Are your relatives computer literate?

I think I can safely say I'm the most computer literate in my family. My younger brother is pretty proficient. My Dad can get on the computer to check sports scores and play games, but beyond that he usually needs help. My Mom doesn't use the computer at all. It takes a lot of work trying to explain how to do something

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I really do think that my dad can learn, but my mom is afraid that if she pushes the wrong button the computer will blow up.

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In my family, me and my brother are computer literate, him easily more so than me. I know enough to get simple things done. Relatives of the same generation as I usually know how to work a computer.

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Originally Posted by Chibi Neko

I really do think that my dad can learn, but my mom is afraid that if she pushes the wrong button the computer will blow up.

Yes. I could imagine it clearly. My sis and some of my friends also thought that microsoft planted bomb and self-destructing system in their OS.

I was speaking idiomatically.

My mom has gotten...errr...better at using the computer. She still doesn't quite understand the benefits of tabbed browsing in FireFox, and gets frustrated easily, but at least she can do her online banking and make airplane reservations and such.

My uncle though, he's a computer genius -- literally. He's the only person in his company that's a computer engineer without any formal education; he just went down to Silicon valley in the early 80s and went from there. I call him if I have problems with my computer.

And my grandma. Yeah, she's afraid of crashing the computer. She won't even go in the room it's in.

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in my immediate family, i'm the most computer literate, next is my sister who can do simple things like use MS Word, install/uninstall programs, play a few games and browse the internet using IE.

my parents and gran on the other hand, have no knowledge whatsoever, they think they only way to turn off a computer/laptop is to pull out the plug, they are also unable to tell the difference between me working on a computer and playing games X.x;;;

with the rest of my family, it's usually the guys who are more computer literate though it's in different areas; one cousin is more proficient is graphic design, another just knows about requirements for gaming, another about computer architecture. the parents just tend to stay out of it.

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No, they are not. They cannot even press the power button without my help.

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My Dad thinks something is wrong when he presses something and it doesn't work in the next second. He doesn't believe in trail and error, by using the programme and seeing what it can do he just asks me if it's capable of doing it and if so, how so.

My Mum is ok, she tends to try and work at something if it's all going wrong but at the end of the day she doesn't know that much.

Jam it back in, in the dark.

Originally Posted by xuemin

they are also unable to tell the difference between me working on a computer and playing games X.x;;;

Ah yes, that reminds me how I try to fool my dad into thinking the computer is off by simply turning off the monitor. >=)

There's nowhere I can't reach.

For the longest time only dad, my uncle, and I were very computer literate, but now the others are catching on.

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

Most of my family can type out letters it might be one finger that they use to type but they get there in the end. They can just about manage to surf the Net and send e-mails, anything more advanced than this and they call for my help.

I am a dolphin, do you want me on your body?

My Grandpa is bad enough to not even know how to use a cellphone!! I literally had to teach him how to shut down his computer, and turn it on...I sent him a text message the day he got his cellphone just to servely confuse him, and it worked!

I was speaking idiomatically.

My parents are a mixed bag.

When we got our first computer in 1995, my uncle showed my folks how to use Windows 95 and several nice things to know about computers. Then they instructed my sister and I on how to use it.

Currently, my father is rather braindead when it comes to the computer. In fact, I believe he's used my mum's laptop less than ten times in the two years she's had it. He's a police officer with very shoddy typing speeds (but I don't hold it against him), and computers aren't the least bit fancy like they are in movies and such. He just knows how to use Internet Explorer and to type reports. All he really needs, but he even infuriates my mother with questions. Typically, we'd just do for him whatever he needed, like burn CDs and such.

My mother, on the other hand, is rather weird. She showed me how to use Windows at a time where the only computers I'd ever used were Apple IIs, Macintoshes, and these clunker IBMs that only ran on DOS. She even showed me how to do all the neat shortcuts like copy and paste and what the Tab key was for. These days, I'll get a phone call asking about how to use Windows Media Player, even though she could just stick with the simple CD Player programme that's been there since 95. That and many other common questions unknowing parents ask. However! She is familiar with FIrefox and does prefer it to IE, though she gets frustrated when she can't just click on an e-mail address on a website and can't send an e-mail that way. Regardless of my explaining that she uses a web browser based e-mail account with our ISP, mind you. I need to get her to setup Thunderbird so she won't have to deal with that problem anymore.

What kind of toxic man-thing is happening now?

In my immediate family, I suppose my brother is half as literate as I am. He mostly sits on the computer and plays with GarageBand, but he knows how to type up reports, etc. He's got an Apple, though. We've got a PC. I haven't used an Apple since 6th grade.

My parents can turn the computer on, that's a start. My mom uses a computer at work, mostly uses Excel but she doesn't know what any of the buttons do and she only inputs text. Her biggest accomplishment is changing her desktop image a million times in a week...but she's fairly quick at typing, she can use Google, but I almost always have to come and redefine her searches, and I'm teaching her how to use Limewire. She knows how to burn her own CDs with WMP (easiest program for her to use). I'm thinking I might take my old computer class pamphlet with all the tutorials for MS Office and give her assignments to do so so she can learn what all the functions are in Excel.

My dad types with his index fingers and it takes him about half an hour to type up 3 complete sentences. But I chalk that up to him not being good with words in general. There is a cardboard box next to the computer and I can see several of his scribblings where he attmepts to work out how to spell words ("buisness," "bisuness," etc.) instead of using spell check features. Apparently he can use the internet only to book vacations and waste all our money on eBay, but I always have to proofread everything he writes.

I do everything else, I set up the computer, I take it apart and clean it, I maintain it, I install/uninstall things, yadda yadda yadda...but even with all that, I'm pretty basic in my knowledge. I still cannot figure out what the fuck a NAT problem is and why I can't get rid of it for Azureus. The Azureus wiki FAQ is like Latin to me.

I don't know anything about the rest of my family. I assume that my closest cousins are fairly literate, about as much as I am. One of my uncles is great with computers, though. He was the very first of all of us to have one, I remember playing Doom and ...I think Wheel of Fortune on his computer when I was in elementary school.

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My dad uses the computer for e-mail, managing financials, downloading, web, and backing up DVDs. My mom just uses it for shopping and e-mail. My brother uses it as I would, but add more time AIM. I doubt my grandparents know. And most of my uncles and aunts I think get around. One of my cousins, 6 years old, is pretty computer literate. It's insane.

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Other than my mom, not really. I always get asked for help and quite frankly I get sick when I have to help my sister, because she is going to be a senior in highschool and still needs help with word!

Jam it back in, in the dark.

I think there are only five people in my family who are computer literate. They build their own computers, rather than buying pre-made ones, and whenever I need to get something fixed, I go to them! Then, there are a couple people who know the basics. The rest of my relatives are as clueless as they get. "How do I use Google?" Actually, I was helping my uncle look something up once. As I was scrolling down the page, he said, "Stop scrolling up!" I then replied, "I'm scrolling down..." He said, "Well, the words are moving up."

As for me--well, I'm not really computer literate, but that doesn't mean I can't solve minor issues. Because I tend to play around with things, I usually figure stuff out, but then again, I also figure out ways to somehow mess up the computer. As I once said during an electronics class, I don't make electronics. I destroy them! While I do know much more than a lot of my friends and acquaintances, it's nothing compared to most of the people here.

There's nowhere I can't reach.

My uncles and aunts and their children are all really computer literate, probably because they have to be where they work. As for my immediate family, my brothers know more about computers and programs than I do, although I'm your average 18 year-old computer user. My mom knows next to nothing about computers and the internet aside from checking her email. My dad was much like her for a while, but in the past few months, he's been getting lessons from my older brother, and has since started using eMule, leeching torrents, and listening to oldies excessively on iTunes. -_-;;

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

Originally Posted by elwe

The rest of my relatives are as clueless as they get. "How do I use Google?" Actually, I was helping my uncle look something up once. As I was scrolling down the page, he said, "Stop scrolling up!" I then replied, "I'm scrolling down..." He said, "Well, the words are moving up."

My dad needs me to type the url in the search box. I dont think he knows the existance of google either.

I am a dolphin, do you want me on your body?

Originally Posted by elwe

As I was scrolling down the page, he said, "Stop scrolling up!" I then replied, "I'm scrolling down..."

(!) That's exactly what my dad said when I tried teaching him one time. I only realized the next day why he thought I was scrolling up. Moving from a webpage apart from clicking the links that are already on that particular webpage also seems to have impeded in his interest in learning about the internet.

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None of my family and none of my neighbors are computer literate at all. At least not to the point to where I'd trust them alone with a computer for more than a couple weeks. A few I wouldn't trust a day with. I few I wouldn't trust within a mile of one.

Basically how it is is that I'm expected to fix anybody's computer problems (I've had people 10 miles away from where I live ask for a house call), and if something breaks, it's my fault.

It couldn't possibly be that they install every single piece of software they get their hands on.

It couldn't possibly be that they start messing around the BIOS because they want to think they are computer literate.

Nope, it was me. Nevermind I was 10 miles away and asleep at the time, it must have been ME.

Yeah, I'm bitter. I've started to make people fix their own problems under my guidance rather than just do it for them. It teaches them how to do things, and if it's still too complicated for them I drill it into them that they shouldn't try it again unless I'm here.

People just seem to think that since computers are so easy to use, and they just sit down and use it without even thinking, that they should just always work, no matter what you do with them.

You don't see that sort of attitude about CARS.

What kind of toxic man-thing is happening now?

My little brother is computer literate, he knows enough about spyware/adware/viruses to delete them himself, can fix basic computer problems, etc.

It's a little harder to expain to my dad these things but he sticks to what I recommend him to use (Firefox, Adaware) so we haven't had too many problems.

My mom can hardly double click. I had to put my browser icon in the quick launch area so it could be accessed with one click. She only does online banking...

As for immediate family, only my generation can use the computer. I get called a lot to fix computer problems. They like to reformat whenever something goes wrong and then repeat the same mistakes again. My uncle thought his router was not working one time and plugged his modem to his computer directly without having any kind of firewall. And viruses flooded his computer. Gah.

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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.

What, you don't want my bikini-clad body?

My brother is much more computer literate than me. My Dad can use the internet and outlook express email, and my mom can use hotmail and ebay.

Jam it back in, in the dark.

For my family, my elder and younger sis and I all can use the computer. I'm the most computer literate in the sense that I can solve technical problems with the computer and I understand things like advantages of using Firefox over IE. I can work Mac too but my sisters can't unfortunately.

My parents did have some basic computer training and they know more or less how to exercise some basic features. They only seem to like webpages though and the flurry of colours.

My grandma, no doubt about it, she's a computer idiot. She knows nuts about it and I don't blame her because she doesn't need it at all! She still likes her television. (:

There's nowhere I can't reach.