>> machine at home that they do at work for obvious reasons. (Yes I know
>> that is technically a choice, but it wouldn't be a good choice to use
>> totally different OS's and applications at work and home in most cases)
> Actually, it would be better to have a variety. Makes viruses kind of
> hard to propagate, doesn't it?
Probably, but I wouldn't make my choice of OS at home based on that. :-)
> I make my living off of Unix, not Windows. My training and experience on
> Windows is self-taught, 100%. I've not read any of the books nor have I
> read the manuals. Most of my formal training and experience is on the
> Unix (and variants) platform.
I would *guess*, that most of what you know about Unix too, you learned
through experience, not though formal training.
> I expect people to have the same basic understanding of Windows I do. In
> fact, maybe more so since supposedly the dummies series of books is so damned
> popular. While my experience and knowledge may be vast, I do not think that
> people need even a fraction of it to use computers in a sensible manner. They
> just need some common sense, which, despite its name, isn't very common.
I would tend to disagree. If you live, eat, and breath computers all day,
every day like some of us do, it becomes easy at some point to
instinctively understand things and know what's going on behind the scenes.
Even across computer types and OS's. It's also easy to forget how foreign
the behind-the-scenes stuff is to the general user, especially when it
changes so much so fast.
> I'd love it if people would attempt to understand what they are reading
> instead of pull a hamster and just call tech support when the smallest thing
> breaks.
Don't get me wrong, I actually agree with you totally about those users
(and software designers for that matter) that seem to think software should
read their minds and be so intuitive that it should give them exactly what
they want all the time even if they've never used it before. For instance,
we recently designed a search engine for a project that, at first, everyone
complained that they seemed to be missing too many hits because they could
find documents on their own that had what they believed should be hits. So,
we re-configured the way they wanted, to find synonyms, misspellings, etc.
Now... you guessed it, they complain because they have to wade through so
many hits. They want only the hits that they can use right then and they
and want the software to weed out the rest, but how in the &*#^ is the
software supposed to know?
But, there will always be new users, and users that don't use the computer
enough to avoid making mistakes, and there will always be LOTS of them. So
while it would be nice if they would all have to get a license to drive a
computer first, it ain't gonna happen. So, we try to modify and enhance
software, not necessarily to coddle these people, but maybe to make life
easier for those of us who have to do the support. If we gets calls about
something enough times, we figure we'd get less calls if we make a change
(if it makes sense). Now I guess M$ has tried to do this but they seem to
have made a mess when they did it. That doesn't mean that everyone has to
make a mess when they do it though. Those developers that finally do it the
right way... maybe by having good judgement and not trying to put in
everything including the kitchen sink, but, instead, putting in the things
that make the most sense... are the ones that have the best software.
Kevin
--------
Using The Bat! 1.36
Under Windows NT4.0 Build 1381 Service Pack 3
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