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Show HN: Fun tool that cut my family and friends tech support time in half

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Re: Show HN: Fun tool that cut my family and friends tech support time in half

#121

Post by Zelmor »

loeg wrote: post #56
dimino wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Available desktop environments for Linux are nowhere near ready for wide consumer use, and hardware support is abysmal compared to macOS and Windows. Linux is best for servers.

Linux hardware support is really good. Probably better than Windows and certainly better than macOS (which only has to support a very limited range of hardware).

It's not the kernel which is at fault, but archaic software architecture. Eg. X11 and vsync tearing.

I was unable to fix it for two-monitor setups reliably in 4 years. It will not go away until Wayland is properly supporting nvidia, which might be another 5 years. So there is that.

Re: Show HN: Fun tool that cut my family and friends tech support time in half

#122

Post by MartijnBraam »

chirau wrote: post #40

I can't believe that some people here think that it is better to move your relatives, who are scared/prone to malware but don't think to restart their computer first, to Linux. What a joke really. Linux is good and all, but come on people, among iOS, MacOS, Windows, Chrome and Linux, it's the least usable and least user friendly.

I installed linux on my grandmothers PC exactly because it is not usable. The webbrowser and email work fine (She already used thunderbird and firefox) but what destroyed the computer monthly is other family members that "helped" by installing "cleanup tools" and some ridiculous games that required hardware with shady drivers to unlock game content...

Re: Show HN: Fun tool that cut my family and friends tech support time in half

#123

Post by sleepychu »

Jaruzel wrote: post #117
koliber wrote: post #115

Regarding the "is it plugged in?" question. A great anecdote I heard was that the support person on the phone asked if the power plug was clean. The user was confused. The support person told them to unplug it, blow the dust out of the holes, and plug it back in. This fixed the problem! The issue was that the power plug was in the socket, but too loose to connect. Somehow, the support person figured this was the case…

It's the Nintendo Cartridge Effect.

Aaactually I suspect that's to do with capacitors. You allow them time to discharge.

Still a great name for this though!

Re: Show HN: Fun tool that cut my family and friends tech support time in half

#124

Post by [deleted] »

sandebert wrote: post #91
jamiecurle wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am curious about this. From 2005-2008 my mother ran Ubuntu from an install that I set up and I have to say, it was delightful in terms of "very little IT support". The problem however was that she always seemed to feel like an outsider with her friends. Do you experience anything similar. Granted this timeframe was pre-smartphone and tablet, but I am curious none the less.

Well, sort of, but not really. My mom's best friend was really jealous of mom because her computer actually worked. The friend was running WinXP, experiencing all the typical problems. So my mom didn't feel like an outsider, more like she had the luxury situation. A couple of years later Iphones and Android appeared, and as I'm an Android user she picked one of those (to simplify potential support situations) and was…

[deleted]

Re: Show HN: Fun tool that cut my family and friends tech support time in half

#125

Post by klibertp »

majewsky wrote: post #108
Karlozkiller wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because it's not so simple. I have no experienced with HBO Now but similar services. And typically they use DRM like Microsoft Silverlight or the like to prevent people from playing videos without proper access. The reason why such things are harder to get to work in Linux sometimes is because such DRM-solutions are not always baked in or provided by the same providers as in windows, and might be proprietary. Also co…

Of course that's correct, but we're talking about users that consider their device broken when an icon is not in its place. All they will perceive is "I cannot watch this video because Linux".

> we're talking about users that consider their device broken when an icon is not in its place

I wonder why such people exist at all? They do - reading the comments up to here I saw them mentioned four or five times. Yet the mindset such people supposedly display is totally incomprehensible to me. I can't for the life of me understand why would anyone, when faced with a problem, automatically give up without researching and trying to solve it. This is how I - and probably most of us on HN - learned "computers" in the first place: hours and hours of typing and clicking random things until something happens.

Aside from where do they come from, another question is if we really need to cater to them? Are they truly a majority of users? Is the condition in-born, uncurable, or can they be educated?

Re: Show HN: Fun tool that cut my family and friends tech support time in half

#126

Post by evacchi »

koliber wrote: post #115

Regarding the "is it plugged in?" question. A great anecdote I heard was that the support person on the phone asked if the power plug was clean. The user was confused. The support person told them to unplug it, blow the dust out of the holes, and plug it back in. This fixed the problem! The issue was that the power plug was in the socket, but too loose to connect. Somehow, the support person figured this was the case…

I think it's from Raymond Chen's blog, The Old New Thing

Re: Show HN: Fun tool that cut my family and friends tech support time in half

#127

Post by amelius »

You should add an option to add questions. If you crowdsource it, you could end up with a giant support-question tree!

Then it could be fun AND useful :)

See [1] for a similar idea, but applied to guessing animals.

See [2] for a more serious approach.

[1] http://www.animalgame.com/

[2] http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/09521976929...

Re: Show HN: Fun tool that cut my family and friends tech support time in half

#128

Post by gambiting »

kriro wrote: post #65
chirau wrote: post #40

I can't believe that some people here think that it is better to move your relatives, who are scared/prone to malware but don't think to restart their computer first, to Linux. What a joke really. Linux is good and all, but come on people, among iOS, MacOS, Windows, Chrome and Linux, it's the least usable and least user friendly.

My dad (>60, not exactly tech saavy) has been using Lubuntu for 2 years now (actually I don't even remember when we installed it might be 4 years :P). For many parents who only surf the web and do some non power user office (he uses Libre Office now) and check their mail it's the perfect solution. For his use case it's more user friendly than the Windows install because of the lack of constant update requests and ant…

My problem with Linux is that more often than not, Linux failure mode is dumping the user to console, where even a power user might struggle to diagnose the problem. I've had failed kernel upgrades on Ubuntu where one moment you click "update all" in the package manager, and the next you are staring at terminal login screen. I haven't had a windows computer do that to me in years.

Re: Show HN: Fun tool that cut my family and friends tech support time in half

#129

Post by jakub_g »

evacchi wrote: post #126
koliber wrote: post #115

Regarding the "is it plugged in?" question. A great anecdote I heard was that the support person on the phone asked if the power plug was clean. The user was confused. The support person told them to unplug it, blow the dust out of the holes, and plug it back in. This fixed the problem! The issue was that the power plug was in the socket, but too loose to connect. Somehow, the support person figured this was the case…

I think it's from Raymond Chen's blog, The Old New Thing

Indeed, here's the link (though the details of the anecdote are slightly different):

https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20040303-00/?p=...

> Here's the trick: Don't ask "Are you sure it's plugged in correctly?"

> If you do this, they will get all insulted and say indignantly, "Of course it is! Do I look like an idiot?" without actually checking.

> Instead, say "Okay, sometimes the connection gets a little dusty and the connection gets weak. Could you unplug the connector, blow into it to get the dust out, then plug it back in?"

> They will then crawl under the desk, find that they forgot to plug it in (or plugged it into the wrong port), blow out the dust, plug it in, and reply, "Um, yeah, that fixed it, thanks."

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