Random Flux

Like many geeks I tend to be treated as the universal computer guru resource and free support line and repair shop by many of my friends, at any time of the day or night. Liked many others in my position, I’m always trying to find ways to reduce my FFSO in an effort to get a life back. The Mac’s easy-to-use operating system and programs once seemed to be the ideal solution.

I used to think that it would be a smart move to tell people to switch to Apple when they asked me what new computer they should buy. No viruses, no spyware, less confusing choices, a clean, simple operating system that’s easy to use, known hardware that generally works right away with everything you can buy for it — sounds like a great solution to all my worries.

Unfortunately, as I recently discovered at the cost of many large tufts of hair and extensive heartburn, it doesn’t always work like that. You have to be careful who you give this kind of advice to. As it turns out, telling someone who still indents paragraphs with tabs, hard returns and spaces to switch from a PC to a Mac can be a recipe for geek guru disaster.

I’ve now discovered that the old rule of “never change a running system” also applies to computer users. If they’re managing to get by somehow, you advise them to switch at your peril.

About a year ago a dear friend of mine — let’s call her Monica — bought a Powerbook to replace her broken Windows laptop. Since then, both of our lives have taken a distinct turn for the worse. The problem is that before switching, she learned just enough about Windows and PCs to kind of get by, so that she could use Windows for about six months before I needed to erase the mess and restore the original image again. At some point she had decided that she knew everything about computers that any respectable woman would ever need to know, and so she disconnected her internal learning module.

As far as Monica’s concerned, her new Powerbook is not a computer. It doesn’t work the way she expects it to work and so there’s something wrong with it. Every “support call” is still based on the expectation that it should be behaving like Windows and a dogged determination to somehow make it behave that way, come hell or high water. She clings to her acquired computer knowledge like a drowning man hanging on to a soggy tree trunk, and nothing on earth is ever going to make her let go of it.

Eventually, she’s probably going to go back to a Windows laptop. But by then, of course, it’s going to come with Vista installed on it, and then my life is going to get much, much worse.