I’ve never been much of a user myself but mum had been asking about it when we were visiting last weekend. So we downloaded it on to her laptop, got her registered and added ourselves to her contact list. Signed in and and skyped (is that the verb they use?) her for the first time last night. We had to talk her through starting up, signing in and answering my skype over the landline.

Convincing her that once we were connected, she could put her landline down was another thing though. 😀

I so love her. 🙂

Any other tales of your folks, grandparents, etc and their experiences of new technology?

Be prepared for 4 hours of technical back up phone calls – before they turn the router on.

And then complaining that they can’t see the screen well -” Have you got your glasses on Dad?

Yeah I know – should of bought them and ipad 😉

ipad on skype is **** (edit-not very good) as it has no camera.

when it does have a camera, and skype will run in background, it will double rock.

I used to have an old Siemens mobile (this is over 10 years ago now) which never displayed the name of the person who had sent you a text message, just the number. I once got a message that was just a few letters and some numbers. I thought it was a friend from college sending me some kind of joke text message to wind me up.

I replied with “what the **** is that supposed to mean?”

The reply came “its your gran, Im showing a friend of mine how my mobile phone works”

😳

My Mum is in her 60s and has always refused to have anything to do with computers – even though I have shown her Skype and how she might like to see her new grandson with it every now and then. However she has got a mobile and got my sister to teach her about texting as she liked the sound of that. So my sister taught her the whole txt spk thing which my Mum feels she has to use – most disconcerting getting texts from her with LOLs, etc given that no-one else texts me in that way.

My Grandma to any answer phone…

‘Hello… Hello… Are you there?.. Hello? If you can hear me…’
Then into a conversation, and then when she’d finally get hold of the person she’d called be upset that they hadn’t been very responsive.

I used to have an old Siemens mobile

S25 by any chance?

Older people and technology – you all know about Cyberdoyle, yes?

http://www.youtube.com/user/cyberdoyle#p/a/f/0/leb1l04-rgg

My mother won’t use the Internet, She is convinced that she will break it.

Old people do break the internet. Fact.

My mum doesn’t realise how close she’s come to breaking the Internet on numerous occasions. I have to be careful about calling it the “interweb” in front of her in case she starts calling it that in a completely non-ironic sense 🙂

My mum is 74, and unfortunatly, being racist*, refuses to have owt to do with computers. 🙁

She can speak several languages, is brilliant at making clothes and knitting and that, very handy and practically minded, but won’t go near a computer. Can take an old Singer sewing machine apart and fix it, won’t touch a keyboard.

Funny, innit?

*She’s not actually racist, I just called her a racist in exasperation of her stubborness to embrace new technology, once. Not my greatest ever choice of words. 😳

Against my better judgement, back in the day I once tried to get my mother (would have been around 67 at the time) to configure a dial up modem over the phone after she’d managed to wipe the settings.

Longest. Two. Hours. Ever.

“So, tell me what windows are on your screen at the moment”
“Windows? There’s no windows…”
“There must be, boxes with a bar at the top and an X in the top right??”
“Oh, THOSE, there’s three or four of those”

(Aaand breathe)

i spent a very long hour with my grandmother explaining mobile phone use, how it can be used anywhere, and that you need to keep it ‘topped up’ with money. I also had to write VERY detailed instructions on every aspect of its use, including diagrams of the buttons and what appears on the screen… she is nearly 90 though… and she does use it.

My Nan decided to get a dvd player, plugged in the SCART, plugged in the power, all going well. Then my mum got a call because it turned out it didn’t actually work, could she come round and fix it?

My nan says she has put a dvd in, nothing happened so put another in, nothing happened again. So my mum opens the tray and it’s empty “oooh what did you do there? how did that happen?”
Mum – “what do you mean, that’s where the DVDs go what did you do?”

Turns out she’d rammed the dvds through a gap in casing like it was a car cd player (she doesn’t have one of those though..)

end of story

My mum is fine with computers. As she says “I’ve got a flaptop, and microwave broadbean”.

