It amazes me what I learn when I work with people, real people, many of whom have computers and yet have no idea what they’re doing with them.

The computer industry did itself a disservice by making things easy to use. They actually made computers too easy to use. Because computers are so forgiving, people bumble along and never really understand what it is that they’re doing. That means that they can use the computer, to be sure. But they will never get the most from that expensive piece of equipment.

Take an experience I had the other day. I designed a web page for a political candidate. He’s an older gentleman, very intelligent and honest as the day is long. I told him to type in his web page’s address and he did. Then he said, “Not found.” This was puzzling to me, because I’ve accessed the page hundreds of times in that last several weeks.

I asked him to read back what he typed. He did. There were no errors; the name was what it should be, but the page didn’t come up. I was puzzled.

One of the most frustrating things when doing “tech support” over the phone (or in email) is that you cannot see what the other person sees. And when they don’t know computers, they often don’t use the proper terms to describe things.

Long story short: My friend was using Yahoo to “search’ for his web page. He was typing the web page address into the Yahoo search box. Eventually I introduced him to the browser’s Address bar. Lo and behold, he found the web page.

This event got me to thinking. I’ve seen other people, for example, use Google to “find” web pages. When given an address, these folks don’t bother with the address bar. This isn’t wrong, but it’s a bad habit that has unintended consequences. The bottom line is that these people use their computers, but because they lack computer literacy, they are not getting the most from the machines.

Funny, but buying a book for $15 (discounted at Amazon.com) would solve this problem quite easily!