Ten IT Concepts That Non-IT People Don't Get
Since I “work with computers” I tend to get asked to do fair amount of unofficial technical support for family and neighbours. I’ve noticed that the same confusions about IT crop up again and again. Here’s my top ten.
(Note that due to my background this is going to be Windows-centric. Please don’t take this to mean that I think Windows PCs are unfriendly – it’s just I don’t know enough about other systems to be able to comment. I also don’t want to come across as elitist – if non-IT people don’t understand something, that’s not because they’re dumb – it’s because we haven’t made computer systems obvious enough.)
1. When to Click and When to Double-Click
This one is a continual source of annoyance to IT people, and especially to those in support. It seems obvious to us which should be used when, but before you get mad with the user you’re helping, consider this: can you make rules for when to click and when to double-click? Why do you double-click an icon to perform the action, but only single-click a button? What if Windows is set to “single click to open an item”?
Add into the mix the close cousin right-clicking, together with triple-clicks in text editors, double-single-clicks to rename, and of course modified clicks (holding down control or shift), and I think confusion is the correct response.
2. Hierarchical Folders
Hierarchical folders are a great idea – don’t get me wrong – but they’re a good example of a neat metaphor overextended and hence confused. Most people are familiar with cardboard folders that can store bits of paper – and equally most people are happy to store their files in folders on their PC. Where it all goes wrong is with folders within folders, as this very rarely happens in the real world. Many users are simply unaware that they can create additional folders inside “My Documents” – hence the usual tendency to find hundreds or even thousands of files, all at the same folder level.
Making the problem even worse is the fact that “Save As” and “Open” dialogs often look nothing like the standard file explorer. This makes it more difficult to mentally link the save operation with the save location. This leads to the common problem of a user “losing” all their files – when in fact the “open” dialog has for some reason defaulted to another directory, and hence shows a different list of files to those the user was expecting.
(And don’t even get me started on the fact that folders like “My Documents” appear in TWO locations in the folder tree – the physical one that users can’t find or recognise, and the virtual one which isn’t supported by all applications).
3. Using Add/Remove Programs
I need to clarify here. When a user wants to remove a program they chose to install, they head over to Add/Remove Programs – no problems. I’ve found however that when it’s software they didn’t install (or didn’t intentionally install) – there’s a problem. Messages that pop-up on start-up, unwanted system tray announcements, even auto-starting applications – these are all a source of annoyance, and often there’s no obvious way to associate the offender with the appropriate entry in Add/Remove Programs. Often trialware pops up nag screens at startup, giving the user the option to purchase it – but without an option to uninstall.
Even worse is the case where a user wants to keep the application, just not have it launch at startup. There are many different ways an application can hook into the startup sequence, and most of them are inaccessible unless you’re comfortable using something like msconfig (which, let’s face it, non-IT people aren’t).
4. Installing Bundled Software Hurts
IT people know that bundled software (aka “crapware”) isn’t included for our benefit – it’s generally a way hardware manufactures or system builders lower costs by basically pushing unwanted adverts for unwanted products onto your machine, in the hope that you won’t be able to uninstall them, and will finally buy them (see item #3 above).
Unfortunately a standard user assumes that if a hardware item comes with a disk, that disk is there for a good reason – and so installs the lot. Sometimes this is just an annoyance, but sometimes it’s more sinister – bundled software often stops the PC functioning correctly. The worst offenders seem to be the software that comes with wireless network adapters. For some reason they all want to turn off Window’s standard wireless zero-configuration system, and install their own. Sadly, their own offerings often don’t work (especially if they were written pre-XP) and the user is left with a completely non-functioning wireless system. Had the user simply plugged in the hardware and let Windows do the rest, it probably would have worked. The instructions said to install the software – and possibly stung by all the geeks who kept telling them to “RTFM” – they did so.
