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"How to help someone use a computer.", a guide from 1996 (pages.gseis.ucla.edu)

submitted 9 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

36 comments fedilink hide all child comments

A friend shared a post from someone else that was talking about this article. I've quoted the text from that post below:

This is a 1996 guide on how to help someone use a computer. It's strikingly resonant with 'how to be a parent', or really 'how to help anyone with anything'. A nice example of "the universal within the particular"

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[–] [email protected] 14 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (9 children)

I'm finding it difficult to help at work as I stopped using Windows years ago.

The search function fails to find basic menus or programs, I'd have an easier time using Windows XP. I'm sure part of it is I'm forgetting things and not up to date with changes but when typing "printer" does not give a useful result either it's as shit as I hear it is out of the box from M$ or it has been crippled by work's OEM.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (2 children)

I get very annoyed when I'm looking for something that should be listed, but instead it tries to search for it in Edge (or now copilot).

I have never wanted to use the device search as a way to search the web.

edit: There's a recent question about it, and the solution was to edit the registry with a new value. That is not something I would feel comfortable walking someone through:

https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/all/how-to-disable-search-the-web-completley-in/ea22410a-3031-487f-b5de-5a0113d656c5

[–] [email protected] 13 points 9 months ago (1 children)

I love that when in Linux a solution suggest to write into the terminal a verb and a noun, some people panic, get angry, lashes out, declares Linux unfriendly to users, etc. But somehow on Windows it was normalized that some stuff requires editing the registry, an arcane and ancient binary tree mess were stuff can only be found by recalling cryptic runes and nonsensical strings of numbers and letters, inconsistent naming, repetitive nomenclature with an eccentric GUI. And everyone just accepts that as a perfectly normal suggestion in detriment to Linux's terminal.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 9 months ago

People lashing out about Linux terminal commands and people editing their own Windows registry entries are not the same people, lmao

A regular Windows user being instructed to enter the registry would have a stroke and shit their pants when opening regedit, and those users would never have found the tech support thread instructing them to change a registry key in the first place. Someone who already knows about but is uncomfortable editing reg keys may fall into the group you're describing, but they would probably have an identical discomfort about regedit or about unknown terminal commands. Someone who is comfortable editing reg keys already has a Linux install on their home machine.

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