So I was listening in on a conversation today, and.....

[CoMpX]

Speaking of popups and old people....

Last week, my grandpa called me complaining that he kept getting popups on his computer. I was thinking "WTF?" because I have antivirus and antispyware programs installed, set to auto-update and Windows Update is set to auto-update. It's pretty well locked down from spyware and viruses....well, about as protected as a Windows XP computer can get. And, the last time I used it for about 30 minutes and never got a single popup.

I went over to see what the deal was...he starts up the computer. Upon bootup, his SBC DSL software pops up a window for a second to say he's connected to the net..."Look! There's a popup!" Next, Avast! pops up a message by the system tray for no more than 3 seconds saying how it auto-updated it's AV definitions..."Look! Another popup! I'm sick of these damn things!". He opens up IE, and the right-click context menu magically appears...or so I thought, but there was no magic. He was trying to use the right mouse button to click links...."Look! Another one of these stupid popups!" I told him not to use the right mouse button, which went in one ear and out the other..."What's wrong with this piece of crap? I keep getting popups!" It took my dad (who's computer illiterate himself) and I five minutes to finally convince him to never, ever use the right mouse button unless told otherwise, and that is completley normal activity when you use the right mouse button.

So, none of these so-called popups were actual web advertising popups. Just a right click menu and useful system messages.

This got me to thinking.....Windows just shoves so many messages in your face al the time. What's the use? It's just annoying. Widows in itself is a popup ad. Go die, Windows.

Sorry, random.

 

[Motley]

Also, this was a lot more common 10 years ago, but I always enjoyed watching somebody use a mouse for the first time and run it off the table.

When I was teaching my mom how to use a computer she had a hard time mastering the mouse. When moving the mouse left on the screen she came to the left edge of the mouse pad and didn't know what to do. I said "Just pick the mouse up move it to the right of the mousepad and set it down and you will have more room to move left." So she picked up the mouse moved it to to the right, moved it back to the left, put it down and exclaimed "Nothing happened" I had to walk away for a few minutes.

 

[alywa]

Lexmark Printers

I don't know what it is about Lexmark printers, but they are a never ending source of headache for me (via my father-in-law).

I swear, I have to fix that thing at least once a month (be it changing cartridges, re-setting the connection, or fixing jams). It always starts the same:

"XXXX, this is XXXX. Yeah, my printer won't work. No, I tried that. Yeah, I turned it off and turned it back on. Yeah, I restarted the computer. Dialogue box, what? OK thanks."

As it turned out last time, he didn't tell me that the printer had gotten a paper jam. I went throught all of the uninstall / reinstall steps, got out the driver CDs, etc. Finally, he said "oh yeah, the paper did get jammed"...

Needless to say, I simply nudged the cartridge carrier, and everything went back to normal.

If it isn't that, it's the absolutely horrible XP home networking situations. Why 2 dells can't be reliable configured to share one printer is beyond me. He eventually just went and bought a cheap printer for his laptop since he was so tired of the network going down.

OK, enough rant. I've threatened them that when they do get new computers, if they aren't macs then they are tech supporting on their own for now on. Of course, that's probably just an idle threat... they are good people, just bad computers.

-alywa