Mandrake disappointment 1754
Ok, let's grant you that you knew that there were more than four distros... it is questionable, but let's drop that and just grant it to you. Your next lesson - one can not take...
I find that many people who work with their hands find computers challenging. I think they are natively good at - or become good at - manipulating and working with items in the physical world. When you start trying to show them a metaphor where a folder opens to a window (wow - for a carpenter that is just *wrong*!) and other rather abstract ideas, it becomes tough for many.
On Fri, 11 Mar 2005 12:31:44 -0700, Snit That's likely because it's a page comparing paid versions. Download editions...
There are some who tend to do well in both "worlds", including myself - though I am far from an excellent carpenter. Then again, put me in a foreign language clbutt - or dance or music - and I am lost. :)
Many in CSMA simply can not - and I suspect the doubt will continue into COLA. When I say consistent dialogs are important, I am not just being nit-picky. For this group that *is* important. In order to help reduce the fear of the computer, they need early successes. By learning one program and then being able to go to another and find they already know how to save print - two huge things for a beginning user - they gain a lot of confidence.
Several in CSMA have jumped on me when I have described students who could not boot a computer because of a floppy in the drive or had similar problems. They just are not able to understand what it is like to be so new... and why should they, few people deal with such new users every day as I do.
I have pointed to many such incidents: * confusion caused by the "yes" and "no" style buttons in XP * windowing oddities and inconsistencies * frustration fear from malware
Etc. In each case the Mac handled the situation better than did XP... I am hoping to find a flavor of Linux that handles it about as well as does OS X (or better, of course). Many in CSMA, though, simply could not believe someone would be that inexperienced... it is amazing how much folks take for granted.
OS X is designed to almost never need the contextual menu... though there are times it certainly comes in handy. If you merely can click and double click you can get by just fine. That is a lot less true of XP... I do not know enough of Linux to say (and it likely differs on different systems).
My sympathies... Something others seem to have a challenge with. :) Yeah... I had a customer call me and read me the error message... I told him it was likely a floppy in the...
Exactly... and for many older folks it is just a huge, huge hill to climb.
For many users XP is just impossible to use - if nothing else the malware and the fear of malware cripples the experience. I do point...
Would like to see that....
Years ago I was at a psychology convention and saw a study called "Of Mice and Menus" where they compared different menu-ing methods for computers. It won the best breastled study award. :)
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