So I went over yesterday evening. He'd been trying to burn using some Nero software or something. I stepped through the wizard with him and confirmed that it didn't work. All I did was show him how to burn his pictures to CD directly using the Windows Explorer. The burn stuff that comes free, built in with XP, is not at all bad with an acceptable enough wizard. And it worked fine and he was able to save his pictures to CD successfully. So he basically paid for this junk Nero thing that didn't work when XP already has what he needed. He'd had the computer for over two years and until last night had not been able to save to CD successfully.
So that wasn't too bad. It only took about a half hour to get his pictures burned onto CD. Most of that time was spent training him so he could do it himself the next time when I wasn't around.
All done right? Not quite. He mentioned that his computer was starting slower and slower and he was getting these annoying pop ups. Could I look at that too? Hmmm. So anyway it was not a good scene.
- his IE start page had been changed on him to some Oemji crap
- there was some garbage IE "search" toolbar
- he was at XP SP1. He wasn't receiving automatic updates
- his firewall was not turned on
- he was getting billed every month on his credit card from classmates.com and wasn't able to cancel it
- he was getting these popups every few minutes for some junk or other
From there I was able to squash Oemji (there was all kinds of it), fix his IE start page, get rid of the unwanted junk toolbar, squash the periodic popups, stop the scam "spy scan" program that ran at startup. Then I put on the Google toolbar - he'd had all kinds of problems with popups in IE. I also put him on windows automatic update (not sure how it got turned off), so hopefully he'll get SP2 shortly, and turned on his firewall.
For the classmates.com thing I told him to just call his credit card company and cancel the preauthorization with them. Don't bother trying to figure out how to cancel with classmates.
So all this extra stuff took a couple of more hours, not the most enjoyable way to spend an evening. Anyway he's kind of handy so I'll have a favor to call him for where I can use some of his skill in the physical world in exchange for the big electronic favor I did him.
I strongly hinted to him that he should switch to Firefox. I've been using Firefox for over two years and during that time my start page has never been changed on me, no unwanted toolbars have ever appeared, and there's never been a popup. I can only hope he took the hint.
He showed me the bill of sale from the computer. It was from a prominent local dealer, the ones who advertise on the radio all the time. I was highly unimpressed by what I saw. They charged him over $2000 for a mediocre system. It was basically a white box clone, not tier one. Also I noticed his CD player was an HP. I doubt it was brand new since the dealer could surely have bought a clone CD player cheaper - does HP even sell CD/R direct to small shop vendors? So it was very likely a used player cannibablized off some other HP system.
Still one more thing. At one point he took his PC back to the dealer about the inability to write his pictures to CD using Nero. The dealer gave him some mumbo jumbo tech talk he didn't understand, charged him $200, and didn't even fix it. The only difference before and after taking it in for "repair" was that he was out the $200.
I wonder what would happen with my neighbour if he had a leaky faucet, then called a professional plumber to come over to fix it. I doubt he'd pay that plumber $200 if he left his house without actually fixing the faucet. Yet that's just what he did with his PC.
It's a shame because for what he paid he could have had a Mac or a nice Dell workstation. Instead he got a white box clone that for two years didn't even write his pictures to CD, which is what he bought it for. I felt a bid bad for him for what he got for what he spent. Maybe if they didn't have so many radio ads their prices could come down some.
I'm pretty sure that most computer users are around his skill level. I'm also pretty sure a person who has only basic tech skills and knows how to use Google could make an OK living doing what I did, coming into people's houses and fixing IE start pages. Not that I would want to do that for money, no thanks.
The problem with doing it for money would be that you would go in and fix all the stuff, then two months later the user would be calling you saying that their IE start page has been changed again, the popups are back, and they're getting redirected off Google. Except when they call you back they'll say it's your fault and want you to come and fix it again, this time for free. So no, I'll stick with professional programming.
One thing I found interesting was my neighbour could not understand the difference between the Google start page and the IE address bar. He couldn't understand what the address bar was for or how it was different than typing something into Google. I tried to explain that the address bar will go straight to the site you want. But he just wasn't grasping it, I guess it is a subtle thing to many users. When I started his IE last night, the address bar wasn't even turned on.
What he likes to do is use Google as his IE start page. From Google he just types what he wants, then clicks the first link in the results. So if he wanted to go to Ebay, he would type ebay.com in Google, then use that to get to Ebay.
I once read that people go to Google, then type amazon.com and click through from there to Amazon. A guy from Google said he couldn't understand why people do that. I've now explained here why. People either have their address bar in IE turned off or pushed to the right, or don't know what the address bar is or how to use it. So they use trusty Google as their default IE start page, then type in where they want to go then click through from the Google results page. I can't imagine how much money Google must be making off selling that top link in the results. I can tell you that probably most users don't realize it's a sponsored link.
No comments:
Post a Comment