerous attempts to explained how to safegaurd against such things. AdAware and friends can only do so much when the user actively seeks out "free" (as in strings attached) games and "helper" programs to download.
So, SUSE 9.1 went on the new office computer. I am the only one with root access. There was a little grumbling about having to learn something new, but acceptence was pretty quick when I explained that they won't be worrying about spyware getting onto the same system that does the accounting. It took my mother about 10sec to figure how to use KDE's menus to perform common tasks.
Xboxes are cheap - and also, like my macs, virus free.
I'd rather spend an extra $100-150 on a console than have any WindowsXP under my roof.
I have a small geek works business - I offer PC support at $75/hour and Mac Support for free (plus parts as needed). Posted on the big window to the world.
Full Mac install for my in-laws. iBook, AirPort, iSight, and a cable modem. Trips home have been remarkably light on tech support.
After the routine updates, I'll load Rhapsody for my mom. She has a broadband connection and she enjoys music but wouldn't know where to find it online. I love the Rhapsody service myself - a huge selection of albums, including reissues from when my mom started buying records, well organized and easy to explore.
It would be matricide-suicide to give my mom one of the adware-supported programs like Kazaa, truly penny-wise and pound-foolish. But the legitimate digital music services are a great application of computers and broadband.
iTunes, bought by the song, seems more for kids who want to burn their favorite hits, or wealthier and mobile yuppies who will take their iPods with them everywhere. The free radio in Windows Media Player and Real Player is nice but doesn't always scratch a specific itch. Rhapsody doesn't provide easy mobility (though it does allow CD burning), but it offers a huge selection of albums for listening near the computer, and intelligent links from one artist to others, for a modest price.
Here's my answer to requests for tech support: "I work with these:
(http://www.sun.com/servers/highend/sunfire15k/i ndex.xml r s/superdome/index.html)
http://www.hp.com/products1/servers/scalableserve
at work
and (http://www.apple.com/powerbook/) at home.
I don't know crap of about that cheap piece of plastic junk you're using."
"Who hasn't slipped into the break room for a quick nibble on a love Newton before?" - Mr. Peterman.
That is what I tell everyone now. You don't have to try to explain what you do. You don't hve to talk about work, and people don't ask how much you make. But best of all, they don't ask for help.
My favorite failed tech-support reaction comes from my parents when I claim my ignorance of Windows and can't completely solve some rediculous problem (last week it was the corrupted registry/winsock problem caused by firewall software)
... and then they ask me what the hell i've been doing in school for the last 6 years (B.S and M.S in computer science) - as if my university's CS program concentrates its studies on Windows point-and-click manuevering and expert knowledge of its failed security/design flaws.
Its big here already.
Love,
Tulsa
Save some room on your support CD or USB drive for other goodies, and have SP2 sent to your parents' house on Microsoft's dime. Order here. It's absolutely free, including shipping. Allow 4-6 weeks for shipping.
How about sharing this with us do others do anything like this?
Thus far I have had no problems with it, and it seems to be great.
If all they are using the computer for is letter writing, check book balancing, e-mail, and web surfing, and editing the occasional digital photo then there really is no sense in keeping something as buggy and hard to maintain as MS Windows.
Back up the data and then slap in Debian, Fedora, Suse, or something similar. Voila! No more viruses... and remote tech support becomes faster easier.
If you don't like the linux distros, there's always BSD. Get them an iMac. $h = $iMac_price / $your_hourly_rate, where h is the number of hours of "free" work for Bill needed before it becomes cheaper to just cough up for an iMac
Maybe it's worth the effort to make a GRUB boot floppy and set up one of the options in the start menu to install GRUB in the MBR. Floppies are fragile though, better have two, or a GRUB boot CD.
I'm not IT support, and frankly, I wouldn't want to be if it involved Windows. I personally think you cannot blame the user other than when they've done something you have explicitly told them not to, or when it's really just blatantly stupid what they've done.
;-)
First of all, users are typically not trained when given a system because "it's so easy to use you don't need training" (that cuddly nice Windows myth). That might be so, but telling them about backups and deleting files strikes me as a healthy idea.
Secondly, you should not expect a user to become a car mechanic to run a car. Why does a user have to maintain AV and patches, do spyware checks, defrag their harddisk and watch what every website downloads on to their system? Instead of enjoying the richness of knowledge of the Net it's turned for them into an avenue of fear for which they happily spend serious money to buy a sense of safety. Maybe that was the whole idea..
Thirdly, it's IMO utterly absurd that you can't expect a computer system to run cleanly without forever rebooting and patching the box. I've had a couple of people comment after trying Linux for a couple of months that the thing they enjoyed most was simply that it worked. Yes, it patches too, but at least it does it cleanly (nothing breaks) and the patches tend to keep at least pace with discoveries and disclosures instead of being late (in some cases months) or being met with dire warnings that you should upgrade (read: spend more money because the PROVIDER made a hash of it).
I think Windows is userfriendly, but only in the usability aspect of it. If MS was clever enough to actually focus on the usability aspects they could indeed make a fortune, even with Windows. At the moment it appears that the only way they can hang on to the empire is by buying their way out, marketing and legal. They can do *much* better with the people they have. Take, for example, their DNS setup facility. There is nothing in Linux distros I've come across that is so simple and elegant to set up, even with more basic skills. Now *THAT* I consider useful. Not this "I have more features than you" stuff that is of no benefit to anyone.
So there. I'll shut up now
Insert
Seriously.
... women usually know lots of other women.
