While assuming is never a good thing (how often have you heard "Assume makes an ass-out-of-u-and-me"?), there are certain things I can safely assume the PCMech audience knows without having to overly explain it. For example, if I say "USB device", you know that’s a piece of hardware that plugs into a USB port, and furthermore you know what a USB port actually is.
You, being the helpful soul that you are, are more that happy to help people close to you when they seek out computer help. However you may find your good intentions for naught because you assumed they knew certain things when in fact they don’t. Remember, you’re the "computer person" and they’re not.
Here are 5 of the most-often made assumptions when geeks are trying to give computer help to others.
1. That the user understands the difference between locally-installed software and internet apps
As far as the user is concerned, software is a thing that’s installed from physical media (as in a CD or DVD) and literally does not understand – nor wants to understand – that software is software no matter where it comes from.
What the user does understand however is that if it comes from the internet, it’s an "app", and if installed from physical media, it’s "software". Strange but true.
2. That the user knows what a web browser actually is
To a non-computer person, the browser is "internet". For a good swath of people out there, if you said, "Launch your web browser", they’d have absolutely no clue what you’re talking about. But if you said, "Start your internet", that magically makes sense to them, even though it literally makes no sense at all.
3. That the user knows of software alternatives
When a computer geek wants alternative software to get stuff done, he or she will go to a place like www.alternativeTo.net and find it.
End users know nothing except what they’re given, and are completely paranoid about installing anything different like Firefox or Chrome. You could tell them a million times over not to use IE, but they won’t do it.
The only time this doesn’t apply is when their equally-computer-clueless friends recommend bad software to them, which of course they’ll install because in their minds they can trust an inept friend more than a computer tech that actually knows what he or she is doing.
4. That the user knows anything aside from Google or MSN for searching
Say Bing, DuckDuckGo, Blekko, or Scroogle to a user and you’ll get the deer-in-the-headlights look. Don’t bother recommending any of these because the user won’t use it. Ever. All they know is either Google or the MSN home page for searching and that’s it.
5. That the user actually knows how to search on Google
Last, but definitely not least, this is by far the biggest assumption geeks make about non-computer people.
Users get a brain fart the size of a nuclear explosion if you dare ask them to search for anything about anything, and instantly get insulted if you say just Google it. In their minds, they’re thinking, "WELL, IF I KNEW WHAT TO SEARCH FOR I WOULDN’T BE ASKING YOU, SMARTASS!" Heck, they might even tell you that outright.
I don’t advise ever uttering the two words "Google it" if the goal was to help. You’re better off just emailing a link they can click to go to wherever they’re supposed to go.
Just imagine if you tried to teach them search operators. Oh, the horror.
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I would add acronym usage. Always define what they mean in a sentence first before using them!
True, so true about the ignorance of the majority of PC users: to most its just a box somewhere that gets them to the internet and loads up their mp3 players. RAM is also a male sheep and an HDD might as well be a Department of Defense acronym. Utilities are part of the ‘electric bill’ paid every month and don’t seem to resolve any problems on a computer.
FDRG
Nice reminder Rich, we often forget that many users and particularly small business owners often use the net under duress.
Google Places – “that map thingy how does that work?”
Local Search- “Isn’t that just alphabetical?”
Two Monitors? ”She (secretary/receptionist) only has one computer”
Heard many of these responses when talking to small business people.
I think a bigger problem are the professional geeks who think they know it all, but know nothing. One of my neighbours has had various ‘experts’ in who have failed to get them to use an external back up, left the router on WEP, and despite complaints about a v slow laptop failed to spot it only had .5GB.
One even told me that the freeware from AVG and Avast etc were vastly inferior to paid for stuff. BS!!
Other geeks that tick me off are those that start by telling you to open, say, Device Manager. If I’d have known where it was I would probably have got there already. Why not start at a basic point like Control Panel?
I hope you know what you are talking about because writing it isn’t your strong suit. Check your tenses…J
Thanks.
