Re: Microsoft's Martin Taylor: A Desperate Man

Tech-Archive recommends: Repair Windows Errors & Optimize Windows Performance

From: The Lurking Horror (notarealemailaddress_at_spamtrap.com)
Date: 05/19/04 

Date: Wed, 19 May 2004 17:54:21 GMT

On Wed, 19 May 2004 17:51:56 GMT, Philip Callan wrote:

> The Lurking Horror wrote:
>> On Wed, 19 May 2004 16:40:10 GMT, Philip Callan wrote:
>>
>>>People are not stupid, everyone can /learn/, but Microsoft doesnt want
>>>them too. People knew /MORE/ about the computers they ran before
>>>Windows95 hit the streets, since then its been a gradual decline in
>>>average proficiency.
>>
>>
>> Of course, you're omitting the fact that there's a hell of a lot more
>> people now using computers - a lot of which would never have dreamed of
>> touching them before.
>>
>> You obviously haven't met some of the people I have. People who were scared
>> of breaking the computer. People who couldn't figure out how to send an
>> email by themselves. People who just didn't *get* technology.
>>
>> There are plenty of these people. They are your dentist, your aunt, your
>> mother. They are your postman, your boss, your lover. They are everywhere -
>> and they outnumber us.
>
> And for people that have never touched a computer before, they have no
> Window-ism's if you will, so they are virgin ground, they know of a
> computer as an appliance, to get email or go on the web, if they bought
> a linux pre-load, or had a friend build them a computer, and install
> linux, the learning curve would be a little shorter, since they dont
> have to un-learn behaviors.
>
> And if I felt that my client was 'scared of breaking it' I /most/
> assuredly would not install Windows, because unlike in linux, a
> 'regular' user account /can/ kill windows.
>
> If they are afraid of breaking their computer, maybe it's because of all
> the horror stories they heard from their friends/family about their
> horrible windows machine that crashes all the time, or 'freezes' etc etc
>
> They outnumber us, but if we give them an OS that they don't have to be
> afraid of, and encourage them to learn it, pretty soon they are far more
> proficient than Windows would have made them, and they are capable of
> helping/teaching someone else.

Sorry, you just lost your audience right there. Most people don't want to
learn it, help others learn it, or teach others how to use it. They just
want their email. They want to surf the web. That's it.

> As for not meeting some of the people you have, I'm pretty sure I
> haven't met /any/ of the people you have, but I've met many classes of
> computer user over the years, from attempting to teach basic computers
> to immigrants taking ESL with a non-profit, to re-networking my church,
> and many years of technical work, friends family and word of mouth.
>
> I've only had one client tell me explicity that he didnt want to know a
> 'damn thing about that machine' just to put it in the room where the
> 'damn broken one' was, and to make sure their data made it across.

This is the norm. 

-- 
No one ever got fired for blaming Microsoft.

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