IT Support for elderly

Doing IT support for home users is awful. It's mostly virus and performance problems over and over.

If you provide someone with a PC (or network) they will keep coming back when they break it and expect free support.
 
Hagar said:
Loads of generalisation there, plenty of young gen can barely use a computer for anything except browsing and playing games. The older generation had better things to do in their life than stare at a screen or be attached to a phone 24/7. My O Level maths was done without a computer or calculator or multichoice answers. I did plenty of learning and also kept most of it inside my head. We had no lookup on Google to get through life.

Happy new year.:D
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Exactly this. Majority of people kids and teens included are lost once outside their game or social media app.

Even the IT department I work in about 60% or more have no interest in computers or doing anything outside their immediate job.
 
I do free/voluntary work with OAPs in Norfolk and Suffolk. Generally I install Unifi AP-AC-Lite access points and bullet-proof their mobile devices as much as possible. My company supplies the Unifi access points we are supposed to give away to students in Unifi training courses. You'd be surprised how little peer pressure it takes to get someone to agree to giving their AP-AC-Lite up for charity! And I add them to my central controller. If anything goes wrong, they can ring me for help. Generally, all they want is for Skype or Zoom to work properly and easily so they can see their family on chats. Very often their family has bought them a tablet or a phablet and just said 'press that button' and it's not that simple if you've got yourself in a muddle and you're not on the home screen anymore. So 15-20 minutes just explaining to them that you can't break it so badly that turning it on and off won't restart it and they're a lot more confident. And if they get into a muddle then they turn it off and on again. Bingo! Everyone's an IT manager now!

Almost none of the people I install kit for have a desktop or laptop PC, which makes my life a lot easier.
 
I avoid any family or friends support. They mostly ignore your advise but expect you to waste your time supporting it.

My usual line is that the job will take X amount of time, I'll do it if you spend the same amount helping me paint a room or two or doing so DIY. No one ever accepts.
 
OspreyO said:
They mostly can't do that without admin rights.
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As I said in a previous post, the best you can do is give them an (additional) unprivd account and ask them to use this then they log in. But you can't hide their admin account from them.

The only time that's OK is in a corporate environment and even then only on corporately owned equipment.

That is why supporting home users is awful and nobody wants to do it :p

OspreyO said:
I avoid any family or friends support. They mostly ignore your advise but expect you to waste your time supporting it.

My usual line is that the job will take X amount of time, I'll do it if you spend the same amount helping me paint a room or two or doing so DIY. No one ever accepts.
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Yeah this is the main problem. You can try all you like to teach people, but they will almost always fall for the scummy malware promising to increase their memory or speed up their internet or something daft.

Good at installing crap and messing stuff up, and good at "not having time" to fix it, thus giving it to you at the first sign of trouble.

Nobody needs that trouble :p

The other "main problem" being "Oh, little Timmy is an IT genius! He shows all the teachers at school how to do it! He changed a bunch of things and now I don't know where my apps are?"
 
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I'm default choice for my wife's family when it comes to it support. I'm also fault fixer for mates.

The most disappointing thing is when people just refuse to learn, as they can call me.

My starting question is always "is it plugged in/ turned on?". It has surprised me how often that has been the problem...
 
FoxEye said:
As I said in a previous post, the best you can do is give them an (additional) unprivd account and ask them to use this then they log in. But you can't hide their admin account from them...
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I don't hide it. I rename it to something technical. Which people are naturally allergic to. Charge the user photo to an App icon like control panel or something. A subtle but significant difference.
 
Where it comes to the elderly is that family drop hi-tech stuff on them which they won't support, that becomes unmanageable for the elderly. Better off keeping it simple and OS agnostic. People
 
I do "some" work for folk but i insist on never taking payment, that tends to make them want to come back to you with yet more user problems and you just spiral from there.
When i fix something for a friend i tell them, i dont want to see it again if its due to it being old or abused - if they keep there aincient 12yr old laptop and keep complaining they get told to GTF.
 
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