5. That There Is A Choice Of Software
Odds are that you’re reading this on Firefox – or if not, as a reader of a coding blog, you at least know the name of the browser you’re using. This almost certainly isn’t the case for the majority of PC users – they don’t use a browser, they use the internet (or if not the internet, then they use msn, facebook, google, or whatever). Most people simply use the browser as a means to an end. The same goes for music players, email clients (generally dictated by their ISP), and anti-virus (generally the one with the biggest display in the local PC shop).
Unfortunately this means that when things go wrong, or go expensive, or go ad-ridden, these users aren’t even aware they can change. Adverts on the web are annoying, but if you have no idea you can change your browser and install an ad-blocker, you have no choice but to suffer them. This also means that poor software can survive in the marketplace – since for correctly positioned, pushed, and marketed software, there ceases to even be a marketplace.
6. What Updates Do
While writing this article – the first two weeks of September – my laptop has installed updates on the 1st, 4th, 9th, 11th and 14th of the month. Since this is a rather slow laptop, that means that if I choose to install them, I have to put up with bad performance, and if I don’t, I have to put up with repeated nagging. Even when I do install them, I know that in another couple of days they’ll be back.
I know updates are necessary – but do we need them every three days? Do they need to be quite so slow? And do they have to nag when I’m trying to use my PC – couldn’t they wait a while to see if the screensaver kicks in, as that’s likely to be a better time than now, now, now.
7. Software Licensing
We need to put aside a discussion of whether software should be free or not for this one, and let’s just assume that people are happy paying for software for now.
The problem is that buying software isn’t really like buying other goods – what you buy isn’t the box, or the media, but a license. With normal goods, once you’ve purchased it, you keep hold it, and if it turns out to be an illegal purchase, someone (eg the police) have to come and physically remove it. With software, if the vendor decides it’s not a valid purchase, then the software magically stops working, with no easy recourse for the customer.
I’ve come across many cases of people who thought they were legitimately purchasing software, but in fact weren’t – either purchasing from someone who was knowingly selling illegal software, or purchasing from someone who believed they had the right to sell, but didn’t. Either way, the honest software purchasers had no immediate way of knowing the software they were buying wasn’t legit.
To be fair, most software vendors are taking steps to improve this – although the cynic in me says this is mainly to protect revenue streams, not customers.
8. What Memory (RAM) Is For
I think most computer users have a pretty good idea what disk storage is for – that’s where their files are stored. What I think users have a bigger problem with is volatile memory. It’s very difficult to describe to a non-techie what RAM actually does – just saying “it’s what running programs use” doesn’t give a full description by any means.
Making the problem worse is that fact that most consumer PCs are sold with the bare minimum of RAM. Users can easily see that they have a good amount of disk storage free, but it’s more difficult to get a feeling for whether they have enough RAM. Most users simply don’t realise that computers don’t have to be slow, and don’t have to spend all their time swapping virtual memory.
9. How To Use Networking
As computers become cheaper, many households now have more than one. As that happens, this question is asked of me more and more often: “I’ve saved my files on the office computer; how can I get them on the laptop?”. The first couple of times, I set up a simple home network and created shortcuts to shared folders on each desktop. Unfortunately, this didn’t really cut it.
I think the main problem is that home networking fundamentally doesn’t fit in with most people’s work patterns – if they’re working on the laptop (say), why would the office computer be switched on? Having to leave both computers on just doesn’t fit. From the user’s point of view, sometimes the files are there (when the other computer is on), and sometimes they’re not.
I’ve found that solutions like Dropbox are much more palatable – while all the home computers might not be switched on, the internet connection almost always is. The networking in this case is transparent – the user doesn’t have to do a thing – and the files are magically up-to-date on all their computers.
10. The Display Is Not The Computer
For a long time, the sheer size of CRT monitors led many users to assume the monitor was the computer, and if they thought about the box below the desk at all, they thought it was “the hard-drive”. Now that monitors are much slimmer, people understand that the monitor is just a display mechanism, and the computer actually is under the desk.
