remote assistance.
so my dad calls me up as i’m driving home, in a crappy mood already, and he tells me that somehow he managed to get a virus or something or other. that was awesome, because now i had to figure out how to fix my dad’s computer over the phone. luckily (thankfully) my dad actually got DSL a month or two ago, and with the magic of remote assistance i was able to fix his issue relatively quickly. faster than over the phone, that’s for sure. it’s not perfect though - i couldn’t get it to work on my desktop for some reason. it says it’s not enabled, who knows why. but on my laptop it worked just fine, and made things much better.
December 7th, 2005 at 2:57 am
Dude, I spent 3 hours on the phone with my Dad the other night removing a Trojan. That wasn’t fun.
December 7th, 2005 at 12:06 pm
Tell me about it. I still took a couple hours to do, but at least but at least I was also able to take control of his machine and do it all myself. It wasn’t just “ok, now go to the menu. No the other menu. in the window. CLICK THE MENU!”
December 7th, 2005 at 5:44 pm
I know you hate Macs, but seriously, getting your parents a Mac makes things a ton easier. They can do all the things they need the computer for: email, web browsing, MS Office, etc. And you don’t have to worry about virii, spyware and random crashes. I’ve hardly ever had to do any administration type stuff for my parents. Plus, if there are OS/software problems, they can just take the computer to any Apple Store and they’ll fix it for free.
December 7th, 2005 at 7:17 pm
I don’t relish the idea of teaching my parents to use a Mac when they’re already comfortable using windows. Plus, I’m guessing your parents are more avid (read “competent”) tech users than my parents are.
plus, i’m not buying my parents any computers, mac or not. If they want to buy a mac, they’re welcome too, and maybe they’ll have fewer problems, but i doubt my dad would want to get one. Especially cause they’re a bit more expensive than $450 Dells.