Holy dogshit, Comcast is the worst internet service provider ever. I’m one of the unlucky people in a Comcast monopoly area, and my connection ain’t worth a hoot. If I opt for someone else than Comcast, my only options are DirecTV and Dish, and both are even worse. I’ve been mostly offline the past 24 hours thanks to cable outages and a perpetually resetting modem. I had Cox Communications in Phoenix, and they were out-frigging-standing. This Comcast business is for the birds. When internet goes down, that takes Netflix and Amazon Prime Video with it. I don’t get any teevee channels, and I couldn’t imagine having to deal with Comcrap as that utility provider either.
In my experience Comcast Xfinity and AT&T Uverse suck equally. I spent over 6hrs last weekend setting up a family friend’s new computer and spent hours on the phone with comcast as well as standing in line at the local comcast store to get new updated equipment. The irony was that I had to use my cell phone to contact comcast tech support because the comcast phone service was not working anymore after the equipment change out.
Anyway, speaking of things that suck. I am not impressed with Windows 10. I still have Windows 7 and am not planning on upgrading to 10 until I absolutely have to. It was virtually impossible to explain how to navigate around Windows 10 to the family friend (he’s in his mid-80s). Between the crappy comcast service and the Windows 10 experience, the elderly family friend looked like he was about ready to burst into tears.
If you are avoiding Windows 10, you should definitely avoid Windows 8. What a nightmare it is. It’s like a hybrid of a crappy operating system and a clunky cell phone, what with all the tiles and totally incomprehensible layout.
I think Windows 2000 was the best OS Microsoft has produced. XP close behind, and then probably Windows 7. To be honest, I’ve never had a problem with Vista. A lot of complaints were made about it, but it never really gave me any issues.
Speaking of the confused elderly, you should see my father-in-law wrangle with Facebook. He changes his password to something he thinks is trendy, such as walmart spelled backwards, or Jesus-something. Then he forgets and gets locked out because he doesn’t know how to reset it. Every damn time my wife and I go over there, she argues with his phone for sometimes hours, trying to undo whatever buffoonery he has committed. He also uses his 8GB of data in about a week watching youtube religious videos. They don’t have internet, so he has to hop on the Verizon network.
The only reason software broke in Vista was because they had been relying on XP’s bugs for 7 years. For years MS didn’t fix specific (non-user-noticeable) bugs in their APIs because of backwards-compatibility. In Vista many of those bugs weren’t reproduced so a lot of software that ran on XP broke on Vista.
Ahaha! The worst was when my mom (who is in her 80s too) was getting in the middle of things and trying to explain to the family friend about computers (she is only a bit more computer literate than he is). I really felt sorry for the poor guy!
At least I got the new computer working, the comcast phone service working, and got his email setup.
I’ve had to deal with the forgotten password issue too with my mom—more times than I can count!
I’ve been the free IT support for my mom for many years (since my dad passed away—he was very computer literate and studied computer programming as a hobby). I don’t mind it but every time something happens with her computer, it is always (1) my fault, and (2) an emergency (and it is imperative that I drive the half hour to her house to resolve it pronto). Oh well, at least I feel useful and chalk up some good karma points!
I was the on-call technician for my in-laws until things reached a boiling point and I withdrew my services. They abused the privilege, didn’t even say thank you, and expected I drop everything I’m doing and drive over (much like you described). I help my wife out with issues that crop up from time to time, but she basically knows enough for me to let her fly on her own. She brought over her boss’s laptop this past week. I spent 20 minutes on it, fixed it for free, didn’t get told thank you, and he ended up re-mucking it up anyway. I told my wife I’m not dealing with him any more. I am big on common courtesy and manners, and when people who are not paying me a red cent do not even thank me, I refuse to help that person any longer. It makes me curious, what is up with these people? I NEVER did tech support when I lived in Phoenix…no one approached me, and I didn’t have that stress in my life. This town just ain’t for me.
