Tech

And so many cars these days are full of electronic systems that are virtually impossible to repair yourself, even outside of warranty (trying to repair them yourself is seen as tampering) and they always break down once outside of warranty 

It’s almost comical that banks tell people to be careful of thier online security at home on thier PC’s and devices, yet the banks themselves have had serious data breaches - since 2008, both Bank of Ireland and AIB banks have had serious data breaches and its a serious problem for elderly people living in Rural Ireland, who have had their post offices and banks taken away, where the elderly can only get their money paid into online bank and post office accounts and are therefore forced to go online to get access to thier pensions - the failure of the Irish government to get thier Rural Broadband programme up and running has also caused serious problems during Covid 

Then BT had an utterly silly idea a while ago about ditching landlines and only offering landline service over the internet - it would be more in thier line to give up their silly practice of having call centres in India for customer service and tech support, same with mobile phone companies and other companies as well - if a company is offering service to a U.K. customer base, they should only be allowed to have a U.K. call centre only, not redirect the calls outside of the U.K. which is how people get scammed 

Tell me about it.

Computers definetely like to throw a wobbly when you are using them for soemthing with a deadline, and mobiles are just rubbish, half the conversation half the time. At least the landline WORKED.

I can sympathise with you. I had a NAS number for a while as couldn't work out how to change to a name. That is also why I have no picture. Someone kindly told me how to upload a picture via a laptop but I still couldn't do it so I enjoy pictures from the experts instead. I once tried like others to refer to someone else's phrase but that went wrong too. Not sure what will happen when there is a new Forum.

At work any updates throw me. I either need a manual or have to write down in small stages what to do. If I don't I often forget next time. I do feel though I can empathize with any customers who also struggle with technology. If I spoke to you at work I would definitely be on your side. We all have different strengths and for some of us it isn't technology.

Passwords are also a nightmare. It was so much easier when we had paper that could be filed under sections. The worse scenario with passwords is when you try to reset it and you get a message to say your email is already in use. Of course it is. This is the time that I then start talking to the technology as if it will understand that I just want to do a simple thing but have forgotten my password. 

I am fortunate that I have a husband who can guide me through a lot of things when I have still forgotten what to do next, but I don't know how I would manage without him.

Even new appliances often come with no or little instructions as we are meant to look online and it is no longer a simple case of turning a dial to select an option. Then there is starting up one of them because you leaned over it and the touch pad registered something.

Even the doctors surgery relies on you signing in. On my first or second attempt I was confused as the name came up wrong until I realized that was who I was seeing. Fortunately I tend to book the quietest times as anyone nearby would hear me talking through the instructions.

I have to say I enjoy non technology time. I go for a walk most days and enjoy hearing birdsong or smelling flowers. I totally don't understand people walking along glued to their phones. Knowing my luck I would probably trip over.

Almost everything it seems relies on electricity and internet access. I used to like looking up the yellow pages. There have been times when I have called on my mobile and then need to look something up. Apparently you can do this whilst in a call but with my luck I would either disconnect the person I finally got through to after nearly an hour, or I wouldn't be able to find the button to get back to end the call.

More age and experience, than dope.

so dope really

BRAVE is the one for those of us on the ADD end of the spectrum.

NO ADs.

Some people who, like you, hate the mouse set up their computer so that they don't have to use it. By using the command line and tiling window managers. Those are usually considered quite advanced though.

As for search engines, I have heard good things about kagi.com. It's paid so no ads. I don't use it myself so I can't vouch for it's quality but I've heard it's very good.

I took a look and the sponsored links on the search engine I use (https://duckduckgo.com/) are somewhat less in your face than the ones on Google. And I can't see any on https://search.brave.com/.

Other engines include https://stract.com/ and https://mojeek.com/. But they don't have that good results in my experience. People like them because they have completely independent indexes and because Stract is free and open source software.

Trying to get in touch with some ISP’s like Virgin Media and wanting to get rid of all TV and landline in favour of the highest speed broadband only, should be easy since my contract expired last November, but with all their call centres in India, it’s virtually impossible to do so 

Easy to drive? Not sure about that as I fitted an overdrive and still get confused over levers from time to time! Lat year, I drove to Suffolk and back, 440 miles and felt every one but I had fun at 55mph on the A47. Thanks for the tech offer, I really do struggle.

I understand technology well enough, but I still have problems with it.

It just doesn't work properly half the time. Really frustrating.

Try Linux. It only updates when you explicitly tell it to.

I like some things tech offers like online banking and shopping online. Both means less stress for me as I get very stressed when I'm outside. Banks are very stressful as well so online banking offers a lot for me.

Don't despair of yourself.......despair of the analogue choices being taken away from us......and protest against it wherever, however and whenever you can.

I’m exactly the same as you.  It is the biggest  bane of my life - and I’ve many! And knowing that however much you try, you can’t avoid using the *** for long, because more and more things HAVE TO BE done online, thus increasingly, choice is being taken away. This awareness only makes me more anxious and miserable. I despair of myself.

Touch screens, thats a good way to get nothing or 10 of everything!

I do like the telly, so what? I get really annoyed by people who think themselves superior because they dont' watch it. At the moment I don't have the ability to have a computer instead of the telly, I share a living room with other's mainly my 89 year old Mum, who's far worse with tech than me.

I've heard of this immersing myself in technology stuff before, it only works if you have some idea of what you're doing or it goes horribly wrong, like the whole thing freezing and not being able to get out of it even turning the machine on and off dosen't work. To be honest I wouldn't know how to immerse myself in it. I much prefer typing to using a mouse, I write quite a bit so my typiing speed is quite good. Hypermobile and arthritic finger joints don't make using a mouse that easy, and I've tried various kinds and end up going back to the most simple and basic. Dragging things about with a mouse is the fastest way for me to lose things entirely, I'm a total technoklutz and can crash anything, even a digital egg timer!

I find that no matter how I word a search it rarely gives me the information I need or want, once I've worked my way through all the sponsered ads and things people seem to think I ought to have instead of the thing I actually want, I find the useless information endlessly repeated the more pages I go through. I get so frustrated at searching for something simple, getting three of them and pages and pages of stuff I didn't ask for. 

There are many times when I think of going offline completely, only then I wouldn't be able to find the books I read huge amounts of.

Whenever I ask how to do something a YouTube video or 10 come up, I don't find them useful at all, I dont' know if it's just my learning style is different or what? The other thing is so many are American and they often have different equipment or terms for things or things that you just can't get here.

Does anyone have any insight into why me and tech don't get along, as I said before often all I have to do is touch it or even walk past it and it goes haywire. The case of the egg timer was one, 'you're just afraid of technology, press a few buttons, nothing bad will happen'said an ex, so I pressed the buttons and it crashed, had ot have the batteries taken out and put back in again, he never tried to help me tech stuff ever again.

Technology is very complex and I regularly get overwhelmed by it. I have a phone and a laptop but I need other people to set them up for me, I have absolutely no idea when it comes to tech. I need everything to be basic otherwise it's overwhelming and like you meltdowns are a regular occurrence for me. I wish things were simpler, but to be everything is getting much more complicated as tech advances.

Actually. It is.

Updates is why I ditched useless Windows PC’s and laptops and went over to Apple devices a few years ago, despite some online privacy concerns - same applies to Google Chromebook which is a nightmare