Saturday, July 27, 2013

Make Things Simpler or me Smarter

   Too often I find things complicated computer wise and wish that I had more smarts to figure things out.

    Just look at my header! What is there is thanks to my son. I'm too afraid to throw everything away and start from scratch. There are unknowns that I don't feel comfortable with. I would like to be assured that there will not be snags on the way. I had buttons on my header at one time. Three buttons! I made them myself and it seemed simple. About a year ago I wanted to add another button and I couldn't do it. Worse than that, I lost my other buttons and couldn't put them back on. Things had changed since I first put the buttons on and I couldn't conquer the new system. It may have been a very small change but I couldn't get it.

     The new blogger format came in about a year ago. I decided to tidy up my reading list a little. There were some very dead blogs. I didn't feel obligated to follow these blogs when they were inactive. When I went to delete blogs , things had changed and I couldn't get rid of them. So my usual solution...forget about it.  So a few rainy days ago I decided to get rid of the blogs again. I noticed a button on the far right of the page that had the reading list on the left. I thought, "What's this for?" Yes, it was for managing the reading list. Soon   I was deleting the dormant blogs. What's really infuriating is that there are probably two other ways to manage the reading list  and delete blogs!

   Now I think the chances of making this old boy any smarter are between zilch and nil. So guess what? Things on the computer are going to have to be made simpler.

   I read an article today about cell phones. A high percentage of seniors have cell phones. Doro makes two cell phones geared to seniors. Bigger screens and keypads make cell phones easier to handle. Better sound makes it easier for seniors to hear. Cameras are also simplified. The other high tech stuff is taken off. Samsung has an Easy mode which is aimed at seniors. The European market has recognized and found seniors a long time ago.

    So my point is that they can make things simpler. But I would like to be able to do more things independently. I guess I'll just have to face up to the music and work a little harder to discover how to do things.