Where it all goes a little confusing is when the computer in question isn’t near the display in front of the user – remote desktop, remote assistance, and the like. Even more flummoxing seems to be the notion of servers in general – for some reason a computer without a display unit doesn’t seem to be easily understandable. Despite the familiarity of the web, the idea that accessing a website involves a computer, often running a familar operating system, somewhere remote, seems a difficult one.
Any More?
Have I missed any other concepts that are repeatedly misunderstood? Any common problems you have to deal with? Let me know!
I hate when people says “I need a new video card, mines only 256mb” or something like that. The amount of RAM on a graphics card is almost not related to it’s performance!
WINDOWS is not the computer. When Windows gets hosed (viruses, popups, dll hell, whatever), the average user discards the hardware and buys a new PC… With Windows. (Some) IT veterans know that the culprit is the software, not the hardware.
Re RAM, a lot of both tech AND non-tech peeps ‘don’t get’ is that an OS which uses as much available RAM as possible is usually a good thing.
The computer can’t read your mind. You have to communicate with it. For instance it can’t put a list of things in one of your objects without knowing which one you want the list put in.
Similar to #1 is when to normal click on an item versus right-clicking and selecting a menu option.
COMPUTERS ARE DETERMINISTIC. Windows machines, in particular improperly configured Windows machines, often behave randomly. That is, problems are “fixed” by flipping it off and on, and continue no matter how exactly you follow directions.
This is less common on other platforms, and at least intelligible to IT sorts when it happens on Windows.
USB stands for Universal Serial Bus, therefor there is no reason to keep calling it UBS.
“microsoft” is not a software package… of any kind. When you buy a 100$ bottom of the barrel computer with XP loaded, do not expect a 200$ office package with it. “waddya mean it dosnt have word?? i thought you said you loaded mocrosoft on it!?”
god damn i hated retail…..
…fuck i love being an admin now
On the windows world: you forgot to mention that the add/remove programs doesn’t actually add programs at all. People coming from linux systems sometimes get confused there because they actually used the equivalent “add/remove programs” there and it worked to install new apps too.
Also, nitpicking on windows, but my grandma actually asked me why she had to click on “Start” to shutdown the computer
This is almost equally well a list of things that the IT industry has made needlessly difficult and obscure for “non-IT people”—folks otherwise known as “the paying customer”.
11. Top ten lists suck.
Great Article!
11. Turning off the computer. Explaining the difference between hibernate and stand by. Why is the power button mapped to hibernate or stand-by on laptops rather than shutdown…
Most users have no idea of the difference between the operating system and the applications being run on it.
11 (a variation on 5): That things don’t work on non-Windows systems exactly the way they work on Windows. Almost always, that’s for a good reason. Installing or removing software on the Mac, for instance, is (for most people) instantly intuitive; drag an icon to the ‘Applications’ folder to install; drag an icon to the Trash to uninstall. (Studies have consistently shown that Mac users own and use more applications, and change them more frequently, than Windows usees with otherwise-equivalent experience levels.)
12. An application is NOT the same as a protocol. If I hear one more person say “mIRC” when they mean “IRC”, or “Internet” when they mean “Web browser”, I’ll likely fold, spindle and mutilate said someone. (And no, Control-Z does NOT undo that action!)
I like your list
Especially the one about browser-naievity and just using ‘the internet’.
The RAM one I often explain as the computer’s lung-capacity. The more RAM it has, the bigger breath it can hold & work without having to ‘come up for air’ (rely on the hard drive to take a breath). People often relate to that pretty easily.
[...] Ten IT Concepts That Non-IT People Don’t Get: [...]
Hi. I identified the Software Licensing problem many years ago… and tried to do something about it. The Software Licensing Handbook is an attempt to be able to explain the licensing concepts to anyone (on either side of the transaction) that they neither party gets screwed. From the feedback I’ve received, it’s working.
I do volunteer work for my local college where I help people learn literacy, mathematics, and computing, so I run into a lot of beginner errors that make me scratch my head. Nothing that we think is intuitive is really that intuitive.
