Is this you?
Ok. So is this you? It probably is. I am a geek/nerd/tech type person and it isn’t me and it isn’t a lot of my friends but it may well be you.
To join this particular demographic, you need the following…
1. A PC – desktop or laptop, it doesn’t matter. You could even have a Mac (Hi Stan).
2. A state of mind that mixes inappropriate confidence, a bit of laziness and a refusal to accept the inevitable until it’s far too late.
I will use the phrase “PC” from now on but Mac owners are pretty similar. Their computers are see-thru, more expensive, a tad slower and their mice have less buttons but they can be just as stupid.
So there you are, possibly joined by members of your family, in a large, cavernous shop with a name that ends in “World”,”urrys” or “omet”. You are about to handover a large amount of money to someone young enough still to have fairly impressive acne but old enough to convince you that he knows a lot about PCs. Whilst the first may be true, the second is almost certainly not. He/she usually has a coloured shirt on (purple probably) and he/she is a simpleton. The only person in fart-smelling distance more stupid than them at the moment is you.
I don’t mean stupid for buying a PC. After all, they are wonderful things, I mean stupid because you don’t know enough about what you are buying to be allowed to buy one. I admit this is harsh but in your defence, why should you know enough? 20 years ago, I regularly had the piss taken out of me for spending my weekend free time mucking about with a Sinclair Spectrum. I did that and everyone else didn’t. As I grew into mandhood, I owned increasingly more sophisticated and expensive computers until one day I realised everyone had one.
But I digress…
The cash is handed over because you need a PC in your home. You have reached this decision and justified same in a mysterious, group-conciousness-led decision. All of you want one. The house needs a PC.
What the house, or more precisely “you” need at this point is a slap across the back of the head with a metal tea tray followed by someone shouting in your ear “what the hell do you know about PCs? Do you have any idea how this thing works?”. If this did happen, how many of you would be honest enough to reply “not much really”?
But your head remains unbruised and you leave the shop with a £1000 worth of consumer electronics and every intention of sorting out the family finances with online banking, editing and producing your own holiday dvds, designing your garden, downloading legal movies & music and … well you get the idea.
What you never do is actually understand the first thing about what you have bought. You will treat it the same way you treat a new toaster. You will switch it on and expect it to work.
One day something else happens. You turn it on and either it beeps a few times before switching itself off again or you are treated to what we in the know call BSOD or “The Blue Screen Of Death”. It just sits there. White gibberish on a blue background. No “booting in safe mode” for you matey. It’s dead…
..which is where I come in. Three times in the past few weeks, I have been called into help out in such a situation. I shouldn’t grumble because I recieve a little pocket money in return for my rescue efforts but to be serious for a moment, I don’t really think anyone is stupid. It’s just that somewhere along the line someone should have told you that they don’t work forever and you need to be ready when they don’t. Copy your stuff to a blank DVD every once in a while – photos, documents, music. Everything that you would be cross to lose. It’s not hard to find out how to do it and it will safe you a lot of pain. Two out of the three laptops I sorted out had no backups whatsover and the hard drive data was unrecoverable. They lost literally years of photos and they are never, ever coming back. Gone are the letters, the emails, the school work, the CVs and everything else you spent the last year filling the thing up with. Whilst you are backing up your stuff, take a moment and write down all your passwords & email account details too, its easier and cheaper than spending £s on a useless helpline in Bangalore spelling out your mother’s maiden name to someone 10,000 miles away who only got his “Beginner’s English” certificate that very morning.
Better yet, consider using what we tech-heads are already beginning to call “the cloud”. Don’t have the data on your PC in the first place. Store it online. I long ago solved the problem of losing my Email by using a Google Mail account. All my photos are on Flickr. All my documents are regularly “synced” online too. This takes a while to set up but it can be made almost totally painless and absolutely free.
Of course some of you reading this will be disgusted the idea of sitting down in front of your PC and doing “housekeeping” and this (finally) is my point. It is similar to old adage “if you can’t do the time, don’t do the crime” or more precisely in this case,
“if you treat it like a toaster, one day your toast will get burnt”
Get to know your PC. Believe it or not, geeks are in the minority. Most websites, online services and software is aimed at people just like you and not like me. Sure, we can get our nerdy fix and spend hours exploring that scary “Advanced Options” button in most programs, but you don’t have to. Not yet anyway.
Don’t think of that hot, black, windy box as something to frighten you. Treat it as a beast to tame and a slave to do your bidding.
Failing that, Email me. My fees are quite reasonable and Christmas is fast approaching.
L8r
I agree with the backup story .
On the PC Mac issue.
Neither side has a lock on good value.
If you start with Apple’s relatively short list of SKUs (three or four model variations for each of its lines, such as MacBook Pro, MacBook and iMac) and then look for comparable Windows machines, you’ll find that Apple bests the competition in some ways and not in others, but the pricing overall is surprisingly on par.
NB : PC equals personal computer ergo Mac’s are PC’s
The notion that PCs are serious machines while Apple Macs are, “for artsy fartsy creative types” has pretty much stuck.
The distinction is a little silly, as anything that can be done on a PC can be done on a Mac and vice versa.
The important point of difference is ease of use (Macs are far easier to use) and that a Mac can run Windows (NT or Vista), whereas PCs can only run Windows (and in many cases not even Windows Vista).
A lot if the new users moved over to the new Macs because they can run both types of OS, although it appears that once they have converted over, they soon bin the Windows option and stick with the Mac stuff.
The speed/processing power is all relative but on comparative studies, they are more than often equal.
Viruses target PC’s operating Windows & Linux installed machines and as such most informed users install AV software, which to be fair is reactionary software rather than preventative and that always slows processing power down, Mac’s as far as I am aware are not under such threats, although AV software does exist for Mac’s most Mac users feel it to be money down the drain and into Symantec’s or the likes pockets.
And this indeed will slow down the speed of any processing power.
What is best of all is the faces of my Windows chums, actually everyone of tem is stunned by the Apple experience, although some would rather swallow their tongue, than admit that Apple is just supreme compared to what they have.
Alas not everyone will be convinced, but what I find astounding is the fact that not one person I have ever met who has switched to the Apple Mac has ever regretted it.
The only regret everyone … including me – had was not having switched sooner.