Parents with technology

[Blaze163]

That seems immensely nice of him to do that and immensely ungrateful of you when you already knew he wasn't technically adept. It's one thing not wanting what he spent time downloading but it's obvious he was trying and ridiculing him seems particularly mean...

I appreciate the sentiment, and it was pretty funny, but this is also the same guy who betrayed me and left me for dead, so I have more than enough reasons to mock him. Although I suppose in a way I'm a little grateful for both of them. By watching their endless string of cock-ups for the last 25 years I've learned exactly what NOT to do with my daughter.

 

[allanj87]

Im a parent with technology!! thank god he's only 6 though, plenty of time for me to mold him into a nintendo fanboy

That being said, i get so jealous at the games he gets to play compared to when i was 6 (omg tetris on a green screen!)

Id hate to think that in ten years time hes going to think im outdated with tech which i probably am already

 

[Gahars]

I appreciate the sentiment, and it was pretty funny, but this is also the same guy who betrayed me and left me for dead

To be fair, hasn't everyone at this point?

Anyway, my parents reactions to technology are mixed. My father actually works in the field, so he's pretty on the ball (except for his insistence on big name anti-virus programs, but hey). My mother, on the other hand, is a bit of a mess when it comes to computers, and her phone is a clutter of unused programs and never-checked email accounts. So yeah, that's always fun to deal with.

 

[Ethevion]

My mom only knows how to use the remote control for the TV, anything else is an enigma to her. My dad is a bit better, but still not too good.

 

[FAST6191]

The website of my old high school did this, if you didn't add www you got redirected to some error page. They FINALLY fixed it now, but last year it still was the case. And I had to go there like every day for 6 years to check for last minute schedule changes >_>

Did bookmarks/shortcuts/history not exist?

Blaze163 destroying a laptop and consoles by fiddling with settings? On a normal PC about the worst you can do is either flip the power supply switch to 120V (or 230 if you are somewhere that uses such crazy low voltages) or change the DVD region enough times that you can not change it back (most BIOS stuff is sorted easily enough). To straight up destroy it takes some serious doing.
To destroy a console by options alone is even better, I could do it on a PSP but in most cases it would probably be the fault of the person that hacked it for leaving tools to do that job around.

Myself, mine do OK and the remaining grandparents could be far worse. I suffer from the "just call FAST6191" thing a bit when they could probably puzzle it out for half an hour and get it but the same thing gets visited on them when it comes time to doing things they really know how to sort. That said it saves http://xkcd.com/763/ from happening and http://xkcd.com/627/ is a path anybody can follow.
I do owe a massive debt of thanks to both teamviewer and ultravnc though. A pity the same get used in reverse for phone scams but they seem to have died off in recent months.

 

[emmanu888]

Me and my mom are the only one that follows technology around. My dad and my sister however doesn't want to hear about Blu-Ray yet i got my parents to get a Blu-Ray for the living room. But my sister is like strongly against Blu-Ray... She has an HDTV in her room and she still uses DVD's when i want to buy her a Blu-Ray player but she doesn't want to ! While my mom and me lives in the present. My dad and my sister lives in the past by using a format that could die anytime soon !

 

[FAST6191]

Me and my mom are the only one that follows technology around. My dad and my sister however doesn't want to hear about Blu-Ray yet i got my parents to get a Blu-Ray for the living room. But my sister is like strongly against Blu-Ray... She has an HDTV in her room and she still uses DVD's when i want to buy her a Blu-Ray player but she doesn't want to ! While my mom and me lives in the present. My dad and my sister lives in the past by using a format that could die anytime soon !

I very much doubt DVD is on the way out any time soon (people have been saying "this is the year" for several at this point) and if you set things up properly I doubt most people can tell the difference.

 

[mysticwaterfall]

My mom is tottaly useless and knows how to do absolutely nothing with any tech device, including things like dvd players. My dad actually was big into computers when they were new in the 80s (I remember when I was like 4 he showed me this 128K memory chip he was really proud of that cost a lot) so he is usually not that bad, even though he's a little outdated at times, like his obession with defragging.

My wife can do all the basic things, but after that she loses it. She also doesn't have much patience, so she clicks a million things to get rid of them. Trying to tell her how to do something is a chore because she ll not wanting to wait long enough, get frustrated and give up. She also hates when you tell her to check the basic things that are usually the problem (like, did the DSL line get unplugged?)I remember once I tried talking her through reseting the router. She got annoyed and said she d rather just not have internet. And she didn't for a whole week until I could take the 2 mins to fix it.

 

[KTurbo]

Blaze163 destroying a laptop and consoles by fiddling with settings? On a normal PC about the worst you can do is either...