Some good examples include…
- “right-clicking”: There are a couple of people I help that forget the mouse has more than one button. When I tell them to right-click on a piece of text to copy, because selecting this piece of text is impossible from the menu, this instantly go to type “right-click” over the top of the text (if it is editable). There’s also hitting the wrong mouse button when they go to click but they’ve all grown out of that.
- “patience”: The computers we’re using must first boot to the desktop after the user has logged in and then load a lot of extra stuff off the network. This can take a few minutes and it often causes longer wait times because trying to open something in this time locks up the computer for even longer. Most know they need to wait but sometimes it just happens.
- “selecting vs highlighting”: This one is really technical for the layperson because it isn’t what they first think. I often make the mistake of telling people to “select” a piece of text instead of “highlight” it. To them, “select” has to do with tangible objects on the screen like pictures whereas “highlight” has to do with text selection. I probably say “select” because on Mac OS X (the OS I use) text really does act like any other object. It can be dragged and manipulated like everything else, and this behaviour is much more obvious than on Windows. I might also say it because I understand some of the mechanics behind the way applications are made and, of course, the primary language of Mac apps is (Object)ive-C.
The box under the desk is not a “hard drive.” If I had a nickel for every time someone said “my hard drive is not working, can you take a look at it,” I’d probably have enough to buy a soda, maybe two. This one is I think can be blamed on microsoft for their “My Computer”/”C: drive” user interface.
I had someone in the office get annoyed because their computer kept popping up to tell them they needed windows vista service pack updates, but they said they didn’t need it because ‘they already had windows’.
11. That just because you are a programmer, it doesn’t necessarily mean you can solve every PC problem and understand every piece of software that they have downloaded without even seeing it. Or fix their DVD player for that matter.
The scrollbar: “Why do I pull it down to make the screen go up?”
Disagree that most consumer PCs are sold with the bare minimum amount of RAM nowadays.
RAM is cheap, and most new PCs are sold with 2 or 4 GB, which is more than enough for almost all software.
Double click when the icon is a pointer, single click when its that little hand.
Another that would fall under the heading of “The Display is not the Computer” is how many users don’t understand the concept of a laptop docking station. They dock their laptop and use it like a regular computer (with a monitor, keyboard, mouse that never leaves their desk) but just don’t seem to understand that they are actually using their laptop the whole time, even though its folded up on their desk. They don’t seem to understand why their “computer” doesn’t work when they leave their laptop at home.
How about “AOL is internet”
related to #8 : that “Memory” is not the hard disk, as in “the computer says it needs more memory but I have hundreds of jiggabytes free”
`or “Internet” when they mean “Web browser”` – I believe you meant World Wide Web. Which refers to the various HTTP Servers that provide Hyper Links to other HTTP Servers that people view with a “Web Browser.” The “internet” is simply a network of computer networks that communicate via tcp/ip.
Obviously even self described “IT People” have fundamental misunderstanding of the technology they use everyday.
Often times I will hear people complain about their computer running slowly and that they need to delete some of the junk off their hard drive. The contents of your hard drive only impact performance if they are fragmented or so full that they crowd out VRAM. Stop trying to make your machine go faster by deleting 100kb worth of kitten pictures, run a disk defrag, magic.
Most users I know have no idea of file sizes and why e-mail is not the best solution to send a 30 minute family vacation video.
How many times have I been called to a family members house because Outlook can’t move an e-mail with 100 eight megapixel photos attached.
That being said, while solutions for this problem exist, there are none that are easily accessible to the user.
It would be nice if e-mail severs could be queried for their maximum message size and this could be relayed to the e-mail clients so that instead of choking on a 30MB attachment it refused to attach it in the first place, with a clear and appropriate error explanation.
While I’m wishing for things.. how about the ability to fly and turn invisible.
