Recently I pushed an old couple of people out of Vista to Lubuntu. In both systems (they now have a dualboot) they confuse password for the system, password for the mail access and password for the the ISP connection. I had to give them a full course to make that more clear to them, plus a few other tricks, such as configuring a mail client for them so that they get it more simple to manage their messages.
Ooooh, pushed out of a vista. Did they have a hard landing? Seriously, though, did they? Hardy har har. Seriously, though, there are many like that. I still do service calls for a woman about my age running PCLinuxOS. Bless her heart, though, she just does not understand computers at all. She will call occasionally with either an email problem or a printer "problem". I can usually diagnose either with a quick dialin to her computer using TeamViewer. The last time I had to go to her house was to replace a router.
When she does call, she usually begins with "I can't get into my computer." Translated, it means she can't access her email account. "I can't print" means she has messed up the print job queue. I have instructed her several times on how to use both the HP printer toolbox
and CUPS. It all goes in one ear and out the other. She pays me well to fix minor problems.
Like I said, she was previously using Windows Vista. I was called because she couldn't do anything with her computer at all. Bad infestation. After my first service call, she was running Linux. That was two and a half to three years ago. I can recall only four or five service calls since. Two were for hardware.
"Easier for users": sell them hard drives or even better : machines with preinstalled easy to go Linux distributions... it will be a bit easier but this will not teach them how to use a machine.
Exactly.
@konaexpress,
Those users who would have trouble with partitioning would, most likely, never feel capable enough to reinstall Windows. Nor would they have the patience to download from the net all the service patches, then download and install all the apps they had. Their data would most likely have never been backed up. All the data stored in "My Documents" on their boot drive would most likely not be recovered. Any user who knew enough to be able to use a proprietary solution to recover their data would also have no problems installing almost any Linux distro. If it isn't pre-installed "from the factory", most people will take their computer to the "experts" at Geek Squad or a similar shop for software "repair" and/or a "tuneup".
"My computer just starts running slower and slower the longer I use it. It just picks up all this stuff that clogs it up." We may laugh about that, but that exact statement was made to me once. Along with, "Well, the computer won't run without Windows."
