[click170]

As one of those computer-literate relatives / offspring, I can't help but feel like I'm contributing to the problem by helping them "fix" their windows computers.

So I've stopped doing it.

I've explained politely but firmly that I'll be happy to help them transition to a Linux or Mac desktop because I use those in my daily life and am familiar with them, but I'm not helping them with their Windows 8 PC. I do not use it, don't plan to, and have no interest in it.

Anecdotally, the relative who is the most cautious seems to be the one who causes most of the problems by trying to click on all of the "helpful" messages that pop up. This came to light after they got a new laptop that only one of them had been using exclusively.

[graeme]

>As one of those computer-literate relatives / offspring, I can't help but feel like I'm contributing to the problem by helping them "fix" their windows computers. So I've stopped doing it.

This happened to me after I switched to mac. Not on purpose, I just stopped knowing how to troubleshoot.

Recently, my parents had to upgrade their old XP computer. They bought a mac. They were worried about learning Windows 8 without support.

[Widdershin]

This had been one of the nice upsides of swapping to *nix. I can now claim ignorance of Windows problems.

[fiatjaf]

This is something everyone reading this should start doing now. I will.