Re: Major interview

[Malonowa <malonowa@wanadoo.fr>]

Bill Ries-Knight wrote:

> My wife is in agreement.  She is spooked with the options on Microsoft Word to the point
> I type most of her stuff.

I've been in many situations in businesses where the staff weren't computing experts and
often implemented educational solutions for admin purposes. It's true that even us adults
don't need all the features of such big programs and often software aimed and young children
just fits the bill perfectly.

There may be stigma attached to adults using kids software but hell why not. I do and I am
an expert.

I once wrote a database for a university accommodation office. Just a small one. The member
of staff wasn't very computer literate so I wrote it with a kids interface. She learned to
use it in one afternoon. And afterwards was thrilled that she could actually do what she
wanted with the computer that she'd had for about 2 years. Then she asked, "So why does
everyone make all the other software packages so hard to understand". "It's the art of
one-upmanship," I replied. She found that concept quite silly.

My advice here is to find your wife a good kids word processor. It'll probably do most if
not all of what she wants and without all those menus she doesn't need.

Roman.