I usually tell incompetent PC user that no matter how deep they think they go into the computer to actually destroying it, it won't happen. It's not like you'll end up ruining partitions for your HDD or change power settings by mistake. There is always a 'X' in the corner or a cancel button. They should not be afraid of using the computer.

 

[FAST6191]

I usually tell incompetent PC user that no matter how deep they think they go into the computer to actually destroying it, it won't happen. It's not like you'll end up ruining partitions for your HDD or change power settings by mistake. There is always a 'X' in the corner or a cancel button. They should not be afraid of using the computer.

Same here, I am usually quite happy to fix a machine if someone did "break" it by trying to mess around and learn stuff as well.

 

[Harsky]

Biggest rage moment? My mum who is super pc illiterate keeps dropping hints that she wants a laptop for Christmas. So I do a lot of research and found a cheap laptop and spent all day setting it up to be, "parent proof". She turns it on, uses it for a few days and when I ask what happened to it a few weeks later, she says that she just gave it away to her niece.

Now she says she wants another laptop again.

 

[mysticwaterfall]

I would agree with fast in that DVDs aren't going anywhere soon, there going to linger for a while. As shocking as it may be, some people still have old school CRTs.

My wife is one of those people who claims she can't tell the difference, even on tv broadcasts that look obviously better. Admittedly, it varies a lot on the disc side of things. Some blu rays look a lot better then the dvd, others are only marginally better and it doesn't really matter.

 

[FAST6191]

Going slightly off topic a nice article on hi res stuff that some reading this might be interested in
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/06/25/the_future_of_moving_images_the_eyes_have_it/

Of course as I frequently lament most people do not have a TV calibrated anywhere close to properly and even prefer people looking like they are in a scanner darkly and suffering from sunburn.

In other good news though it seems 3d is back on the way out again in some cases
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-23195479

 

[Fishaman P]

Even my grandmother knows how to use computers better than my "techy" father:

1) He thinks a computer in sleep mode can suck internet bandwidth
2) He thinks a sleeping computer that's physically disconnected from the router (and doesn't have Wi-Fi) can suck internet bandwidth
3) He's used Norton Antivirus since it was distributed on floppies
4) He can't figure out how to use tabbed browsing
5) My family all got phones together 2 days ago from US Cellular. My sister got a Galaxy S3, I got a Galaxy S4 ($700!). My dad also got the Galaxy S4 because "out of the only 2 phones they had at the store [lolwut], the S4 had a better antenna."

 

[ComeTurismO]

Actually is sometimes is, not all website/browser combinations will redirect you to the "www." version of the site.

Oh, word. Thanks for teaching me that, learned something new today.
Alright, then..
My mom when she wants to see the whole area, thinking a camera captures the whole area if you capture one bit.

 

[PityOnU]

My dad actually was big into computers when they were new in the 80s (I remember when I was like 4 he showed me this 128K memory chip he was really proud of that cost a lot) so he is usually not that bad, even though he's a little outdated at times, like his obession with defragging.

I miss defragging, man. Nothing beats watching those primary colored blocks dance around the screen, and the squeaky clean feeling you get when your computer only takes 2 minutes to boot now.

Woot!

 

[kupo3000]

Mom is technologically challenged when it comes to PC's even though she wants a tablet.
While Dad is sort of anti-computer for unknown reasons but that doesn't keep him from asking me the lottery number results. He's also fond of complaining if I scroll too "fast" the lottery page.

 

[the_randomizer]

Biggest rage moment? My mum who is super pc illiterate keeps dropping hints that she wants a laptop for Christmas. So I do a lot of research and found a cheap laptop and spent all day setting it up to be, "parent proof". She turns it on, uses it for a few days and when I ask what happened to it a few weeks later, she says that she just gave it away to her niece.

Now she says she wants another laptop again.

Then just tell her "hell no" and guilt her for giving away something you spent money on

 

[Coto]

i know dat feel bro. every member of my family says "don't worry, coto will fix it!".

this takes to fix stuff:
- from few secs and clicks
- few days and just one headache
- few months few headaches

 

[pasc]

Me parents are hippies.
Well, still stuck in the 60's yet me mum goes along with an old Iphone (few games) laptop (few online games) and me dad gets along with computer technology (general interest in keeping the system healthy and trying out different converting software, along with photo editing (very basic) and making video's from old VHS tapes.

Me mum is a disaster when an error pops up and me dad usually fixes it 9/10 times.
Or they both slide it to me and I have to fix it.

Waaaait... how's that hippie ?

My parents are kinda: If I can do it I'll do it, fore everything else, I HAVE MA CHILDREN SUCKA**S.

Seriously.

Well except for my Dad, he's quite savvy himself so thats that.