| Forum Home | ||||
| PC World Chat | ||||
| Thread ID: 109594 | 2010-05-14 10:47:00 | Computing book for seniors | toonttm (14853) | PC World Chat |
| Post ID | Timestamp | Content | User | ||
| 884874 | 2010-05-14 10:47:00 | It was nearly mother's day and I seen an ad in sky mag: "Computing for Seniors". it was a full page ad, not a good looking ad, but still, a full page ad. (that must cost a $ or 2) So i bought the book to help my ma (ok, maybe to stop me having to sort her comp out everyweek as well, lol) So this book turns up: 152 A5 pages (newsprint), maybe 20 small screen dumps instead of any real diagrams, plain blue cover, so really no eye candy. Some of the brilliant quotes [and this is the "New and Improved Fourth Edition"]: "The internet has nearly 50 million users"; "current top-of-the-range is the Pentium IV or 586 "; "minimum spec is 17" CRT"; "Dot matrix printers - things were shaken up with a new type of printer (after section on daisy wheel printers)"; "Nowadays, the fastest modems are hitting 56,000 bps"; So, for my $40 did I expect much? no, not really...and honestly some of the material covered is what I grew up on and hence have built my knowledge from (i still fondly remember my first Atari 1200XL? or my Vic 20, ahh my BBC, that 8080 chip!) ..and I would have certainly loved to have seen some good basic explanations of the material we all take for granted, but it was not in this book. So my winge? how many old people are paying 40 bucks to get something they think will help when they actually get a prime piece of rubbish? The sellers of this should feel shame!! Ekk! are we going to end up buying the same rubbish when we get older? or with growing up with what is now taken-for-granted knowledge are we future proof? because we had to do things like learn by programming games etc from scratch? Thanks for reading Toonttm P.S. After working with a lot of sparky trade students it still amazes me how little the 'sterotypical' teenager actually knows about computers..and yes, I have meet the clever ones, brilliant, but the majority have no clue beyond email, facebook, youtube..and it impresses their parents no end *sigh* |
toonttm (14853) | ||
| 884875 | 2010-05-14 21:17:00 | Well those ads are like TV infomercials. Better to buy a Dummies book for Windows. And yes all the teens think they are PC techs because they use the PC more than their parents. |
pctek (84) | ||
| 884876 | 2010-05-14 22:10:00 | Get your Mum signed up to PressF1 and have her just read, and maybe ask the odd question. Worth more than any textbook (which is out of date as it leaves the printing press) - and it's free! | johcar (6283) | ||
| 884877 | 2010-05-14 23:00:00 | Get her to join the local SeniorNet. | Scouse (83) | ||
| 884878 | 2010-05-14 23:01:00 | Well those ads are like TV infomercials. Better to buy a Dummies book for Windows. And yes all the teens think they are PC techs because they use the PC more than their parents. Ain't that the truth -- Esp the last comment. |
wainuitech (129) | ||
| 884879 | 2010-05-14 23:16:00 | Perhaps this is the course notes for the computer course formerly offered in Birkenhead by MIT (Not the real one, the farcical one in South Auckland) that left the attendees worse off than people who had never seen a PC. A joke in bad taste (and at taxpayer expense) - this manual fits right into the same ethical stream. |
R2x1 (4628) | ||
| 884880 | 2010-05-14 23:32:00 | +1 for johcar I'm learning a lot and it's interactive ... not easy asking a book for clarification of something you don't understand. | SP8's (9836) | ||
| 884881 | 2010-05-15 01:34:00 | Get her to join the local SeniorNet.I'll second that. | Tony (4941) | ||
| 884882 | 2010-05-15 02:37:00 | You got what you asked for, computing book for seniors, you have to be a senior to remember all that old technology | plod (107) | ||
| 884883 | 2010-05-15 05:41:00 | And yes all the teens think they are PC techs because they use the PC more than their parents. x 2, and Wainui's comments as well. |
WalOne (4202) | ||
| 1 | |||||