Interesting story! I'll trade you one. I have a 40 year old daughter, who is a very successful business woman, or trying hard to be. She likes her computer, a Windows PC variety, so long as nothing goes wrong. She doesn't "have time" to fuss around with it. Per her words...
She's a real estate appraiser. Her national organization has made up some software that does most of the calculations automatically. Great software. Quite literally, no-one else makes it. This company has it all locked in... The problem is, it's PC based, and they do NOT make a version for the Mac... Sighhh. So, what happens? She gets several nasty virii. (Of course, right?) The program stops working, and she can't do her business. Does she have a virus program? Uhhh, no. Does she have any backup to all her laboriously gathered records? Uhhh. no. I could beat her over the head, she's so stupid! An IQ of more than 150, in all probability, and she's so IM-practical, it hurts! I tell her to get a Mac, but as I said, the software is not available. Sad. I see this refusal to recognize how it can hurt, all the time. Good for your relatives and friends. To have someone who watches after them... Take care of yourself! -- keith Al Shaikh wrote: > > My fault, not yours keith, next time I will be more clear. > > To the other person that asked, what I do is create a email account in > any system I help (family, friends) and if I spot that email address in > the from or to line usually labeled ([EMAIL PROTECTED]), I > pretty much know they got infected and are now emailing me because of > the way most of them just go through an address book and email everyone > in it. It's not foolproof but does tend to warn me with enough time so I > can go there and fix it. > > Personally, Lately I just install mandrake or some other GUI linux on > their box and let them run that. This only works with complete neophytes > that never want to do anything other than surf the web or check email. > To them the internet is YAHOO. I have it set so it boots and opens yahoo > and that's it. They don't really want anything more than communication > with a few family members that are far away. They have zero admin > access, they can't install or remove anything, they can't get infected > by anything (almost), they can click yes on the worst damn spyware on > the planet and never be bothered. Nothing installs really other than > legit plugins which I preinstall anyway. Just make sure you stick the > computer behind a nat router and have it autoupdate itself every night. > > Just remove all the icons and let them enjoy their now relatively > bulletproof computer. Only problem usually is when they want something > one of their friends has but usually there is an alternative software > (word processing etc) that is basically 100% the same for a novice user. > > The other alternative is tell them to get a mac and run osx. > > Al [...]