When my grandmother first started using a computer, I drew a set of pictures to illustrate several basic concepts. There was a filing cabinet for the hard drive, a table for the desktop, a telephone for the network, and a multi-armed stick figure for the processor and RAM. I explained that the processor could only actually work on one thing at a time, but could hold several things in its hands ready for use. Surprisingly enough, it worked wonderfully. Some of the metaphorical drawings needed some explanations, but the concept worked. If I ever end up teaching a whole class of elderly users, I plan to bring in a whole set of props and illustrate the main processes.
One last thing.
I firmly believe that anyone working at a job where they work on a PC day-in day-out should have their International Computer Driving License. I believe its a minimum requirement for most gov’t workers in the EU.
It covers all the basics you need:
1. Concepts of Information Technology
2. Using the Computer and Managing Files
3. Word Processing
4. Spreadsheets
5. Database
6. Presentation
7. Information and Communications (internet and e-mail)
Many users don’t understand that computers can run multiple simultaneous tasks. Users tend to see programs (from opening to use to closing them) as a linear process they must step through properly, forward and backward. i.e. Start > All Programs > Microsoft Office > Word > now I need to get “on the Internet” > Close (“X out of”) Word > Start > All Programs > Internet Explorer. Rinse and repeat.
Many people don’t realize that programs are opened in a Window on top of their desktop. I can’t recount how many times I had a small web browser window open on a 30″ display only to have people say “Wow your screen is very small,” only to have them change to “WOW! That is a big screen!” once I’ve pressed the maximize button.
I find both of these concepts tie nicely together in showing that users are somehow trained to have a sort of “tunnel vision” when using programs. I think the classic desktop GUI was originally centered around completing tasks in a modal or linear fashion, discouraging people from unlocking the true powers of multitasking. I find this helps to explain why multiple (physical) monitors/displays is a great way to improve efficiency in the workplace versus concepts like “spaces” on Mac not being as effective (in a mainstream sense) as they could be.
I’ve noticed that people often don’t understand:
1) the difference between desktop applications and web applications
2) the difference between operating system and applications
3) the connection between the desktop (background folders) and the filesystem
4) the difference between IM networks
5) the difference between different media codec (lossless, non-lossless, etc)
6) the difference between a media codec and a format
7) that a computer is like bread – it’s value quickly expires with time
@Andrew: Can you really have more than program running in Windows at the same time? It´s been a long time since I switched operating systems, but as I recall, Windows was unstable enough running a single program…
@Andrew: Can you really have more than program running in Windows at the same time? It´s been a long time since I switched operating systems, but as I recall, Windows was unstable enough running a single program…
Maybe people just use applications one at time because it´s safer, less blue-screen-of-deathy.
RAM was best explained to me (NON-IT person) as,
Think of your work office. Your hard drive is the file cabinet where you keep the information and your RAM is like your desktop. The bigger your desktop is the more information you can have spread around on it at one time.
Nice post.
I’d also add
– file extensions
– why you can only have certain characters in file names
(both of which are quite understandable)
I’d love to see a follow-up on the best ways to teach these concepts to Non-IT people.
[...] http://www.hackification.com/2009/09/28/ten-it-concepts-that-non-it-people-dont-get/ Etiketler: Havadan [...]
Not all websites use www at the beginning of the URL. Seriously. They’re called subdomains people. I find it amusing that I can tell some of my clients to go to soandso.website.com and they immediately repeat it back to me as http://www.soandso.website.com and are appalled when I correct them. “No www? Are you sure? Then it’s not a website?”
[...] Ten IT Concepts That Non-IT People Don’t Get [...]
[...] Ten IT Concepts That Non-IT People Don’t Get [...]
Not really related to computer though but essentially something Non Tech people don’t understand : You don’t call every portable mp3 player as an “Ipod” !
11. That a computer that has failed to give the desired response to a mouseclick will not interrupt more, faster mouseclicks as evidence that you’re really serious.
*interpret, not interrupt
11. Computers don’t actually get slower as they get older. They’re just as fast as the day they were purchased. They may seem slower if you’re comparing them to newer, faster computers; applications may actually run slower if you’ve updated them to more bloated versions, or have hundreds of viruses running in the background. But the computer hardware itself doesn’t degrade. If you buy a new one and treat it the same way as the old one, it will soon meet the same fate. Of course, in order to understand this you must know that there’s a difference between the hardware and the OS/apps that run on it.
[EN] Diez conceptos de Informática que los No Informáticos no entienden…
[...] Parece que nos resulta obvio cuándo tenemos que hacer click o doble click, pero, párate a pensar. ¿Puedes crear normas para cuándo se debe hacer click o doble click? Cuándo haces doble click para llevar a cabo una acción, pero haces un único……
People that says “internet doesnt work” just because messenger doesnt connects…
And the difference between a url and a email address…
Hi, one way to explain RAM to non-IT users (Number
is compare the Hard-Disk with a bookshelve. You can store all your books there and the amount of books you can store depends on the size of the bookshelve. The Ram is compared to your Desktop. When you are working or studiyng on it, you can only have as much books (at the same time) on your desktop as the size of it allows. If you have a bigger desktop, you can have more books on your desktop to use at the same time, let’s say 2 dictionarys, one atlas, etc… So the Desktop (RAM) is bassically the amount of things you can handle at the same time. 
cheers!
I felt identified in most of them! As the IT guy of course, not as the user
Nice article.
[...] Original source : http://www.hackification.com/2009/09/28/ten-it-con… [...]
Hay un post parecido en español, pero muchísimo más divertido: http://jl-alvarez.blogspot.com/2009/09/los-tontos-existen.html
[...] hackification hicieron una lista de 10 conceptos que las personas que no están relacionadas con los ordenadores [...]
[...] Desde hackification hicieron una lista de 10 conceptos que las personas que no están relacionadas con los ordenadores nunca entenderán. [...]
[...] hackification hicieron una lista de 10 conceptos que las personas que no están relacionadas con los ordenadores [...]
If a hear a fucking user say my pc is “clocking” again im gonna lose it!
Number two is dead on, but there is also another version when Users take the Hierarchy to the extreme limits. I have run across users that have nested files 7 levels deep with folder names that are at least 5inches.
I’d add just one more: no email address can have a blank space in it. Stop asking “is there any space?”.
And yes, I too have difficulty explaining how “www” isn’t so necessary as people think it to be.
[...] Depuis hackification ils ont fait une liste de 10 concepts que les personnes qui ne sont pas relatives aux ordinateurs ne comprendront jamais. La majorité d'eux m'ont causé beaucoup de grâce parce que je le vois tous les jours des personnes qui bien qu'ils envoient quotidiennement mails, naviguent et plus, ils ne se rendent pas de compte. Quand cliquer et quand faire un double click : Qui font un double click dans un hyperlien il me met plus que nerveux. Des dossiers hiérarchiques : Qu'un dossier garde tout n'est pas un inconvénient. Le vrai problème surgit à l'heure de garder des dossiers dans des dossiers. Utiliser Le fait d'ajouter / s'Effacer tu programmes correctement : Ils pensent qu'en lui donnant delete sur l'icône dans le bureau il fera tout le travail. Installer TOUT le bundled software n'est pas bon : Comment ça va en CD qu'ils lui ont donné quand il a acheté l'ordinateur il considère qu'il faut installer tout ce qui vient dans lui. Tu peux choisir le software : Ils pensent que comme l'Internet Explorer est celui qui lui est venu avec le système d'exploitation c'est la meilleure option. Si tu installes Firefox il aura une attaque. Qu'est-ce que les actualisations font ? : Non toutes les actualisations de software sont nécessaires. Acheter des permissions : Acheter un software n'est pas le même qu'acheter d'autres biens. Tu ne verras pas souvent de changement au-delà de l'avoir comme enregistré à ton nom et cela leur fait un bruit. Pourquoi c'est la mémoire RAM : Le concept de magasinage est assez clair, mais les expliquer pourquoi il sert la mémoire RAM sera un vrai problème. Comment utiliser les réseaux : Comprendre que les fichiers ne sont pas dans ton ordinateur et qu'en réalité ils sont logés dans un autre ordinateur peut causer des maux de tête. L'écran n'est pas l'ordinateur : Cela a commencé à arrêter d'être ainsi depuis que les moniteurs sont devenus beaucoup plus maigres. Mais il continue de succéder quand l'ordinateur est dans une situation lointaine et l'utilisateur a seulement l'écran, le mouse et le clavier dénonce. Numéro 1 est, par arrière-plan, le plus vu quotidiennement. Le moment dans lequel quelqu'un lui donne un double click à un lien pour, par exemple, entrer à son mail, je commence à tremper de sueur déjà un froid. Posted by Vickie J. Denton at 9:24 AM [...]
[...] Seit haben sie hackification eine Liste von 10 Begriffen gemacht, die die Personen, die mit den Computern nicht verbunden sind, nie verstehen werden. Die Mehrheit von ihnen hat mir viel Grazie verursacht, weil ich es täglich mit Personen sehe, die, wenn auch sie mails täglich senden, zur See fahren und mehr, sie legen keine Rechenschaft ab. Wann klicken und wann Doppeltes click zu machen: Die Doppeltes click in einer Hyperbindung machen, verbindet er mich mit mehr, als nervöser. Hierarchische Kollegmappen: Die eine Kollegmappe bewacht, alles ein Nachteil nicht ist. Das authentische Problem erscheint, wenn es darum geht, Kollegmappen innerhalb der Kollegmappen zu bewachen. Zu benutzen Hinzuzufügen / zu löschen, programmierst du korrekt: Sie denken, dass, ihm delete in der Ikone im Büro gebend, er die ganze Arbeit machen wird. Den GANZEN Bundled Software zu installieren, ist nicht gut: Wie geht's meint er in einer CD, die sie ihm gegeben haben, wenn er den Computer gekauft hat, dass es nötig ist, alles zu installieren, was in ihm kommt. Du kannst die Software wählen: Sie denken, dass das, weil Internet Explorer der ist, der er mit dem Betriebssystem gekommen ist, die beste Wahl ist. Wenn du Firefox installierst, wird er einen Angriff haben. Was machen die Aktualisierungen?: Nicht alle Softwareaktualisierungen sind notwendig. Erlaubnisse zu kaufen: Software zu kaufen, ist dasselbe nicht, der andere Vermögen kaufen. Oft wirst du keine Änderung sehen jenseits es registriert in deinem Namen zu haben und das macht ihnen Lärm. Wozu ist das die Erinnerung RAM: Der Speicherungsbegriff ist ziemlich klar, aber sie zu erklären, wozu er die Erinnerung RAM dient, wird ein authentisches Problem sein. Wie die Netze gebrauchen: Zu verstehen, dass die Archive in deinem Computer nicht sind und dass sie in Wirklichkeit in anderem Computer beherbergt sind, kann Kopfschmerzen verursachen. Der Schirm ist der Computer nicht: Das hat angefangen aufzuhören so zu sein, seit die Monitoren viel schlanker gemacht wurden. Aber es geschieht immer noch, wenn der Computer in einer entlegenen Lage ist und der Benutzer nur den Schirm hat, der Mouse und die Tastatur zeigt an. Die Nummer 1 ist, durch weit, täglich gesehen. Der Augenblick, in dem jemand einem Link Doppeltes click gibt, um, zum Beispiel, seinen Mail hineinzubringen, fange ich schon an Kälte auszuschwitzen. Posted by Vickie J. Denton at 9:40 PM [...]
11. The need to learn keyboard shortcuts. You can explode your productivity by not having to right-click > copy and then right-click > paste. Ctrl-C + Ctrl-V, problem solved. In defense, shortcuts are not intuitive, it’s mostly a muscle-memory thing, but once you know them, you’ll wonder how you ever lived without them.
