Hi L.D.,
>Congrats on getting the elders "on line." My mother bought her own
>computer, to use primarily for word processing and games, when she was
>71. Old dogs can learn new tricks. <G>
Better than that... My father-in-law has managed the basics: he's worked
out how to use the system for e-mail and internet (I configured the whole
thing for them and found them an ISP). Their problems are with harder
things: printing, storing mail and files away from %temp%, that sort of
thing. Most arachnoids know this through DOS, but my in-laws don't of
course.
>One thing all of us have groused about all along is a hideous lack of
>docs ... not because they are considered unimportant, but rather because
>this is *still* "beta ware" and function comes before finesse.
Docs are quite good, but they are mostly about installing and configuring
the connection. For anybody used to computers, everything else is
self-explanatory". Of course my family didn't need to configure, so the
docs didn't help them. They made things even more confusing when my father
in law tried to read them.
>But if you wanted a "short list" of basic stuff [you do have them up and
>running ... yes??], I guess it would include:
>
> 1. If something isn't working, just push that little red button on
>your computer [If Reset isn't red, do what I did: permanent marker
>covered by good qualify clear tape] and start over. You won't "lose"
>anything. Just start Arachne again and go back to what you were doing.
Would be a good idea, but... I set the %temp% on a RAM drive! The
problem of course is that if you switch the computer off you lose the
contents of %temp%. One thing they do very often is view pictures e-mailed
by their family. Problem with saving, you switch off the computer...
Picture is gone.
>Charles, I can't say more because I don't know if you remembered to
>change the MIME.CFG file so that the reference to diskettes doesn't
>screw up off-line attempts to get/send mail.
Haven't had that problem. Is that specific to 1.6beta? I install 1.5
s.r.c (didn't want to lumber them with a beta test... use their e-mail
account for a while)
>Also don't know if you've
>made up a nice menu for them, and batch files to get them around to the
>various software.
>If you haven't, and would like, I can send you a sample menu, and some
>of my batch files as examples only.
Done that and it helps. In fact they aren't too perturbed by having to
learn something. It's not knowing where to start, not having the
necessary information that is the problem.
>Should they want to participate on the list, they should be welcomed and
>feel they are. I haven't seen any "name calling" in over 2 years,
>unless it was me telling myself off, or someone else admitting their own
>dumbness.
There's been several welcome messages in reply to my mail. Thanks very
much to everybody for your help.
Charles
