Grandmother Computer



  • Maybe this is not the TRWTF (if it isn't the TRWTF, I am sure someone will figure out what is), but it is something someone might like to read anyways. These are things my grandmother used to ask me about her computer. (She is still alive, even though her birth certificate doesn't.)

    She said she wanted a slow computer instead of a fast computer, because she didn't want it to go too fast for her to follow.

    After she deleted the e-mail messages from the Inbox, she went to Deleted Items, and call me (she called me many times about this, and I keep answering the same way every time), saying "I deleted the messages, but now I went to Deleted Items and the messages came back!" I told her that it is normal, when you close the e-mail, anything in Deleted Items will delete automatically (that is how it was configured).

    She never uses the backspace key, instead she moves the cursor left and pushes delete, for every character wanted deleted.

    And various others.



  • @zzo38 said:

    And various others.
     

    Does she also make wretched websites that try to emulate a command prompt menu?



  • @MasterPlanSoftware said:

    @zzo38 said:

    And various others.
     

    Does she also make wretched websites that try to emulate a command prompt menu?

    I was kind of holding off on this one until you came around.  I think all of us might have been.  Your reply was not as stunning as I had hoped, but I was too paralyzed to say anything.

     

    Not only is this a completely stupid thread, the guy is insulting his grandmother for not being familiar with computer concepts.  The fact that she "wanted a slower computer so she could keep up with it" tells me she was dealing with something completely foreign and just trying to do the best she can.  WTFs come from people who are lazy, incompetent or moronic.  They come from people who have been trusted to produce a good solution to a problem and instead have lied about their knowledge or cut corners or just not cared.  An elderly woman who is trying to become a computer user for the first time does not qualify.

     

    I don't even want to taint our beloved mugs by suggesting this guy should get one.  Instead, I nominate him for the sticker



  • @morbiuswilters said:

    I was kind of holding off on this one until you came around.  I think all of us might have been.
    I know I was. On the one hand, it's barely a WTF (Old people don't understand technology that became prevalent when they were 60? WTF?!), but on the other hand, it's the closest zzo's come to an actual WTF. Do we hammer him for his weak post, or nurture this step in the right direction?
    @morbiuswilters said:
    I don't even want to taint our beloved mugs by suggesting this guy should get one.  Instead, I nominate him for the sticker
    The sticker raises an excellent theoretical question: can the thread be awesome until the OP posts? Does the thread exist before the OP?



  • @bstorer said:

    The sticker raises an excellent theoretical question: can the thread be awesome until the OP posts? Does the thread exist before the OP?

    I intended the more obvious "this thread was never awesome" interpretation, but I believe you might be on to something here.  I am awarding you $0.27 to conduct an environmental impact study.  Report you findings when you are done and we shall see how to proceed from there.



  • @morbiuswilters said:

    I am awarding you $0.27 to conduct an environmental impact study.  Report you findings when you are done and we shall see how to proceed from there.
    My findings are as follows: twenty-seven cents buys you very little in the way of prostitutes. I hereby request further funding to test this theory in other, poorer countries.



  • @zzo38 said:

     (She is still alive, even though her birth certificate doesn't.)

     

    Doesn't what? I'm sitting in suspense here! 



  • This is probably quite uniteresting but I thought I'd share anyway...  my boyfriend and I were looking for a recipe yesterday, so he rang his (80-something yr old) grandmother to see if she had it.  After looking and calling back to say she couldn't find it, she had a suggestion: "Why don't you look on the internet?  Bezinkovy.cz (we wanted to make something using a tree called bez) or something.  Or google?"

    This after discovering that when my his mother was young, for some reason she had to attend a FORTRAN class - which his grandmother also attended!  He's the first person I know whose grandparent has learnt programming... however well or badly.



  • I had a cat like that once (its birth certificate didn't either).  It would push all kinds of keys when it walked on the keyboard, and mess stuff up now and then and I'd have to fix it.



