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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

#131

Post by 4ndr3vv »

klibertp wrote: post #125
majewsky wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 research…

See "The Distribution of Users’ Computer Skills: Worse Than You Think"

https://www.nngroup.com/articles/computer-skill-levels/

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

#132

Post by nightcracker »

gambiting wrote: post #128
kriro wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I've never had that happen on Ubuntu. Installing Ubuntu used to be quite technical unless you were lucky and everything worked out of the box, but even that is way less so today. Regardless, once Ubuntu is installed I never had issues.

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

#134

Post by amelius »

dkersten wrote: post #113
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.

All of my computer science friends who have moved their parents to Linux (myself included) report that they are happily doing with their computers what they used to (sans downloading and running random malware) with much reduced "tech support". Hell, when I introduced my mom to ubuntu ten years ago, Linux wasn't even as desktop friendly as it is now. Not to say that it's the best choice, but it's plenty usable and us…

Too late for me, my mom is already using apps from the Appstore.

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

#135

Post by anotheryou »

Well... usually the device works somehow and they are incapable of giving a good description of the problem. That's the real problem.

I used the tool like my mother would and had these Problems:

1. the device is on! Of course I know it's plugged in!

2. "is the device up to date". What does that mean? The clock seems to be going correctly! It's not the newest model, but fairly recent...

3. I now have the google results for "the titles don't work anymore"

-

I think far more helpful would be a simple form helping writing a report:

- What is the name of the program where the problem occurs (you can find that here [screenshot showing a title bar])

- Describe step by step what you did when the error occurred. Once done, please do these exact steps again to see if the problem still occurs.

- What did you expect to happen?

- What did actually happen?

- Did it work before?

- If it did, when did it work the last time? Did you change anything since than?

- Any further guesses on what might be relevant to the problem or what might cause it?

- When we solve the problem, what do I get? (multiple choice: nothing - still owed me one, a beer, a hug, other [ ])

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

#136

Post by hawski »

pvg wrote: post #94
eli wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A chromebook is cheaper and, IMHO, better for most users.

What do you think makes it better? It's not unusual to see non-technical users of all ages using an iPad. You never see them using a chromebook.

- Built-in keyboard,

- many times desktop browser will be more compatible,

- you can install additional safety browser extensions beyond adblocker,

- Chrome Remote Desktop for remote service,

- updates on ChromeOS are entirely seamless - just reboot the machine every once in a while.

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

#137

Post by witty_username »

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 mom had been using Linux for basic spreadsheet work and browsing. Yes, it needs setup and configuration; but that's true of any OS.

Also, Windows has annoying forced restarts and takes a long time to update. And it doesn't have a package manager. And drivers need to be annoying--needless waiting even for simple devices like a USB keyboard.

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

#138

Post by Yizahi »

Tech support for my family is usually "WiFi is not working", "WiFi is working only on his device and not mine", "WiFi is turning on and of randomly and constantly". I hate WiFi :) . It is almost impossible to debug and usually ends in rebooting all involved devices, sometimes it helps.

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

#139

Post by klibertp »

4ndr3vv wrote: post #131
klibertp wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 research…

See "The Distribution of Users’ Computer Skills: Worse Than You Think" https://www.nngroup.com/articles/computer-skill-levels/

Quoting from the article:

> That one quarter of the population can’t use a computer at all is the most serious element of the digital divide.

Frightening... but why?

> To a great extent, this problem is caused by computers still being much too complicated for many people.

Ok, but this doesn't answer my other question - is it possible to educate these people to use the current computers, or do computers really need to be streamlined that much?

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

#140

Post by StavrosK »

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…

Apple did that on the iPod manuals. They wouldn't say "make sure the lock button is unlocked" (because duh, of course it's unlocked), they would say "turn the button to the lock and then the unlock position".
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