BTRIPP (btripp) wrote,
BTRIPP
btripp

I spent most of the day over at an old friend's place helping her get her new computer set up. It is SO STRANGE dealing with people who are just NOW buying a computer (my first one was the Sinclair ZX-80 back in the 80's!). They ended up going with PeoplePC, which is a pretty good deal, being a decent system (by Toshiba) and ISP for just $25.00 or so a month (for 36 months), including 24/7 customer support and free on-site service.

Once I fixed the obvious (line jack in the phone socket, speaker jack in the mic socket) I thought it was going to be a breeze ... silly Brendan! Spent the better part of an hour trying to get them on-line, eventually discovering the PeoplePC's local node was down and it wasn't REALLY a problem with their ID or PW ... just the system not authenticating at the time! Then we had to deal with the printer. Maybe I've been lucky, but I've NEVER had serious problems gettng a printer to work on any of my systems ... this took SIX long calls to Lexmark, AND installing AOL (so I could go download a new dirver for them via one of my accounts), and doing four complete cycles of installing and un-installing the drivers, etc., before we finally got the thing sort of working (I suspect there is some conflict between the Lexmark control program and the Norton package that came with their system, but that's just a guess).

I've been so used to dealing with folks immersed in the on-line world that I forget that there are people out there who don't have a CLUE about this stuff and still think it is some strange voodoo.
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