Absent-minded keyboard manufacturers
One of my favorite dumb questions at the Help Desk was one where the user called in a frantic and crazed voice stating that she couldn't find the "Any" key...she claimed the stupid computer was asking her to press the "Any" key and the dumb keyboard manufacturers hadn't thought to put one on it...it took all of my energy to keep from laughing while she was on the phone...I struggled through an explanation of what the PC was actually asking her to do...just had to share that with you guys, and I am sure you have heard of something along those lines...
Face it, There are people who
just should not own computers. We have friends who have owned a computer for 2 yrs. It came with an antivirus program which he disabled because it wanted to update and he thought he was being "attacked." So, he shut it down. I talked him into enabling it.
A month later, it tried to do an auto update and he disabled it again. This time, I sighed deeply and let it pass.
A few months ago, he discovered online gaming and began frequenting these sites. A month ago his computer crashed and it cost him a bundle for the hard drive to be reformatted and everything reinstalled, including the out of date antivirus that would have saved him. The techs did the update, but he has again disabled it.
Now, he's talking about getting firewalled (to prevent viruses, trojans, and other things from infesting his computer). Two years this past April, and he can't figure out how to load software, download software, upload software, keep his antivirus updated, send emails, or do much else but turn the computer on and access and basically navigate the Internet and he wants to firewall his computer.
I won't discuss what my wife and I went through over the phone when he bought a scanner and printer and tried to install the drivers for both. We live in New Mexico, they're in Massachusetts. It was a three hour phone call and he never could figure out how to load the CD's!!!!!
His wife is a thousand times worse, by the way. They're good friends but I'm sorely tempted to tell them to sell the machine and find a nice Royal typewriter. Oh, and besides the firewall, now he's talking about having XP installed because it's supposed to be easier to use, and maybe that would help he and his wife learn quicker.