What It's Like Watching a Computer Illiterate

Its true! Its all true! This and people that type 10 words per minute frustrate me to no end!

I was surprised to find out that fresh college graduates can't use Excel. They know a lot about PowerPoint though.

People know how to post on Facebook via cell phone but they couldn't use a computer to save their life.

Well, look at the people in the forums who ask a question that a few minutes with google or any other search engine could answer easily.

ZOMG so true, I do IT for a living and it is the same thing every time, click to enter user name... grab mouse to click the password box, grab the mouse again to click enter.

That girl in the pic has some serious man hands.

Now that you've mentioned it...

while it may be true that quite a bit of the population may not be as computer saavy as tom's readers the very same people might look at us techies in the same way. the older generations often times are more saavy when it comes to the basics.

how many of the tech's can honestly say you are as fluent in mechanical skills as either someone born in the 60's or the auto mechanic down the street? We all have our own little areas of expertise. of course some people just dont seem to get anything at all.

Just something to think on.

Very very true, which is why I am taking multiple Auto Shop and Metal shop classes on top of my engineering classes.

I would much rather be a jack of all trades and master of none than a specialist in a field that is extremely narrow in scope.

her hand looks un porportionally large because its much closer to the camera than her head. its also possible a small wide angle lense was used to take this photo further accentuating the fore ground.

lastly image stabalization in some cameras can sometimes slightly increase the size of moving objects in an attempt to keep the image solid and clear.

if you look at her right hand, albeit partially covered by her hair, its normal sized.

what saddens me is that alot of people like that actually work in IT depts.
the other day, my manager wanted to know how to password protect some excel file, so she called in some IT dude.. at first i didn't know what exactly she wanted, i found out only later what she wanted, and by then it was too late for me to show them how (2 IT dudes + my manager).. and it was exactly like in that video, me putting on my best poker face, and trying not to lol or kill them.. in the end, after a full microsoft office help + google combo, they got it down..
meh.. sometimes i wonder why am i even on this planet...

and man legs too

If that's how an IT literate person feels trying to assist someone who is not, maybe they are in the wrong profession.

Regardless of how "good" the IT person may be, I'm sure there are things he/she are illiterate at as well.

This is less and less common, thankfully.

Having worked with users in a wide variety of environments I can tell you from personal experience most all if not all IT workers feel this way. Most of us hide a burning need to scream at incompetence behind a friendly facade of helpfulness. Unlike mechanics and appliance service members that can bury themselves in the machine they are working with, IT staff usually have to work right with users, many of whom feel they should be using the mouse and typing while you direct them. Its nice that users wish to help (many wish to "learn"), but time is money and when it takes someone 10 mins to type in e-mail sever information it drives me crazy that I can't just snatch the keyboard from them and have the e-mail setup 30 seconds later. That being said I've never yelled at or belittled a user; I've really wanted to but like many others in my field I wait patently as users hunt and peck their way through.

I always love that term... Better than the term "all-rounder", since I'm not round at all...

Ummm.. Did I just made a bad joke?

I get paid too much to waste my time doing this for people now a day. Besides I am not an IT person.

Asked the programmer to restart the server. He did so by pressing the reset button on the server.

Apparently you don't get paid too much to post comments on TH.

Most IT or any one in an office setting for the matter - can not even change the oil in their cars. So, I could see were their mechanic would have similar comments. Along with more work than could possibly be done in a day.

Yeah, what a fool! I get paid 24/7 as long as I'm doing my job! I lost $1.43 by taking the time to post this comment.

Someone just "youtube" some call-center calls.

There are some sickening funny stories.

