Let's get real and back to basics, a question asked should be answered sensitively according the perceived knowledge of the requestor.
Computer geeks still act like elitists. I don't think that will ever change, but I suppose it is getting better. It's not as easy to tell someone, "Read The F***ing Manual", since more and more computer products don't even have one these days!
Here's a feature I'd like to see in AmigaOS: A glossary of computer terms. Don't know what a checksum is? Don't dig through obscure webpages. Press the help key and type in the word! I think that would be a very powerful addition to the OS and would be greatly appreciated.
I wanted to find out what "CL2" memory was, but when I typed in "CL2 Memory" in Google, all I got was a list of vendors selling CL3 memory, or reviews saying you should "always buy CL2 memory". It took me about an hour of searching before I found an obscure tech site that EXPLAINED the difference between CL2 and CL3.
Now, of course, the term "CL" has been replaced with "CAS". How do "normal" people keep up with this kind of stuff? Well, they give up wasting hours of their life scouring the Internet for meaningless geek speak, and buy a Dell. ;-)
I agree. I tried getting help from the Mac community, but they suck at this kind of thing.
Sad, but true. It's especially bad with technically infirior products. I had lots of trouble with MacOS 7.5 crashing on me, so I went to some Mac experts for help. They ALL told me it was bad system extentions and I had to delete crap I didn't need. Well, that's nice, but an OS is *supposed* to manage system extentions and conflicts automaticly, and MacOS was too incompetent to do so. I thought MacOS 7.5 was supposed to be so easy to use? So why did Mac people treat me like an idiot when system extentions caused conflicts? Especially since MS Word and Photoshop were the only apps installed on the machine. What am I supposed to do? Delete all extentions used by MS and Adobe?
Mac people were no help back then. Times may have changed, but I haven't used MacOS X yet, so I don't know what the attitude is today.