I got my first computer while still in highschool. 800 MgHrz chip. The 1 GHrz had just come out. Thunderbird. Now you
know from what era I came.
My dad was a lecturer in computer science at the university (basically programming and whatnot - he prefered DOS and
hated Windows). So I got a bit of a start from him.
For the past 3 years I've been the computer technician at our department here at the university (small dept though)
- its my job to fix problems and if I can't then to report it at our IT dept. We have a decent firewallso we
don't have to worry about viruses, and Spyware is a minor problem.
Now listen to this: One of our lecturers barged in my office, almost in tears, "the computer lost my test again for
the 4th time - you must do something about it!" She was typing out a test. Then her computer crashed. Then Word
recovered the file. She continued working. Then the computer crashed again. And word didn't recover the
file....When I asked her if she had saved after the file was recovered the first time, she said, "No!" almosts
as if saying, "why should I?" She never saved once except for the template from which she worked.
This same lecturer tried to open a PDF file in Word. When I opened it for her in Acrobat Reader, she asked how to edit
the contents.
This same lecturer uses Word to browse for files and is then very upset that she can't find Powerpoint or JPG
files.
Half (if not more) of our dept ignore the almost weekly "Updates are ready to install" messages that our IT
dept sends. I once had to update a computer that had almost 80 enqueued updates that needed to be installed.
Half (if not more) can't differentiate between My Documents and the C harddrive (not even talking about their
network space).
A few never turns their computer of out of fear of forgeting their passwords or, possibly, the boot screen.
Half (if not more) don't understand the concept of fonts. Or codecs. I just smile and install the stuff
anyway.
One of my basic jobs is to write CD's when a lecturer needs it. Even though some have their own CD writers, they
still don't know how to.
I consider myself a user. I may be the technician here, but all that means is that I am the most computer literate
person working here. I am not a programmer. If I have trouble with my own pc I try to fix it as far as possible, then I
take it to the shop. I have so far only twice opened the casing, once to ad ram and once to change my graphics card.
Some of my friends have never even seen the inside of a shop - they fix it themselves (but they do screw up miserably
every now and then). I protect my own system using the Microsoft Auto Updater. I also update my AVG, Ad-Aware and Spybot
ate least once a week.
But yes, people can be extremely creative when it comes to mucking up their own system due to ignorance. And these
people who I work with all have at least a Masters degree, some with several Doctorate degrees (we follow the European
graduate system- Bachelor, then Honours, then Masters, then Doctorate degree).
