Wednesday, January 7, 2015

Why We HAVE To Be Nice To Our Young

They are fluent in smart phones, tablets, pads and computers.  And people like Richie and me are not. 

A computer to me has always been a sort of combined typewriter and filing cabinet because I'm a writer.  All else is more or less unnecessary.  And a computer is not a cell phone nor vice versa.  Unfortunately, in today's world they are and I am married to a gadget freak.

Ergo, we attended Smart Phone School last night.  It was a small class of nine or 10 "older" students co-taught by a couple of youngsters who couldn't have been drinking age yet.  But they knew their onions, let me tell you. 

Both were very friendly and very willing to steer the students through the shoals and rocks of mainstream means of communication. 

The battery in ours had worn down, probably because it wasn't fully off since we bought it which was the end of December.  We didn't know it either.  So we started class with 20 per cent battery power which diminished to 10 in no time.  The female instructor quickly plugged it into a socket and waited, but while it came back to 18 per cent ... it took another six hours to be 100%. 

Richie has already been playing with Siri, the GPS lady.  I have struggled twice, half an hour at a time, to put our router password into it.  The problem for me is that the keyboard is so very tiny.  I don't have particularly fat fingers (I don't think) but time after time I get the wrong letter or number.  It is maddening.  

And a pencil eraser used as a stylus doesn't work at all.  

Disheartened (to say the least) I turned to the iTablet that was part of the smart phone deal.  I can't even find where you turn it on.  I pushed them all so perhaps it needs a "simcard" which the salesman said he'd put in, but since I can't turn it on ... who knows?  Clearly we're going to have to go the iTablet school, too.  And us at our ages going to school! 

No comments: