Newsweek has a great article by Brad Stone about how many people are headed home for Thanksgiving… to fix their parents’ computers: The Tech-Support Generation.
I know, you can’t lump everyone into that category, but I suspect it’s true more often than not. And it points to the reality that computers are still difficult to use. A Mac is far easier to comprehend than a Windows PC (and you don’t have the spyware and virus issues), but there are still lots of things that can stump someone who doesn’t know what an IP address is, or who can’t tell if the problem is the computer itself or something else, like a wireless base station. (Heck, I’ve been doing this professionally for years and I still get stumped.)
Still, there is a silver lining. I like being the tech guy for my in-laws, because it was one of the first things that we connected on after being introduced by my wife: it was the springboard for a good relationship, and gave us things to talk about on that first visit home when I spent a good deal of time wondering, “Will they like me?”
Jeff Carlson | Never Enough Coffee Creations 