Elderly people shouldn't use computers

[Daddyjaxx]

My late father's girlfriend keeps calling me that her monitor doesn't work. Get this, the first company she calls is the cable company. I'm like WTH does your cable company have anything to do with your monitor. This isn't your cable TV going out. The first time, I just had to restart the computer....boom it worked. This time I just unplugged the HDMI cable and boom it worked. She said she used sleep. I don't trust sleep, especially on this 200.00 computer. The drivers probably get hosed waking from sleep. She called Dell and they told her to hit F2 at boot. Kind of hard to do that if you can't see anything. I told her I was charging her 50.00. I told her I only charge for stupid crap. I told her if she took it to Best Buy, not only would they laugh at her, they would probably charge 100.00. Of course I didn't charge her anything, but I know I computer probably looks like a 747 cockpit to people in their mid 70's. I bought the Dell for her. It's some God awful Pentium dual core with no HT, 4 GB RAM, and probably a 1000RPM, yes 1000, hard drive. It is the slowest thing I have seen in like forever.

 

[trents]

Most of my clients are elderly people. They have many challenges when it comes to computing:

1. Short term memory is typically poor. They can't remember sequences of steps and computing is heavy on sequencing.
2. They only use their computers for a few things like checking email, banking and getting airline tickets and playing solitaire. They can view pictures of the grandkids (maybe) if they're still attached to the email but if it gets downloaded onto the computer they haven't the foggiest how to find it. So they are not motivated to learn new skills, even basic ones like using File Manager.
3. When you show them how to do something they don't practice it so they never get it down and because their short term memory is poor they can't remember how they did it when you showed them.
4. Vision is often poor and they don't make out things well on the monitor, especially laptops. I discourage the elderly from buying laptops because the screens are small.
5. Their energy level is low and they can't hang in there long enough to really get something nailed down when you are trying to teach them something.
6. They aren't interested in learning about computers and computing. They "just want it to work when I go to use it."
7. I think a lot of them have trouble with abstraction and using symbols/icons instead of concrete things they can touch and hold.
8. Digital terminology is foreign language to them. Yet, no matter how hard you try you can only simplify it so much because their aren't good parallels outside of computing for some things.

I hear your bro and struggle with the same things. I've often thought that people ought to be made to pass a basic computing skills course before being allowed to use a computer, like you would for gun safety or getting a driver's license. You might laugh at that but you know as well as I do that this age group probably makes a major contribution (in a negative way) to cyber security issues because they don't know how to use the internet safely.

 

[Mr.Scott]

That's where the money is.
The elderly and the porn guys.
God bless them.

 

[trents]

Cyber language barrier when getting a telephone service call from an elderly person:

Elder: Hello, I need help with my computer.

Me: What seems to be the problem?

Elder: It doesn't come on.

Me: What doesn't come on?

Elder: When I go to look at it it's not there.

Me: What's not there? Are there any lights on or fans running on the computer?

Elder: Oh, let me check . . . Yes, I see some lights but I don't hear any fans. My hearing ain't to good though.

Me: Can you get into Windows?

Elder: What's windows?

Me: What were you trying to do with your computer when this happened?

Elder: I was trying to get my email.

Me: Are you sure your internet is working?

Elder: Well, I paid my bill this month. It should be.

Me: Let's try restarting the modem.

Elder: Which thing is that?

Me: It's the little box the cable company installed when you got internet.

Elder: Oh, yes!

Me: Now unplug the power cord for 30 seconds.

Elder: There's a bunch of cords on this thing. Which one is the power cord?

Me: It's the one that goes back to the wall socket or the power strip.

Elder: I'm not too sure about this. Maybe you'd better come over.


So I go to their house. Problem was the gateway device dropped the signal so I do a power cycle of the device and it's up and working again.


Me: Okay, the reason you couldn't check your email was that your internet connection was not working. It's working again.

Elder: Oh? But I wasn't trying to use the internet. I just wanted to check my email.

 

[Mr.Scott]

On site repair = more money.
You're looking at it all wrong.
The object is to make money.

 

[caddi daddi]

I install teamviewer on all the rigs I have to deal with and set the bios to reboot after power failure, this has cut my having to go to moms house 99 percent and my trips upstairs to help the bee 50 percent.

