At Wed, 7 Apr 2004 09:47:55 -0700 , Soren Harward wrote: > On Wed 07 Apr 2004 at 08:59:32, Bryan Murdock said: > > Do you think Aunt Tillie and her family might have more than one > > computer, and may want to share a printer between them ever? > Do you know how Aunt Tillie is going to share that printer? A floppy disk > and sneakernet.
So the answer to my question is yes. > Setting up a LAN requires a significant amount of computer > proficiency, no matter what operating system those computers are running on. > Think of what you have to do in Windows to share a printer: > - Physically hook the two systems together > - Install your ethernet card drivers, TCP/IP, and Client for MS networks > - Set both machines up with a proper IP address so they can actually talk to > each other > - Share the printer on the server > - Install the printer drivers on the client and attach it to the shared > printer on the server > This isn't a simple task. It would take even me a half hour to set up, > assuming that I didn't hit a single problem along the way. If Aunt Tillie > is capable of debugging her own network problems, then she is by definition > no longer Aunt Tillie. She is a proficient computer user. > The point is that computers require some proficiency to use. Period. No > matter how simple you make the OS, you're still going to have to learn some > basic skills in order to use them. And a lot of things that we geeks > consider to be "basic skills" are so far outside the realm of basic computer > use that the questions, much less the answers, don't even occur to Aunt > Tillie. I think ESR's point was, and you answered my question yes, people do want to do some of these things with their computers, and even if it's a pain to do it with windoze that doesn't really give Open Source software any excuse to make it a pain also. Especially not to make it more painful. That is, if Open Source wants to compete on the desktop. Bryan > Soren Harward <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> -- http://theboard.byu.edu/ So are you one of the question askers or answerers? :) ____________________ BYU Unix Users Group http://uug.byu.edu/ ___________________________________________________________________ List Info: http://uug.byu.edu/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/uug-list
