Old People and Computers

So this is a little unrelated compared to most of my posts, but I think it is a good topic nonetheless. Old people. I understand why they don't know much about computers, they were introduced once they were already retired. Unlike my generation where we were plopped down at the computer as soon as we showed we were not going to slime all over the keyboard (and sometimes before) Some of these older folks, which by this I mean over 70 have so much trouble with things I think are as easy as picking my nose. I first experienced the extreme frustration of trying to teach my grandma how to turn on her computer and even open solitaire this summer. The computer is so foreign to them you might as well plop a baby alien in front of them and tell them to take care of it. Should we be putting more effort into teaching them? No, I don't think so. In some cases it is a lost cause.

For example, my Great Uncle. I was impressed with how quickly he caught on to downloading pictures from his camera and then putting them in an email. Until he called me a week later once I had returned to my home six hours away and wanted me to try to explain by phone. The process is already like pulling toenails, on the phone it would be impossible. So once I returned I showed him again, and then realized that he didn't even have his email set up through outlook. So I showed him how to do it through his webmail, and he got rather frustrated in the process. This is not so bad, but then the disk drive started humming. It was loud as disk drives can sometimes be, and he was completely irritated with the noise. So from the other room I hear him hitting the computer, and I tried to yell at him to stop. Alas he is hard of hearing, and continued bashing at his computer. I finally walked into the room and he still didn't really hear me, so I sat down and pushed the eject button which he didn't seem to notice me doing. He then kicked the cd that was in the disk drive and then shoved the tray back in when he saw it was out, and then kicked it a few more times. Not only was his computer in danger, my fingers were in danger as well. I just decided to leave since now the rattling was gone and he was no longer abusing it.

I picked up the disc, and realized it was Vista 32 bit. It had probably been in his computer since he had purchased the operating system and the computer.