Son_of_Perdition
Senior Member
Here I go again. Months ago I posted a thread about my experiences dealing with seniors and computers. I never meant to imply that all seniors were computer illiterate and my apologies to anyone who took it wrong. I was only trying to point out my personal interaction with my neighbors, (I live in a 55+ manufactured housing park). I enjoy the closeness and friendly association with most of them. My career for 35 years was in tech support at a large aerospace data center, dealing with 17,000+ employees 24/7. That's the reason I have had occasional requests to help my neighbors with computer problems.
During the last week I had calls from 4 with computer problems (a week or so ago there was a major power outage). The outage caused many unexpected glitches with their electronic devices. Powering off/on (resetting modems) solved most, but the 4 had other issues. I went to their homes and without exception each had recently been given a new top of the line desktop, laptop or upgrade by their children. One had an expensive iMac with all the bells and whistles, two were trying to figure out their 'Apple' laptops and the fourth had an older desktop that their son had upgraded to Win 7 with a new 21 inch monitor.
I ask each, 'What do you use your computer for?' email, web browsing, and games (mostly FB or Yahoo) were their standard answers, nothing more. UserID's & passwords luckily had been written down on the reams of notes that I had to figure out. I had each sit next to me as I corrected the problems. Somewhere during my visit I looked at them, each had a blank stare and I knew I'd lost them. I then tried to suggest an option to change their complicated system for a simple easy to understand, stable and re-loadable system. I touched lightly on a Chromebook but my bread n butter is a simple Linux system. I tried to explain they would lose nothing and your web browsing would be clean and simple. I truly believe in the KISS methodology.
Change is not something most seniors embrace gracefully. I thought I had put one lady into 'Gimbel Lock' wringing her hands when I suggested they replace the iMac with something they could better understand. I could see that any suggestion to go against their children's good intentions were not met with an open mind. I gave up, leaving after they assured me they understood the instructions and could now get to 'Google' and their email with their icons. I wish that when the younger generation try to bring their elders current with technology that they take into consideration that most people over 75 haven't been exposed to the concept of being 'connected' as the baby boomers or younger generations have.
During the last week I had calls from 4 with computer problems (a week or so ago there was a major power outage). The outage caused many unexpected glitches with their electronic devices. Powering off/on (resetting modems) solved most, but the 4 had other issues. I went to their homes and without exception each had recently been given a new top of the line desktop, laptop or upgrade by their children. One had an expensive iMac with all the bells and whistles, two were trying to figure out their 'Apple' laptops and the fourth had an older desktop that their son had upgraded to Win 7 with a new 21 inch monitor.
I ask each, 'What do you use your computer for?' email, web browsing, and games (mostly FB or Yahoo) were their standard answers, nothing more. UserID's & passwords luckily had been written down on the reams of notes that I had to figure out. I had each sit next to me as I corrected the problems. Somewhere during my visit I looked at them, each had a blank stare and I knew I'd lost them. I then tried to suggest an option to change their complicated system for a simple easy to understand, stable and re-loadable system. I touched lightly on a Chromebook but my bread n butter is a simple Linux system. I tried to explain they would lose nothing and your web browsing would be clean and simple. I truly believe in the KISS methodology.
Change is not something most seniors embrace gracefully. I thought I had put one lady into 'Gimbel Lock' wringing her hands when I suggested they replace the iMac with something they could better understand. I could see that any suggestion to go against their children's good intentions were not met with an open mind. I gave up, leaving after they assured me they understood the instructions and could now get to 'Google' and their email with their icons. I wish that when the younger generation try to bring their elders current with technology that they take into consideration that most people over 75 haven't been exposed to the concept of being 'connected' as the baby boomers or younger generations have.