  • @Yaos said:

    @zzo38 said:

     (She is still alive, even though her birth certificate doesn't.)

     

    Doesn't what? I'm sitting in suspense here! 


    her birth certificate doesn't alive. obviously. duh.



  • @Mel said:

    This after discovering that when my his mother was young, for some reason she had to attend a FORTRAN class - which his grandmother also attended!  He's the first person I know whose grandparent has learnt programming... however well or badly.

     

     My grandfather could program in C. My great uncle could program in BASIC, and is the person who first taught me the basic concepts of programming (like, loops and if statements) when I was, like, 6. Just sayin'. Don't doubt the abilities of old people and little kids.



  • @indigoparadox said:

    Don't doubt the abilities of old people and little kids.
     

    I'm not doubting them at all - my dad (an enthusiast, certainly not a programmer) taught me the basics of programming when I was about the same age.  He would've been almost 70 at the time.  I still think it's cool his grandmother learnt to program... 



  • She said she wanted a slow computer instead of a fast computer, because she didn't want it to go too fast for her to follow.

    Clbuttic! It's like the old joke: "Hi Mom, college is great. I'm writing this slow because I know you can't read fast."



  • @zzo38 said:

    (she called me many times about this, and I keep answering the same way every time)

    This is a clear indication that you need to explain it in a different way.


  • :belt_onion:

    @morbiuswilters said:

    I don't even want to taint our beloved mugs by suggesting this guy should get one.  Instead, I nominate him for the sticker

    Fine by me, as long as she doesn't get the other half of my mug



  • @indigoparadox said:

    @Mel said:

    This after discovering that when my his mother was young, for some reason she had to attend a FORTRAN class - which his grandmother also attended!  He's the first person I know whose grandparent has learnt programming... however well or badly.

     

     My grandfather could program in C. My great uncle could program in BASIC, and is the person who first taught me the basic concepts of programming (like, loops and if statements) when I was, like, 6. Just sayin'. Don't doubt the abilities of old people and little kids.

    Remember kids, computing hasn't been out there long enough for centuries-old stories, but you will find mainframe users already well into their golden years. I can quite imagine someone in their 70's 0wning a 20-ish developer on FORTRAN... and doing so on punchcards.

    There is quite a large population of age 60+ people in mainframe departments. Check them out.

    And, for the record, my 80-year-old grandmother is actually able to do SMS on her cellphone, and able to open Solitaire on my laptop... all by herself. ;)



  • @zzo38 said:

    Maybe this is not the TRWTF

     

    This may be the first time I've seen RAS Syndrome before the acronym.

    As for grandparents doing stuff with computers, one of my Grandpa's first jobs out of the military was selling software for airports. He went around with his 80's portable computer and demonstrated the software to airports around the country. Nowadays he still toys with his computer (most recently a *groan* Dell running *groan* Windows Vista, but he still has his old HP Windows XP).

    By the way, he still has the portable PC (he was allowed to keep it after the company went bankrupt). We dragged it out a few months ago for fun. It weighs a ton, the screen is tiny, and it doesn't really work anymore; seems the hard drive is corrupt (exposure to one too many airport metal detectors?). But it boots off of a floppy just fine, and its fun just watching how slowly it runs.



  • Wow, a portable computer with a harddrive in the 80s? I'd love to see that (in photo would be fine.)



  • @NSCoder said:

    Wow, a portable computer with a harddrive in the 80s? I'd love to see that (in photo would be fine.)
     

     



  • @ammoQ said:

    @NSCoder said:

    Wow, a portable computer with a harddrive in the 80s? I'd love to see that (in photo would be fine.)
     

     

    Thanks. Wow, that had a lot of RAM and disk space for its time (at least, I think so, but maybe we just had old/cheap, crappy computers, and maybe the tapes held more than I think, I only ever knew the number of blocks and not kB.) It kind of looks like a Lisa at first glance.


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