Are your relatives computer literate?

Some of them. My grandparents don't know much, but they're very interested in getting a computer to use for internet browsing and E-mail. I'm showing them Apple's line of kit, figuring they'll be best served by an iBook.

My mother knows very little, but is self-aware of that and okay with it. She wants a box that works for internet, E-mail, and a few other things and isn't really interested beyond that.

Her husband, on the other hand, is the most obnoxiously ignorant shit-wit I've ever met. He'll posture and throw around technical terms in combinations that make no sense whatsoever, then try to justify his point of view because he understands the stock market, and programmers do what makes them money. Never mind that we were talking about open-source. I've finally gotten to the point that I've locked him out of the rest of the network at the firewall, he gets ports 80, 443, 25, and 110 for browsing and E-mail, and beyond that he's on his own. I'm sick to death of supporting his bullshit.

My dad tries damn hard to keep up and keep abreast of tech news, and while he shows some signs of just-not-quite-getting-it, he shocks me every now and again by talking about RAID configurations, dual-video setups, and other hardware tech. The one thing I find amusing/slightly frustrating is that he has a slight case of utilititis-an addiction to freeware tweaking utilities like those commonly reviewed on Cnet. He really doesn't need them. He's running an Athlon64 with a gig of RAM, but hell if he doesn't use them anyway. It's amusing, and I can at least have a good, engaging conversation with him about technology. He's interested in Linux as he hates the direction MSFT is taking Windows (Big Brother-ware stuff), but for whatever reason he hasn't taken the plunge just yet.

My brother knows what he needs to know to get by. He doesn't go out of his way to learn new shit, but when he has to (usually as a means of hacking in his online games), he learns frighteningly quickly. Example: I got a MIDI keyboard for the holidays and bought a book on Reason, trying to learn to use it. He borrowed the book for a week, and when he got it back to me, said "look what I did." The results were unbelievable. The kid got better with the app in a week than I did in 2 months. Granted he doesn't work 2 jobs at the same time as taking classes, and he has a natural inclination toward music, but still...scary.

Jam it back in, in the dark.