I am not going to fix your PC!

The problem MAZ describes is eternal:

In the middle of a good barbecue, the fatal question shows up: “Hey Maz. Since you’re here and you’re a computer guy, couldn’t you take a look at the home computer? It’s been a bit slow.” Horror.

So much so that there’s even a HOWTO on how to get yourself a computer guy who will fix your PC forever:

In this document we will see what a sucker is, that is, someone who buys, installs or fixes a computer for a relative, acquaintance or friend without charging, and who from that moment on becomes a slave devoted to maintaining for life the machine of the person he helped (in theory, just that once) out of kindness. On top of that, the machine runs Windows (almost always) and is a cradle of problems, headaches and wasted time.

My strategy for dealing with this has been dead simple: my family knows I’m not going to fix their PC. The interesting part is that my kids have developed skills I lack myself. The other day Javiera, my oldest daughter, fixed and “tuned” her aunt’s PC using techniques and tools I had never heard of. In that sense I’ve run my own Dosadi Experiment, and it has worked perfectly.

Evolution: the user adapts or goes extinct :) and if users went extinct, computing would go back to being the interesting field it once was….

(image courtesy of bestial.org)