I mean really don't, it becomes a right royal PITA....
I've tried to be patient, nice and helpful but things are testing my patience to a level that is beyond most people I think...
My mates dad is 85, his PC is 8-9 years old.....He's still spritely, active, not slow and has his wits about him (so to me quite a young 85 year old)
I've been out to it 3 times to try to fix it (lots of script issues, programs crashing, camera freezing, active desktop recovery keeps popping up, his icons disappear and it just generally runs like sh*t), and if I'm honest it was ready for the bin 5 years ago. It's running XP (it did have 95 on it) with a early Sempron CPU and 1GB of memory, to do anything on it takes an age (literally). It can take 5-6 minutes just to open notepad, it's probably one of the oldest and slowest PC's I've had the misfortune to work on, not to mention the thing was riddled with malware/spyware. I think i rebuilt it several years ago and even then it took almost a full day just to get windows and a few apps on.
His lad called me again the other day, and i explained to him I that I don't know what else to do short of a rebuild, but it isn't worth doing it, never mind the time it would take me. So I had an old(ish) PC, but significantly better than his other I was going to stick it on Gumtree but his lad asked if I could build/sell it to his dad..
No problem, did him it cheapish, but with the expectation I would be at his house for a short while (an hour tops) to add in his printer, camera and copy over his mail. I setup Windows Live mail for him (as he was using hotmail) and he seemed to be ok with it when i showed him. Next thing is he didn't like it and wanted to know why i wasn't like express (although the layout isn't that disimilar). I setup Thunderbird. He Didn't like it, I downloaded Office 2007, he didn't like it and wanted Office XP. I tried to dissuade him from that given it's age and said it wouldn't be much different anyway. I also had to copy over a load of data, and do some other setup bits that he wanted. He wanted to know if he could have is "old" icons. I set that up for him, but he wanted it to say "The Internet" "Email" etc, he didn't like the Scanner/Printer Icon....etc.
He wanted it to scan to email, Windows Live Mail doesn't support it. So he says he wants Outlook Express, I try to explain again why he can't have it.
Long story short, 5.5 hours later (Saturday) i decided to call it a day, because he simply did my head in, I couldn't concentrate and I was basically trying to hard to please to "make it like it was". He dislikes change, and because it didn't operate EXACTLY like XP or the programs had been updated he didn't like it, neither could he grasp the concept that Outlook Express is no longer available, or that the printer software I've installed had been updated (slightly newer interface, features and icons). He kept asking me if he had that new Windows 7, because he likes that....so you can imagine my confusion.
So I went home, spent most of my evening trying to get things to work properly, updated it to Office 2010 as I had some issues with the Outlook Connector for hotmail (which was another issue). Tested it all, hey presto "scan to email" works, leaves him a note on his desktop explaining everything I did.
I then gets a call at 10:30 from his lad to say his dads not happy, he can't scan to email and doesn't have Outlook Express, and now he can't write to CD (despite me explaining it didn't have a CD/DVD writer, but was told it doesn't matter because he doesn't use one). He got the jist that i was a tad frustrated and I tries to explain that I can't make it do something that is no longer supported in Live Mail, but it's working fine as far as I'm aware in Outlook 2010, so if he want's it to do it differently, I don't know what he means, but he can have XP and the old versions of software, but it would mean me rebuilding it again and setting everything up. He didn't want me to do that....
I mean I know he's old, but really it's taking the pi$$, if this was anyone else or it was sold on Gumtree, it would be "sorry, you buy a PC, not technical support for it's lifetime....................." or for me to spend the best part of a full day "setting it up".
I'm on the verge of saying, here's your money back, I'll set your old PC back up for you, but you will need to take it somewhere that can rebuild it.
I've tried to be patient, nice and helpful but things are testing my patience to a level that is beyond most people I think...
My mates dad is 85, his PC is 8-9 years old.....He's still spritely, active, not slow and has his wits about him (so to me quite a young 85 year old)
I've been out to it 3 times to try to fix it (lots of script issues, programs crashing, camera freezing, active desktop recovery keeps popping up, his icons disappear and it just generally runs like sh*t), and if I'm honest it was ready for the bin 5 years ago. It's running XP (it did have 95 on it) with a early Sempron CPU and 1GB of memory, to do anything on it takes an age (literally). It can take 5-6 minutes just to open notepad, it's probably one of the oldest and slowest PC's I've had the misfortune to work on, not to mention the thing was riddled with malware/spyware. I think i rebuilt it several years ago and even then it took almost a full day just to get windows and a few apps on.
His lad called me again the other day, and i explained to him I that I don't know what else to do short of a rebuild, but it isn't worth doing it, never mind the time it would take me. So I had an old(ish) PC, but significantly better than his other I was going to stick it on Gumtree but his lad asked if I could build/sell it to his dad..
No problem, did him it cheapish, but with the expectation I would be at his house for a short while (an hour tops) to add in his printer, camera and copy over his mail. I setup Windows Live mail for him (as he was using hotmail) and he seemed to be ok with it when i showed him. Next thing is he didn't like it and wanted to know why i wasn't like express (although the layout isn't that disimilar). I setup Thunderbird. He Didn't like it, I downloaded Office 2007, he didn't like it and wanted Office XP. I tried to dissuade him from that given it's age and said it wouldn't be much different anyway. I also had to copy over a load of data, and do some other setup bits that he wanted. He wanted to know if he could have is "old" icons. I set that up for him, but he wanted it to say "The Internet" "Email" etc, he didn't like the Scanner/Printer Icon....etc.
He wanted it to scan to email, Windows Live Mail doesn't support it. So he says he wants Outlook Express, I try to explain again why he can't have it.
Long story short, 5.5 hours later (Saturday) i decided to call it a day, because he simply did my head in, I couldn't concentrate and I was basically trying to hard to please to "make it like it was". He dislikes change, and because it didn't operate EXACTLY like XP or the programs had been updated he didn't like it, neither could he grasp the concept that Outlook Express is no longer available, or that the printer software I've installed had been updated (slightly newer interface, features and icons). He kept asking me if he had that new Windows 7, because he likes that....so you can imagine my confusion.
So I went home, spent most of my evening trying to get things to work properly, updated it to Office 2010 as I had some issues with the Outlook Connector for hotmail (which was another issue). Tested it all, hey presto "scan to email" works, leaves him a note on his desktop explaining everything I did.
I then gets a call at 10:30 from his lad to say his dads not happy, he can't scan to email and doesn't have Outlook Express, and now he can't write to CD (despite me explaining it didn't have a CD/DVD writer, but was told it doesn't matter because he doesn't use one). He got the jist that i was a tad frustrated and I tries to explain that I can't make it do something that is no longer supported in Live Mail, but it's working fine as far as I'm aware in Outlook 2010, so if he want's it to do it differently, I don't know what he means, but he can have XP and the old versions of software, but it would mean me rebuilding it again and setting everything up. He didn't want me to do that....
I mean I know he's old, but really it's taking the pi$$, if this was anyone else or it was sold on Gumtree, it would be "sorry, you buy a PC, not technical support for it's lifetime....................." or for me to spend the best part of a full day "setting it up".
I'm on the verge of saying, here's your money back, I'll set your old PC back up for you, but you will need to take it somewhere that can rebuild it.
Last edited:
