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Posted by meridianday on 20-07-2006 at 22:23:
Computer support
http://www.rinkworks.com/stupid/cs_os.shtml
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Mallanox : "My mother was Irish and my father was an alien. I was an only child and I dress funny." Posted by Elvin Ruler on 21-07-2006 at 03:09:
I could never work tech support. Ever.
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Posted by meridianday on 21-07-2006 at 06:46:
I remember back in the 80s, where I would be trying to help a customer and I'd be having to explain to him what the spacebar was and what those buttons at the side with the arrows on are for.
These guys had secretaries who did all their computer stuff for them, but for some reason if anything technical came up they wouldn't let their secretaries, with their many 100% more computer experience than themselves, make the support calls. Or they'd be sitting there hogging the phones and barking orders to their secretaries and it was like chinese whispers.
I got a call once from someone I'd written a piece of software for. Bear in mind this is long before Windows 3 and so we were all still using DOS - back in the days before you had any kind of font choice. He didn't like the shape of his zeros, so could I make him a different one.
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Mallanox : "My mother was Irish and my father was an alien. I was an only child and I dress funny." Posted by Elvin Ruler on 21-07-2006 at 13:46:
Heh. I don't know how I'd manage to deal with something like that/customers like that. I'd go crazy.
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Posted by Springie on 21-07-2006 at 17:09:
Springie raises hand timidly ...I have to admit...I don't know what Linux is....
But reading these did make me feel better about my computer knowledge...I'm still very green, but I do know what most of that stuff is...
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Posted by Cep on 21-07-2006 at 17:42:
Linux is an operating system like Windows XP (only better hehehehe)
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Posted by CricketBeautiful on 21-07-2006 at 19:17:
Better? Only if you enjoy messing with it. Hubby's tried (and given up) at least twice that I know of, on MY machine. No clue how often he's tried on his own.
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Between stimulus and response there is a space.
In that space is our power to choose our response.
In our response lies our growth and our freedom.
- Viktor E. Frankl
Posted by Springie on 21-07-2006 at 21:25:
Operating system was my guess...honest!
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Posted by Elvin Ruler on 22-07-2006 at 02:55:
Eh, I don't like messing stuff up. I know enough to fix some stuff, but my best knowledge is knowing when I don't know enough to do something.
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What if there is a spoon?
Posted by meridianday on 22-07-2006 at 14:16:
My husband and a friend of his both use Linux with X Windows. I'd be more impressed, but they can't work out how to get printer drivers installed or play DVDs.
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Mallanox : "My mother was Irish and my father was an alien. I was an only child and I dress funny." Posted by CricketBeautiful on 24-07-2006 at 16:41:
My favourite, and I'm afraid it's happened to me, and no time to reinstall,
the firewall blocks MS updates. You set it to allow, go leave the room, come back and instinctively don't allow the program to download a file.
I've tried telling it to update itself (while I'm awake), but I'm guessing it just checks a few date files rather than look at the files it was supposed to download and over-write.
Sigh.
__________________
Between stimulus and response there is a space.
In that space is our power to choose our response.
In our response lies our growth and our freedom.
- Viktor E. Frankl
Posted by Cep on 25-07-2006 at 14:57:
Linux is good with the X windows component, there are some driver issues with more obscure hardware vendors but thats not surprising and not uncommon.
For example when Windows XP was released they completely forgot the hardware market for 120mb Floppy disk drives.
Also having tested the new windows platform known as vista I have a few concerns about it.
For example the complete encryption of harddrive data, to me this sounds dangerous at best for several reasons.
1. You can brick your harddisk if something fouls up in your OS, no reformating this time.
2. Any court or police force that decide they want to read the information on your encrypted drive and are unable to do so can prosecute you for obstruction of justice.
3. DRM will come into greater force meaning that unless software has a DRM certificate validated by MS you will not be able to use it. Goodbye to all the smaller software firms.
4. No more command line. The command line has been one of the most useful tools in a techies line of work, the ability to create a small command routine which does a job the original OS should have been able to do is undeniably useful.
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Posted by CricketBeautiful on 25-07-2006 at 15:21:
Floppy disks? Those things that Mac declared redundent ten years ago? (We laughed at the time, but they were only about 5 years early. Everything really did get connected. And then came the USB thumb drives, which is the network used around our house.)
Don't know if MS wanting to get their fingers in all the software is part of DRM, but I can see MS wanting to do it. (A backup plan in case they can't buy all the competition. TG for the Open Source community.)
No command line? Eeeps. Can't say I use it any more, but hubby still prefers it over Explorer. (Old dog, new tricks. I find Explorer works well enough for what I do. I'd like to have it on the site host, though.)
Please tell me they have another Windows OS in the pipe for professional use. I suspect upgrading to a new Windows would be easier than going Linux or other.
__________________
Between stimulus and response there is a space.
In that space is our power to choose our response.
In our response lies our growth and our freedom.
- Viktor E. Frankl
Posted by Cep on 27-07-2006 at 15:37:
Yes Floppy disks, though the 120MB versions were aimed at being the cheaper equivalent of ZIP drives or backup tapes many vendors were miffed at not being informed of the exclusion.
The only real reason to upgrade to a new windows platform would be to take advantage of 64bit processors and to be honest theres no real reason to do that at the moment, or perhaps in the next 2 years.
I have Windows XP 64 on my AMD 64 box and its not great, granted its just the Windows 2003 kernel with an XP shell for 64 bit processing but I am hardly seeing the advantage at the moment, but then I have no real 64bit programs to run 
Ah well nevermind....
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Posted by meridianday on 27-07-2006 at 21:38:
I support a system that has lots of 16-bit components. The users, unusally for the sort of software we produce, choose their own hardware and windows versions. I got a call a few months ago - one of the users had decided to go future-proof and bought 64-bit windows without checking with anyone. 64-bit windows has no support whatsoever for 16-bit processes. I think he had to go back to his old pc.
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Mallanox : "My mother was Irish and my father was an alien. I was an only child and I dress funny." Posted by Metaliant on 29-07-2006 at 16:04:
Therre's a comedy series on Channel 4, or was and no on E4 called The IT Crowd, which was about the tech support in a big company.
If anybody had problems with their computers, they would call the 2 computer geeks and say there's something wrong with the computer. The geeks would then say "Try pressing the ON switch." Then the person would switch on the computer and found that nothing was wrong.
NOW, that's a good piece of good advice. Switching your computer on. Genius.
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Posted by Cep on 31-07-2006 at 12:21:
I never saw that program, I caught one half way through and its a fairly funny reflection of what an IT team has to put up with hehehe
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Posted by CricketBeautiful on 31-07-2006 at 18:52:
Hubby enjoys that show, gets it over the internet somehow. Suits, I think.
__________________
Between stimulus and response there is a space.
In that space is our power to choose our response.
In our response lies our growth and our freedom.
- Viktor E. Frankl
Posted by Metaliant on 31-07-2006 at 19:26:
Suits?
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Posted by CricketBeautiful on 02-08-2006 at 14:03:
Hubby, a senior programmer, watches a show about IT on the computer.
Sort'a a pattern, I'm thinking.
__________________
Between stimulus and response there is a space.
In that space is our power to choose our response.
In our response lies our growth and our freedom.
- Viktor E. Frankl
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