I also think some of the older generation out there should just give it up if they don’t understand. Have had to explain the same thing at least 12 times and you know that the person still does not have a clue what you are saying, but only insists about what your doing with your life? and Do YOU have a 401K? I appreciate the kindness but am quickly losing patience trying to explain the difference between a legitimate windows pop up and a mal-ware internet explorer (YOUR COMPUTER IS INFECTED WITH 206 MALICIOUS SOFTWARE, DO YOU WANT TO REMOVE NOW?) Drives me bonkers some days. Word to the them out there reading this. Please after the 3rd time you not understanding give it up
I tend to explain the ram analogy as a filing cabinet (hard drive) vs your hands (RAM)
Information is stored long term in the filing cabinet, and it can stay there all the time.
When you want to use the information, you take it out of the filing cabinet, and hold it in your hands. You can’t hold all of the information in the filing cabinet in your hands, but what you’re holding, you can work with a lot faster. Similarly you waste time going back to the filing cabinet to get other information instead.
Having more RAM is like having extra hands. If I had 4 or 8 hands, I can hold a lot more information that I can get to quickly, so I have to visit the filing cabinet less often to swap my information, making things faster.
And, like a computer, once I go home from work, I put everything back in the filing cabinet, I don’t carry it around with me.
flash drives are not ‘USBs”.
If I hear one more person refer to a flash drive as a USB I am going to kill someone!
These reasons are why the iPad or something like it will ENTIRELY obliterate the PC market. 2-5 years from now, the only people running desktop windows/mac/’nix will be gamers/pros/enthusiasts.
Only these people want/need the flexibility of a ‘real’ computer. Everyone else wants to buy things on the internets, mail and see photos of cute cats. This is not a bad thing.
Techies have had the average consumer by the nards for far too long. Expect hell for it. We brought this on ourselves, and our bully’n ways will not soon be forgotten. They are not stupid, you are for thinking they are.
The Doctor doesn’t berate people for not knowing what abduction is compared with adduction. Odds are you don’t know either. Man, how dumb are you? You don’t know something outside your expected range of expertise. How infantile and unacceptable of you.
Whoever decided the home computer and work computer should run an OS with 99% of the same functions should be shot. I suspect it has been every-person-involved-in-computers-ever’s fault.
[...] From hackification they did a list of 10 concepts that the persons who are not related to the computers will never understand. Most of them caused me many grace because I see it every day with persons who although they send mails every day, surf and more, they do not realize. [...]
[...] we’ve got an article that reveals 10 concepts about your PC that you may not understand. If you want to know about that extra software that comes preinstalled on your new computer, or [...]
As a storage administrator I am still amazed at the number of educated people who still grapple with the difference between disk storage and memory. Too many times I have been contacted by a user who claims that they “need more memory” when, in actuality, they need more disk storage.
“You’re a geek so should know how my program” (even if this program is a Chinese tax calculator).
So yeah, regular people think that if you work in IT you’re a walking IT encyclopedia with answers to anything related to the computer, from the email service from their company to the tax forms they must capture, obviously passing by the fact you must know how to build websites.
THE worst is when you’re trying to get an old AOL user (this happens to me with older family members) to stop using AOL. And when you ask them why they are paying $20 a month for AOL when they are already paying $40 a month for their broadband connection they say “Well I need it for my email”.
Ughh…
Not only do you not need the AOL application for your email (they don’t understand that they can go to aol.com and check their mail from there). But when you cancel your AOL account, you get to keep your email address. There’s no reason to NOT cancel your AOL account.
“I’ve found that solutions like Dropbox are much more palatable – while all the home computers might not be switched on, the internet connection almost always is. The networking in this case is transparent – the user doesn’t have to do a thing – and the files are magically up-to-date on all their computers.”
I agree 100%. Dropbox ftw!
“My internet is broken!”
clientcopia lol