 

[Daddyjaxx]

I should have taken a video of her trying to use a Harmony remote. How much easier can it be? See the button that says watch TV, you click it, the TV, cable box, and sound system comes on all at the same time. It's a miracle! I tried to teach her an iPhone....hopeless. It was like reading sand script to her. I am not a young person myself. Let's just say I'm north of 50. My kids think I'm old, but that's a different story. Growing up, I was about 12 before we had a microwave, a color TV, and cable. Cable TV was the bomb. We had Showtime. They played the same movie at the same time each night for a week, and then they changed movies. There really were no PC's until my late 20's. In my early 20's, you could get an IBM for like 10,000.00. MS should make a Windows 75, just for people around that age. The fonts can be blown up like 500%. There can be only IE, a mail program, a picture viewer, and solitaire. Anytime you hover the mouse over something, it should say, this is where you go on the internet, turn on/off the computer, etc.

 

[trents]

I think the earlier in life you start using computers the better. I was about 35 when we got our first computer, a Tandy (Radio Shack) T1000 E or something like that. This was back in about 1986. I got it because I was getting ready to go into graduate school and I couldn't even touch type so I wanted to learn to do that because of all the term papers I would be doing. There were MS DOS touch typing programs available then. I've also always been a do it yourself kind of person and one thing led to another. But it's an entirely different story when you don't start using computers until you are past retirement age and you have arthritis in your fingers and fog in your brain.

 

[Janus67]

What you described is an awful lot like explaining anything to my mid-60s father over the phone. And Trent's description of the causality is pretty much head on.

Unfortunately my mother caught a rare disease about 10 years ago and has effectively gone blind since then and she was the more technically literate of my parents.

 

[trents]

What you described is an awful lot like explaining anything to my mid-60s father over the phone. And Trent's description of the causality is pretty much head on.

Unfortunately my mother caught a rare disease about 10 years ago and has effectively gone blind since then and she was the more technically literate of my parents.

That's a bummer! What's the name of her disease? Does it only affect her vision or are there longer fingers to it?

 

[Janus67]

It's a disease calls neuro myoltis optica, afaik it only occurs in women. Or also known as Deviks disease. It behaves similar to MS but instead her antibodies are confused and attack her optic nerve. Which has mostly destroyed her vision, but she's actually very fortunate - many people within the amount of time she's had the disease are fully paralized or worse. So trying to always look on the bright side can be a struggle, but at least she's still here. She has to undergo regular chemotherapy in order to lessen the attacks, but it is somewhat a diminishing returns action and also causes her to be immuno suppressed so whenever my kids (or any of us) are even a tiny bit sick we have to cancel any potential plans with them to be safe.

 

[OnDborder]

How sad is this?

No telling what your future is....

 

[Mr.Scott]

It's a disease calls neuro myoltis optica, afaik it only occurs in women. Or also known as Deviks disease. It behaves similar to MS but instead her antibodies are confused and attack her optic nerve. Which has mostly destroyed her vision, but she's actually very fortunate - many people within the amount of time she's had the disease are fully paralized or worse. So trying to always look on the bright side can be a struggle, but at least she's still here. She has to undergo regular chemotherapy in order to lessen the attacks, but it is somewhat a diminishing returns action and also causes her to be immuno suppressed so whenever my kids (or any of us) are even a tiny bit sick we have to cancel any potential plans with them to be safe.

That is a strain of MS.
I feel for you. My wife has RP (retinitis pigmentosa). For all intensive purposes she's blind. Not 'in the dark' blind, but might as well be.
Computer or smart phone use is a challenge at best. You should see the font sizing she has to use. I go nuts having to work on her stuff.

 

[Janus67]

That is a strain of MS.
I feel for you. My wife has RP (retinitis pigmentosa). For all intensive purposes she's blind. Not 'in the dark' blind, but might as well be.
Computer or smart phone use is a challenge at best. You should see the font sizing she has to use. I go nuts having to work on her stuff.

Yep, I purchased a copy of zoom text for her for the computer and turn on the blue/yellow high contrast mode so she can work to read her emails and look at pictures we send.

My heart goes out to you and your wife.