‘Google it’ has become kind of a backhanded epithet. Try to avoid it.
It’s uttered most when the Tech person is annoyed at being asked what they consider a ‘Stupid’ question for something they consider uninteresting or simplistic– especially amoungst the younger set.
Then they make the mistake of snapping ‘Google it’ when their BOSS asks them a simple question- and then the Fire gets turned UP.
And beware of snapping it to a Non-technical friend– the day may come when you need something of THEIR expertise that THEY may consider ‘Simple’. . .and contrary to common knowledge–everything is NOT available via Google, which is why you have to ask what may seem like a ‘stupid’ question to a Real Live Person.
And Trust me– THEY WILL remember your ‘Google it’. . .It has the same snarky undertone of ‘What-evah’
sometimes comments from experts are fairly sardonic if not insulting. people use computers only as part of their work, not as their work so why not just turn tables and find out how absolutely stupid a computer expert might be about the person’s work or profession. Can you sing opera? or is opera just a damn browser? Sometimes the arrogance is really off-setting and many times I have to be thankful that I don’t deal with such computer experts because I really wouldn’t want to pay them.
I can think of many times when I paid a tech for incompetence and spent extra weeks waiting for my computer to return as a result of it. Sometimes rather than going and reading instruction on installing a device, they assume they know everything and screw up, so I’ve also paid for 10hours of work for a techie to screw up simply because he could not go to manufacturer’s page to find instruction on instalment. The device needed particular software to instal only obtainable through the manufacturer. But I paid for the wasted time and took his frustration when things didn’t go as expected.
I’ve also dragged home a computer only to find that the disks and video cards were not properly secured or that they didn’t test the motherboard to see if the sound card was any good. So we unTechies also know about the incompetence of computer experts who blast us for our stupidity.
So I don’t change disks in my computer and there’s good reason for it. So I can’t find out why Java doesn’t instal but neither have three people who were officially computer techies by trade and training.
After a while, stop and think about who you’re servicing and reverse the situation. So maybe the person only knows IE. I know people over on G+ who basically know nothing but Chrome which I despise. I don’t know what to do with IE because its so ugly I never bothered to investigate it. I kept 6 until a couple months ago, but why not. If I don’t use it for anything but MS updates, then why should I waste the extra time adding new stuff I don’t want?
The problem is your perspective on clientele, not the clients. Change shoes and you can’t walk in them. The other problem is that you are bashing a small group of people because you see only a small population of computer users and probably even smaller percentage because its very hard to deal with an arrogant computer expert.
I can comprehend why people assume software comes on disk and make the false identification because for many people that was their introduction to computers. It’s like saying calling a table-tennis ball a ping-pong ball, absolutely incorrect, but majority of people do it. The sport is not ping-pong at all, but table-tennis, but few people call it that.
So I can comprehend that something on a disk is software because it goes back in history to floppy disks or earlier whereas down;pads are called aps… but its not exactly something to snigger about and reflects a bit of arrogance or bad attitude.
To me G+ is horrible bad software, but I am sure somebody else will correct me, but I think it has to be one of the worst designed system, platform, template, program I’ve ever seen and very very hard for anyone with physical disabilities to manipulate with all the vanishing pull down menus, hidden tricks and uber-cleverness and absolute chaos and disorganized structure.
and the absolutely undeniably disagreeable stealth addition of https with linkage across all googly things…
So I didn’t know Scroogle or Blekko, but on other hand, you don’t know biolib or taxonomical search engines either. It’s a raspberry to me. No matter what you think you know, there’s always an infinity of what you really don’t know. So to me a computer is an idiot box, it’s true, but because it has no brains and does nothing unless I instruct it what to do and even then, a lot of times it doesn’t do much at all.
… i’m pretty sure you made something funny, not funny. lighten up.
Insults are always funnier when you are not the one being insulted. Grow up.
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If you want to confuse a newbee then start speaking in acronyms. There must be at least a thousand acronyms.
http://www.acronyms.ch/files/Acronyms.A4.Duplex.pdf
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