No I am not talking about HAL or the Superman 3 computer who become sentient and refuse human demands and control. However, if your computer stops connecting to the internet for some reason or various presets have mysteriously changed, most people are ready to swear that their little desktop has morphed into a mini HAL and is bent on taking over the home.

Actually, I am talking about getting your friends and your family to have a feeling of empowerment over their computers. Arming them with enough basic information and skills that when their docile desktop rears its demonic head, they can perform basic trouble shooting instead of calling you (usually at dinner time when your 2 year old throwing food and feeding the dog).

Reid Goldsborough from Information Today has a nice article entitled, "Empower Others to Solve Computer ProblemsTips for helping friends and co-workers." It provides some nice tips such as making sure they have programs that can prevent major boo boos, such as anti virus protection and firewall software and keeping that up to date.

For example: My father, I love him, but not his computer skills. He has dial up and probably will never go to highspeed access. One day he called me (when the 2 year old was having a full scale temper tantrum) and was worried about how he thought his computer got a virus. After talking to him I discovered that he hadn't updated Norton in a year! You see it turns out he thought it took to long to download the updates over a dial up connection, so he just never did it.

Goldsborough article also mentions showing your friends and family how to download patches and create a troubleshooting step list, such as rebooting, undo, or system restore. Personally, I think the undo (thank you whoever, came up with such a brilliant button) or rebooting has solved a majority of the problems.

For those who are still technically challenged, one might investigate a third party support service. There are quite a few of these and they very in service and price.

For my parents a patch is for clothes. We (my brother, sister, brother inlaw, husband and I) have all had to serve our time as phone support to them. I have to admit we haven't gotten as many calls now that we (the kids and significant others) all chipped in to by them a new computer for Christmas, replacing their 6 year old on deaths door computer. Because the new computer has less software or hardware compatablity problems (because it is new and running new operating systems) there are less major computer meltdown problems. This has caused my parents to be more adventurous. Just this week they decided to buy a new scanner (they did ask my brother inlaw to recommend one) and that is a huge step. I am not sure if they or my brother in law installed the scanner, but I got 4 new emails with giant pictures from my mom. She was learning how to scan pictures and try and optimize them to send them via email. Way to go mom! Of course that was followed by an email for help (at least I can choose to respone when my world isn't hectic) from my dad because the wheel on his mouse doesn't scroll anymore.

I guess my point is that it is great to empower your users, your friends, and God yes your family. A little bit of confidence can go a long way and soon they might be able to troubleshoot some of their problems. However, be forewarned, it doesn't eliminate the help calls. It just leads to more complicated and different support help calls.