However she has only just got past the mobile phone thing; “There is no point switching it on, because no one ever calls me”

My in Laws had one of those BT answerphone services set up (remote jobbie, no actual machine installed). The day after it was set up, someone left a message and simultaneously. the telly died. Quick as a flash, my mother in law put 2 and 2 together and made 7, so she rang up BT and harangued them about the fact the telly had died as a direct result of their system, she cancelled it there and then and tried to get BT to buy them a replacement telly despite everyone trying to convince her it was a coincidence. This event resulted in mobiles being ejected from the house and a ban on anything internet related… just as I had persuaded Father in law to go online.

Aaaaaaaargh!

“There is no point switching it on, because no one ever calls me”

Sounds very familiar to me! Do they go on classes for these excuses or do they get a free excuse with every pension payment?

Its uncanny that since she switched it on, people do call her on it! 🙄

Andy – Member

My mum is fine with computers. As she says “I’ve got a flaptop, and microwave broadbean”.

However she has only just got past the mobile phone thing; “There is no point switching it on, because no one ever calls me”

slowjo – Member

My in Laws had one of those BT answerphone services set up (remote jobbie, no actual machine installed). The day after it was set up, someone left a message and simultaneously. the telly died. Quick as a flash, my mother in law put 2 and 2 together and made 7, so she rang up BT and harangued them about the fact the telly had died as a direct result of their system, she cancelled it there and then and tried to get BT to buy them a replacement telly despite everyone trying to convince her it was a coincidence. This event resulted in mobiles being ejected from the house and a ban on anything internet related… just as I had persuaded Father in law to go online.

Aaaaaaaargh!

“There is no point switching it on, because no one ever calls me”

Sounds very familiar to me! Do they go on classes for these excuses or do they get a free excuse with every pension payment?

Oh so true, both my in-laws & my step mother complain that no one has called them for ages, I point out I have left numerous answer machine/voice mail/text messages. the usual reply is “I don’t want to turn it on as the battery might run out”

My dad got a blackberry to ‘get into the internet’ and sent himself 7 emails. He went back to his nokia brick.

“I’ve got a flaptop

😆 Coughs up tea over keyboard.

the first time my old man saw a satnav said ‘he very polite man’
Really! 😯

Sat my 89 year old gran down in front of the PC to skype my brother in the British Virgin Islands. His face appeared and she pointed out to me that he was on TV. He then started talking to her, causing much confusion. We eventually convinced her he really was on the other end of the video phone ‘thingy’, she refused to believe he was abroad until he picked up the laptop and pointed out the view from his hotel balcony. Old people and technology, great.

My MIL is a 70 year old Thai women who has a hard enough a time using her mobile let alone a computer.
Her average day is 10 hours of meditation before walking to the local market and returning home to cook, clean, watch her soaps, harass my cat and then go to bed.

god love her when she was shown skype and got to see Mrs Q for the first time in a yar, the house, garden, snow and everything else we could get the laptops to. Her face was an absolute picture.
Even more so when she went off screen lay down on the sofa and carried on yakking away with Mrs Q, who had to point out she needed to be in front of the camera for her to see each other.

“I’ve got a flaptop, and microwave broadbean”

😆

I’d do a little dance of joy if I heard my mum say something like that.

Old people and technology, great.

It can be exasperating, but when I consider what people of my mum’s generation had to endure (WW2, the Blitz etc), and the practical (and woefully undervalued in today’s throwaway culture) skills that they had, then I’m little more patient in trying to help them embrace new technology.

We’ll all be old one day.

Agreed and be fair to my mum, she is 76 and largely self taught. Just dont expect anything rational when talking to her about Hard disk recorders and Set top boxes. On her 6th now.

While it’s all working, no problem, but the moment there’s a problem they’re straight on the phone… to my brother. Another good reason not to have a Mac: the time I save on helpline tech talks.