12 September 2005

Move!

Playing Mr. IT Person today with the rents. First up: move data from old computer to new via poor man's click drive (digital camera). Bulkier, but it got the job done. Man-oh-man do applications have a long way to go to making porting easier/less tedious. Next up: wipe out all personal data. I need to put together a CD of useful apps for just such occasions. Those occasions only happen every five or so years, but it'd be nice to have that virus/adware scanner, disk cleanup app, etc. all bundled together when you need them.

Finally, I turned my mom on to OpenOffice. She and dad have only MS Works on their new machine, and she needed some way to edit a spreadsheet she brought home from work. The OO installation, although generally non-technical, still hits the wall for users who just do not live in the world of technology (and don't need to). It's a problem that will always be there and is not new to computers--clean my carburetor?!?--so there are no easy answers. Once told about OO and how it came about, her response was "who would take the time to do that?" That was a more philosophical question than I could begin to get into while wearing my IT hat. "Nice people, mom. Very nice people."

[ posted by sstrader on 12 September 2005 at 8:55:12 PM in Science & Technology ]