Cheers!

well my pinkies are useless, i cant get them to move right to save my life, i also have crappy spelling, so that hampers it too, but i can advrage 40 words a minute not looking at the keyboard (my hand never touches it for more than a split second my hands hover over it, no home row for me) and about 80-120 words a minute looking at it, but spelling hampers my ability to type fast. its all about knowing the best method for you.



excel is a powerfull tool, and im sure you dont know all about it either, i know enough for any employment opertunities though.



i rage more about this in my head than anything else.



my most recent question, a low resource alturnative to firefox, i can google it, but i want people to tell me what they actualy use, its helpfull to get that reassurance that only someone saying "i used (product) and can vouch for it"


i use the keyboard 1 handed most of the time, leaned WAY back, so using the mouse is actualy easier than stretching for those keys.




a computer is a basic thing now, im not asking people be able to diagnose what is throwing a bsod here, im asking that they know how to use a web browser, print, and install an application without asking me EVERY TIME

and, i took a shop class in school, i am capable of more precise work out of the 100 people who took that class, and i also worked faster, but if you ask me the name of anything im doing, i cant tell you, i just know how to do it. im a jack of all trades, master of none.



im not in it, its home friends, and in highschool i was more knolagable than the person they had for it, so i got called around for computer stuff more often than they did, they just handled the server almost exclusively. its always the same problem over and over again. and its something EVERYONE should know, its not complex things that ever got asked of me.

As an electronic engineer with extensive self-taught knowledge in computer engineering and programming, I can tell you it is equally infuriating for a literate user like myself to be reliant (forced by management) on IT staff.
IT staff with a couple Microsoft courses under their belts, some basic ability to follow only simple guides of network and administration, with no real understanding of underlying architecture and certainly no troubleshooting ability to tackle any problems they haven't seen before. (I'm not saying they're all like this, but certainly a good chunk of them, especially the new hires)

In the 80's and early 90's when the average user was completely illiterate, managment was scared of computers and incrementally agreed to pay skilled IT staff more and more money. Powerful service unions grabbed higher and higer salaries for this staff.
Now as more and more users are self taught computer experts, and as many IT departments are being flooded with morons with no skills besides what they've been taught in a poorly developed college IT programs, we're seeing the IT departments costing more than they're worth. They've negotiated themselves such a high salary that employers can't afford to hire enough of them to handle the workloads. Just a case of unions shooting themselves in the foot by making their members too expensive.

That's because it's not a girl.

Who actually thinks that is a girl is the real question... and why should that matter?

"She's got man hands..."

- Seinfeld

I'm surprised no one has claimed to have replaced a broken CD drive because the dumb user thought it was a cup holder. I'm so very thankful I don't work in IT anymore; the rest of the staff were so unpleasant.

Due to the camera's depth of field.

I have been teaching computer science and multimedia for over 20 years. It frustrates me to no end working with people who just don't get it, despite being shown how to do something a half dozen times. I can tolerate slow typing and think that typing should be taught to all students while in elementary or middle school, but the psychological block many have when it comes to computers is what is alarming given our technology driven economy.

The inability to problem solve, think critically, and just go blank in front of a computer never ceases to amaze me. I have seen people with PhD's who are just as technologically ignorant as some kids. Don't know if it is due to techno-phobia resulting from working with machines in general or what? Then you see some of these web sites that are so user unfriendly and then the end-user ignorance really shows itself.

Working as a tech support rep I learned what people hear when you tell them to do something:

"Press 'XXXX' button" = "Mash repeatedly and cry 'It doesn't work!'"
"Close Internet Explorer" = "Shut down the computer"
"Put this address in the address bar" = "Put this in the Google/Bing/Yahoo search bar"
"Press the 'Start' button" = "Press the power button"
"Firefox" = "Foxfire"

They also like to blame their ISP for wireless router signal issues, their computer not turning on, their computer running slow (not just the browser), their OS login password not working, Internet Explorer crashing, Facebook/Myspace/Yahoo being down, and settings on their computer changing.

People also try to get their ISP to provide free PC repair and virus removal because they know if they go to the manufacturer or a storefront they're going to be charged. Then they bitch about it if we refer them to the manufacturer of the product they are trying to get support for saying "Well they're gonna charge me 80 dollars!" Guess what, the only free tech support you get nowadays is from your ISP, good luck even trying to find the damn phone number to your manufacturer (it's usually buried underneath layers of menus because they try to force you to use their FAQ's, which is pointless if the PC in question can't get online or doesn't work).

Whenever an old man/lady calls and says "My family told me to get a computer" I immediately think "Shoot that family member". Now not all of them are horrible, just the majority.

And if you haven't figured it out by now, yes I work for a cable ISP.

Maybe, but in order to be better than average you typically have to specialize not to run out of time trying to chase too many goals.