FYI it's "power cord" not "power chord".
Power chord is a music thing.
Power cord is a cord that supplies power.
Show HN: Fun tool that cut my family and friends tech support time in half
151–160 of 226 posts
Re: Show HN: Fun tool that cut my family and friends tech support time in half
#152So the first 2 are rebooting and making sure it has power. The third is "up to date". I do quite a bit of tech support for my family and neither of those issues are really issues. The #1 issue for me is "this free app I installed wanted to install a browser addon and now I see ads everywhere". The #2 is "this free app I installed hijacks everything on my Mac to show ads". I've spent countless hours educating them abo…
I had the opposite problem recently: how can they know that things are not malware?
My dad complained that his laptop would pop up "strange pictures" and ask if he "liked what he saw" and that they kept coming up even though he always said no.
I thought he'd acquired some sort of malware popping up fake dating site ads, but it turned out that he had upgraded to Windows 10 and was referring to the scenic photos it now shows at the login prompt/unlock screen...
Re: Show HN: Fun tool that cut my family and friends tech support time in half
#153Earlier quoted context omitted.
For folks who mostly just need a browser and for whom malware is a risk, you really can't do better than an iPad. I love Linux, but there really is no beating an iPad if you need a PC-approximate that is absurdly low maintenance.
An iPad is an expensive solution if they've already got a PC, and Linux is a great free way to resurrect computers that the commercial operating systems have left behind.
That depends on how much you value your own personal time setting their system up and maintaining it. An iPad might have a greater up front cost, but the time savings could make it a comparative bargain over the lifetime of the device.
Re: Show HN: Fun tool that cut my family and friends tech support time in half
#154Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
> Frightening... but why?
I asked myself the same question when I saw a documentary about analphabets. They quoted a number of about 8 million total and functional analphabets for Germany (among 80 million population), which is absolutely staggering.
To witness, people who cannot use a computer are often called "digital analphabets" or similar.
Re: Show HN: Fun tool that cut my family and friends tech support time in half
#155I 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.
If all they need is a browser and open office I think linux is far superior in being hardened against mothers and other non-it folk.
Problems come if they need more or are used to another OS.
Re: Show HN: Fun tool that cut my family and friends tech support time in half
#156Earlier quoted context omitted.
Most commonly, people coming to me for help make a blanket statement like "X is broken", where X could be their phone, computer, an application or website, the Internet as a whole. X is also generally inaccurate. For instance, if the browser icon on my parents computer is moved for whatever reason, they will say that "the Internet is broken". If my mother can't figure out what button to press in a mobile application…
Maybe you should start with the basic concepts next time you are around. Explain things like computer, internet, operating system, programs. Just in a Feynman style of explanation, very brief and easy to understand. Once my mother called that the tablet said it had a virus and should scan immediately. I asked what she saw on the screen, what she was doing when it occurred. It was an aggressive pop-up in an app she wa…
If only it was that easy. Most of the ppl having simmilar problems will only pretend to listen and remember your explanations, only to run to you with the exact same problem in a couple of hours.
Re: Show HN: Fun tool that cut my family and friends tech support time in half
#157I wasn't sure what to expect when it asked me to type my problem in: when that tab opened that gave me a good laugh haha. So true.
Re: Show HN: Fun tool that cut my family and friends tech support time in half
#158Earlier quoted context omitted.
The best thing I ever found to reduce the risk of malware is to move them to a Linux distro. The risk is not zero but from a user perspective I install the software they need from package repositories remotely, and that more or less settles it. Of course this is not for everyone, but for folks who for the most only need a browser a Linux distro is a good choice.
If your solution to malware problems with an unsophisticated user is to just cripple their ability to install anything, why not let instead let them keep Windows/Mac and give them an account with minimal privileges?
Because then the unsophisticated user will constantly ask to have $RANDOM_SOFTWARE installed. Admittedly, having to say "no" to those requests up front is preferable to having to remove malware infestations later, but it is still annoying and can cause unnecessary friction in personal relationships.
There are several ways switching an unsophisticated user reduces this problem:
- Ads for malware-laden $RANDOM_SOFTWARE downloads aren't targeted at Linux desktops in the first place.
- The ads that mimic UI widgets don't match anything in the desktop UI, making them much easier for unsophisticated users to identify as suspect.
- Saying that $RANDOM_SOFTWARE they want to install isn't Linux-compatible (which admittedly does generate moderate pressure to switch back) is usually a more acceptable answer than "No, I won't install that malware-riddled piece of crap for you", however gently worded.
Re: Show HN: Fun tool that cut my family and friends tech support time in half
#159Earlier 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 haven't had that happen to me in Ubuntu for, IIRC, about a decade. OTOH I have had the equivalent happen in Windows as recently as early 2015.