News Iain Duncan Smith: Make computers easier to use

After reading all these hateful remarks about the elderly and their difficulties in using modern technology, there is one bright spot about the whole matter that you'll probably enjoy.
They'll all be dead soon and you won't have to waste your precious time worrying with them and their incessant incomprehension of technology that you grew up with. After they die off you can get back to growing old yourself, and thinking what you'll do when you're in the position that they're in now.
You know the old sayings. What goes around comes around. You reap what you sow. Etc.,etc...
And one little ditty that I've remembered since the day I wrote it:
In my "I"
the World's a Sty.
Life's a Bitch,
and then you Die.
Words to remember. Until you all get Alzheimers, of course.

 

As a civil servant in the department he's head of, I'd say I'd like him to take a look at some of the basic i.t. infrastructure the majority of people under him use daily before making any comments that aren't within his remit anyway. Bet he isn't doing his work on an 8 year-odd old p4 piece of rubbish that struggles to handle being turned on in the morning.

 

In a small number of cases its the ability to learn, not the attitude to learn that's the problem. My gran's in her early 80s and can't text on her non colour Nokia, constantly forgets about the existence of the free view channels she has and the other day asked my mum how to play a cassette tape on the dvd player :/ yet she is forever asking me to take her down to the library and show her how to redeem a token on line from the daily mail for spa treatment or whatever. I've done this 3 or 4 times and and every time its like the first time she's ever held a mouse. On top of that she cant afford a BT land line, let alone broadband!

 

agree, can't say i'm some fancy tech support guy but i'm the go-to of all my relatives and i work in a bar with 90% old plumber/sparky/bricklayer/welder gits who wouldn't know the internet if it bit them on the arse.

internet is confusing for older generations and the under 30's really don't take that into account (plus there is enough of that group that somehow remain clueless) - think about it, anyone under 40 might have trained for it but anyone under 20 has grown up with fast weebz and universal standards so take it for granted - that leaves a massive section of the populace for whom internet and computers were either optional learning a school (and obsolete now) or more likely non existant.

companies (in my experience) make it far too hard for the non-tech-savvy, i recently helped a relative with a home network issue, when they rang the provider (talktalk) they were bombarded with jargon and told conflicting advice they didn't understand that helped not one bit, they didn't want to complain even though they get very sporadic 'net access. i have helped them in this case but i'm sure there are many others where the standard procedure is to upsell a horribly overpriced £60 netgear router that didn't fix the problem (as was suggested by ISP here) or various £50 'installation' packages.

we need a regulated ISP with dedicated support and installation for the tech-illiterate, to get them set up fuss free and without extra costs that would annoy/confuse them and most likely some preferred government PC supplier that can recommend a good workhorse PC with standard drivers/components and remote access or a no-fuss support package. i know it seems like a lot of effort to get people set up but you have no idea how valuable access to the world is to an old person, especially one who is home-bound, and access to internet services for those who didn't grow up with it could surely be a quality of life improvement for them and a saving on council calls, medical calls, tech calls and general paper correspondance.

 

That's what I thought too. People can say whatever they want about iProducts, but they are very simple to use. No firewalls, virus checkers, defrags, adaware, etc, and very little jargon. Just a bunch of nice little buttons that do stuff and anyone can use easily.

I think Windows based PC's are not too hard to learn though too. The problem with the older people I know, is that they don't use them enough. I can show them to use a PC and they can find their way around. But then they don't use it for 8 months, and forget everything. I think most of them just don't really need the internet, they can still get by using the phone book, yellow pages, and calling places to book tickets or whatever. If they needed to use it more than that, I would get them in iPad though.

I think computers are doing just fine. They get better with each new version of Windows, and I think Windows deserves more credit. It might not be as simple to use as iOS, but it FAR more powerful so that is to be expected. iOS is basically just a simple desktop and browser, it doesn't let you do even half the stuff you can do in Windows. So I think Windows is pretty good, especially 7, and no doubt 8 will be even nicer.

I would say that the biggest problem facing British pensioners is that they get royally shafted by those ****ing **** bags at BT. I think most older people have not heard of most of the ISP's we can get, so BT is typical choice, and it's just so crap. It's totally over priced, totally under performs, and they just lie to people. I know some guy who "got the internet" from BT. They put a wireless router in one of his rooms, and he couldn't get a signal in his living room. He asked them if anything could be done, and they charged him to fit a new line in the living room and moved the router to that room, and now he can't get a signal in the previous room. Had they have just given a better wireless router in the first place, it would cover his whole house. And I can imagine this is nothing compared to some stuff they get away with, not doubt at the expense of our country's OAP's

 

Like a lot of people, I agree that it's all attitude. I work with a married couple, both in their mid-50s. He's super laid-back and willing to learn things that make his job easier. I've shown him things that to me aren't complicated - mapping drives and printers, telneting into the business server, etc., and he takes it in stride and gets it down after a time or two. His wife is beyond easily frustrated, and gets all in a tizzy when she can't do something, insists she doesn't know how, until I point out that yes, she does, and I've already shown her how to do it six times. Then it's "OK, but can you just come over and do it?"...and I'm talking about copy and paste or putting column headers in Excel (srsly). Really, the only reason she hasn't been canned at this point is her husband is essential, and they're afraid he'll quit if she gets fired (not to worry, though, where the hell is one person in their 50s going to find a job in this economy, let alone two?)

