Anton Aylward wrote:
Mind you, it makes me wonder. The average American can drive most cars. It doesn't matter abut the details of the layouts of the controls, the radio, the hears & a/c, even if the gear shift on on the floor or on the steering wheel stalk.
Well, with tongue in cheek a bit, I'd say that's not quite true. Many Americans can't use manual gearboxes (and in most countries its a separate test), many can't safely drive around a roundabout (especially in the Netherlands). I still regularly use the windscreen wipers to signal a turn when I drive a German car (I normally drive a Japanese one). I still don't remember which is the windscreen heater button and which is the rear screen heater in my own car, and I've had it nearly ten years! And the really important parts - the wheel and the pedals, are standard.
So why should the difference between Office 97 and Office 2008 bother them?
In a car, at least all the controls are in front of you and you can directly see and manipulate them. In computer programs, they're buried in layers of menus, or dialog boxes, or config files or registries and you have to discover where they are before you can even begin to try to understand them. Direct manipulation without understanding also can have more severe effects than switching on the wrong screen heater.
its a Learned Disability driven my marketing.
You are definitely correct that there are vested interests in computer training though. And never underestimate the stupidity of the general public. The Amstrad computer manuals had a picture of a mains plug and a socket at the beginning. That was because of the length of time the support people had to spend answering questions about why the computer didn't work that resolved down to it not being plugged in, and then the user not understanding exactly what had to be plugged in! Cheers, Dave -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org