RE: Can't open Xy in XP -- A thousand THANK YOUS!!!

[Brian.Henderson@xxxxxxxx]

>>Patricia wrote:

>>I wonder though, if many people do as much tweaking as that?


And Harry was astonished:

>Surely, you jest.


Harry, I'm afraid that types like us (xywriters and other tweakers) are very much in the minority.
My wife is a good (but slightly extreme) example of a typical computer user. When she first got her
own machine at home, she'd been using a computer at work for years. So I naturally assumed she had
at least a passing awareness of how a computer functioned. Wrong. She was SO completely lacking in
what I would consider even the most fundamental knowledge, that it (no exaggeration) took me at
least a year to fully realize just how little she understood. At work she hadn't needed to know
hardly anything about the machine she used. She could turn it on, start the email program, and she
knew how to start Word (which she could use better than I could)...that was it...literally. If
anything went wrong, there was the IT dept. to fix things. So we spent a year with me failing (with
much gnashing of teeth on both sides) to teach her anything because I was completely unable to see
how lit!
 tle she was able to understand...I couldn't simplify my explanations enough because I refused to
believe that one could work with a computer for so long and yet only know as much as one needs to
know to operate a TV set. When it finally sunk in it was just in time...I'm pretty sure she was
shopping for a divorce lawyer. So, now she's fairly conversant, and doesn't automatically yell for
help whenever something unexpected happens (though I've never been able to convince her that her
files aren't actually INSIDE Word). And as proud as she is of her computer savvy, I can guarantee
that she'd be happier with a machine that was more like a television set.

We "hobbyists" are like the folks in the early days of radio listening. In the beginning,
many (maybe not most, but a fairly large percentage) of radios were built from scratch or kits (I
believe T.V. had a similar but much smaller hobbyist following). Now, finding people who can build
their own radios is not so easy (although I would not be a bit surprised to find some of them are
Xywrite users). One of the biggest differences between the era of radio and the era of computers is
the amount knowledge the average user needs to know to smoothly operate their own machine. By the
time radios were as prevalent as computers are now the radio owner only had to know how to change a
burned out tube. The vast majority of computer users either need to know more than they want to
about machine/software maintenance, or they'd better have ready access to someone who does.

I don't think the "hobbyist" era of computers will last much longer. I don't expect my
1-year-old grandson will ever need to know anything about whatever passes for a computer in the
future. That's probably a good thing. I don't feel bad just because I don't know the technical
details behind how they fit all those little people inside my TV set.

-BH