I fixed a (non geek) friend's girlfriend's PC and she's asked me to help a few of her friends. I make it a point when I install things like Firefox to emphasize that I "customized it" with special features, so she when she bragged to her friends about her experience there was only one place to go to - ME.
Another advantage is that if you're dating someone and she doesn't work out, either she won't bother you for tech support any more or she'll go out of her way to ensure that you remain good friends.
Yes, realize that you have to score that first "in", but let's face it guys
service name - desired startup type
alerter - disabled
clipbook - disabled
computer browser - disabled
Distributed Link Tracking Client - manual
Error Reporting Service - disabled
Help and Support - manual
Indexing Service - disabled
Logical Disk Manager - manual
Net Logon - disabled
NetMeeting Remote Desktop Sharing - disabled
Messenger - disabled
Network DDE - disabled
Network DDE DSDM - disabled
Network Location Awareness (NLA) - disabled
Network Provisioning Service - disabled
Performance Logs and Alerts - disabled
Portable Media Serial Number Service - disabled
QoS RSVP - disabled
Remote Desktop Help Session Manager - disabled
Remote Registry Service - disabled
Secondary Logon - disabled
Security Center - disabled
Server - disabled
Smart Card - disabled
Smart Card Helper - disabled
SSDP Discovery Service - disabled
System Restore Service - disabled
TCP/IP NetBIOS Helper Service - disabled
Telnet - disabled
Uninterruptible Power Supply - disabled
Universal Plug and Play Device Host - disabled
Upload Manager - disabled
WebClient - disabled
Wireless Zero Configuration - manual
WMI Performance Adapter - disabled
Personal computers have been out for ~30 years now. Let's compare this to automobiles; so far weve been through the build-it-yourself phase, the early manufactured phase, the introduction of 'luxury' phase, the low-price for the masses phase and are now moving towards the 'appliance' phase. At this point for automobiles it was the mid 1920's and the cranky old jalopies of the past were finally becoming reliable enough that non-enthusiasts could own and operate one. Automobiles were still some years from automatic transmissions and the road system some years from smooth freeways and good signage. But innovations like electric starters and improved distributors meant that you could drive your car without knowing, in detail, how internal combustion worked.
For what its worth, autos were also fifty years away from electronic ignition and the beginnings of pollution control. I think there are analogies there too.
- -
Are you an SF Fan? Are you a Tru-Fan?
I've just uninstalled SP2 from an incompatable computer. Sheesh. I was up till 2 AM trying. Doncha just hate it when SP2 messes up all the explorer windows and then reports that it can't uninstall itself? =P
I keep my geek skills as quiet as I can now. People know about them "online", but in real life....
:-D.
I sometimes pretend to not know how to save to a floppy
(which is partially true, because I prefer USB Keychains, or connecting to my home fileserver).
I know it's mean... but it's the only way to keep a few hours in the day for me to do my work. Otherwise I get IM's, Emails, phone calls, etc. every few minutes with a stupid question.
So I simply pretend I don't know much about computers.
Occasionally, someone will *really* fall for it, and attempt to "help" (bother) me with their incorrect knowledge and obvious mistakes. About how a Mac uses a "different Internet", and AOL is the "original internet".
My favorite was when someone said to wash your hands after working in the computer lab, or you can get a virus on your home computer... and no, she wasn't talking about bacteria. But a computer virus. She said to wash my hands, and use a virus scanner once a week! Suprisingly she was blonde.
Agreed.
my dad's internet banking just wont run properly under firefox, so he needs IE as well
I just have to keep prodding him everything time opens IE for non-internet banking related web browsing!
Simple steps to keep your computer secure!
Doing these steps saves me a huge amount of time and heartache in the future.
yupyup I know what you mean. Sometimes I think that maybe 'karma' does exist (outside of /. of course). comes around and it turns around....
Be glad you are indoors, where it is nice and warm this time of year, instead of cold, possibly wet/damp - shivering your ass off, scraping knuckles and getting greasy, etc while working on an automobile ("Oh, you know how to fix cars?" - after you tell them about the new brakes you installed on your car - "Well, our car is making this funny noise, and we thought...").
Reason is the Path to God - Anon
Gee, I wonder why people think Linux guys are a bunch of elitist assholes? Hmm. . . They're your family; answer their questions and don't make them feel stupid about it. Most people are not ready/able to run Linux, it just isn't right for the average user (as it stands now). Get off your high horse.
worst sig ever. . .
> They're your family; answer their questions
Gee, I wonder why people think Windows users are such a bunch of friggin' morons? With suggestions like this? I DON'T KNOW THE ANSWERS! I don't use Windows, I don't know how it works. I can't answer the damn questions. Furthermore, you don't cure drug addiction by offering clean needles.
> Most people are not ready/able to run Linux
That's complete and utter bullshit! Ok, I admit, I was a little worried about this, so (with some help from my brother) I set up my aunt's system to dual-boot, so she could go back to Windows if Linux proved too much for her. In the nine months since I installed the system, she hasn't booted Windows once. Despite being almost completely computer-illiterate, she has had no problems doing any of the things with her system that she used to do with Windows. If a professional cook who has spent most of the last twenty years in the wilds of British Columbia can handle Linux, I can't imagine who can't. (Oh, my four-year-old niece also has no problems with Linux.)
Go spread your FUD somewhere else, troll.
ah yes. I made a floppy, and told her what to (exactly) type, just after booting a floppy. She has noted this in her calendar. So I don't have to come and revive grub after windows reinstallation.
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#\ @ ? Colonize Mars
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