Meanwhile, I've known people well into their seventies that had no problem cracking open a case to install a new modem (back in the weird old days of internal PCI DSL modems.)

 

This from me.

People learn how to drive, cook, bring up kids and do all manner of things.

 

they need to add a extra key.. takes them to the porn so they can fuel the botnet

 

IDS wants the OAPs all webbed up and collecting their pensions online, so his lot can close the rest of the Post Offices.

Either that or it's a heart-felt plea from a poor chap, struggling to find decent pr0n online.

 

Well, I see how my parents use their computer. Doing very difficult stuff, like copying pictures from their camera to their computer.
2 Possibilities,
1) connect, windows says "hey you want to save these?" you click yes, and windows resizes and renames them all.
They look like crap and my parents can't find them.
2) copy and paste, look up or create a folder and copy them in there.
They look great and my parents created the folder themselves so.....they still can't find them afterwards.

And they have to go by written down step-by-step instructions every time. the learning curve equals zero.

I COULD buy them an IPAD...but then the pictures would probably start turning up on facebook without them knowing it

 

Oh...and Internet or general Software notifications popping up in ENGLISH (which is not the language their windows is using) isn't very helpful either. ;-)

 

This is bull. What they need to do is to give people a reason to want to use a computer - they're already easy enough to use. Most of my elderly relatives don't see why they would need a computer, despite me raving on about all the wonderful things they'll be able to do with one. Especially when you explain that to do any of these wonderful things on the internet you'll need to pay extra per month for an internet connection. Those that are interested have already bought a compuer and are using it.

Enter the Raspberry Pi. A small single-board computer with a 700MHz ARM chip. They plan to sell these units at $25 for the basic model (128MB RAM, 1x USB) and $35 for the slightly better one (256MB RAM, 2x USB & Ethernet). They will also have a composite video output, in addition to HDMI, so you can turn any old TV into a computer - you don't need an expensive HDMI/DVI-D capable monitor. They also support hardware accelerated video decoding and OpenGL - they're capable of full 1080p HD video.

The whole idea of these machines is to support a fundamental change in the way that "IT" is taught in schools. Computers are usually seen as expensive luxuries, not to be tinkered with for fear of breaking them, and our education system bascially treats IT lessons as Microsoft Office training. At $25 (or around £15) a pop, schools can afford to dole one out to each student, let alone equip a classroom. Of course the price will go up slightly once you factor in SD cards pre-loaded with an OS, cases (of which no details are yet known), etc. But the hardware itself will remain around the same price as a text book.

They're also pretty tempting for a hobbyist too. If XBMC can be ported to ARM on these boards, and still support full 1080p video decoding, why the hell would I need to spend hundreds on an HTPC. Hell I could buy 5 of them and run a mini-cluster!

 

Now I want one of these! I've no use for it and its not out yet but....

 

Wow, I may finally get a UX job ;-)

 

Hell, I'll buy several! I've got no real need/use for them either, but for $35 (or £22) you can't go wrong.

I'm surprised that I haven't seen any mention of these on the front page or in the forums before now.

Anyway, back on topic, as you were, nothing to see here...

 

You, Sir, win today's interwebz.

Well, many people learn to drive, cook and bring up kids badly too. Do we need to have this conversation again:



So yeah, people can learn to use computers, but many of them are by no means straightforward. Apple tried to address that and gets accused of limiting systems, dumbing things down and locking things in a closed garden --but Apple's stuff sells. Because it is simple. As wuyanxu says: iPad. Job done.

It's so cute! And it runs Doom 3!



After that demo, the chip was still cool to the touch. Awesome. As the guy says: I remember a time when you had to buy a £100,-- + graphic card (on top of a beefy PC) to run that stuff.

I think one of those, and an Arduino should be standard kit for any secondary school science and tech pupil.

 

I've just read an article that states "More than half of UK pensioners use Facebook, says study". Might be just me, but I would assume that most of them are using a PC to do so, despite the incredible difficulty that IDS thinks OAP's have in using one.

http://www.digitalspy.co.uk/digital...of-uk-pensioners-use-facebook-says-study.html

"While social media usage is lower amongst those of pensionable age, 55% of over-65s in Britain have an active Facebook page, while more than two-thirds regularly view videos on YouTube."

 

I know a guy EXACTLY like that!

At the end of the day I realised that the computer itself is not his problem and he doesn't really need me anymore, he needs a psychiatrist to deal with whatever makes him unwilling to open up to it, and stop wigging out every 2 seconds.

They are very high tech and I think a lot of techy people do take it for granted and forget how intimidating and confusing it can be to a total newbie. But really it's only a bunch of buttons that you click with a pointer, it's not THAT hard. And if they are only going to be doing basic stuff like browsing the web for recipes and checking their email, it's really easy.

 

Computers arent hard to use, it's the terminoligy used which people don't understand, hence buying a pre built system for over the odds from PCWorld/Currys expecting something fantastic and all they end up with is crap.

My father is in his 50's he's computer literate, he can use most general applications, he can type pretty well and he taught himself.

People think computers are hard to use when you talk specs etc, I don't know what half of them mean. Hence being here for advice and assistance.

Iain Duncan Smith is an idiot xD

 

That's just their IPhones copying everything to facebook while they THINK they're on the phone, hence the in-ear-video's

*coat...I know, going already*