“Windows tax?” I Don’t Think So…

Quoting:Last month I was with an individual who had an old, second hand, laptop. If I remember correctly, it was an IBM T21 with 128MB of RAM. He tried installing XP and then Win2000, but it would not work. So after chatting with me, we installed xubuntu. After booting up the unit, he just stared at the screen and appeared to have no clue as to what to do. He uses Firefox and OpenOffice on his desktop PC (which is WinXP). After prompting him to open Firefox (to get him used to the GUI), he just stared at the opened Firefox window and had no idea what to do. When I showed him the Firefox was the same application as the one on his XP box… He said “I just don’t know what to do”. I took it a step further and installed his bookmarks, had him open them and he didn’t seem to understand that he could click on them the same way he does on his desktop. It seemed he believed that he was lost. And because he believed it… he was. In my opinion, this was an individual with little ability to adapt.

This is a prime example of magical thinking. This blokes interaction with Windows is by use of magic, magical things he does to make what he wants happen (he clicks there, there and there, double clicks here and it does what he wants). When confronted with a new desktop, he doesn't have the right magic to make it work.

He doesn't know why it works, only that if he does that it does. He would be just as confounded if you changed his Windows desktop around.

Heh, I cross-posted this comment before I got round to reading this thread.

Great minds think alike... and so do ours!

You got it! "Users" do not use a browser, they use the internet. The GUI is the "computer". And so it goes.

Oops, I also commented on that quote in the other thread.