For the last three weeks or so I've had a devil of a job trying to have this battered ol' computer of mine fixed, reparied, or 'tuned'.

So with final resolve I call an 'expert' who agrees to come around to our humble abode with promises to restore it to its former glory, all for the modest fee of $215 !? Gulp ?

He arrives in a timely manner and immediately confronts the offending apparatus and launches into this verbal denunciation as to what's actually wrong with it. From that point forward, I haven't the foggiest idea what he's saying, as he dilegently shows me the various wherewithals that's causing my machine to fail. As I quietly stand there with my 'thousand yard stare', he pauses occasionally waiting for some sign of my understanding and acquiscence and naturally it never comes.

All of a sudden, He gets this look on his face, a mix of compassion, and desolation. And as he leaves, (with my computer) he mumbles something about old blokes who are significantly challenged without the benefit of any real semblance of intelligence. Being able to just get by, on a daily basis, with only this thin veneer of ability, that rarely fools anyone for very long ?

Seriously, after he left I wondered if he is right ? Perhaps I do have a much lower IQ ? Below the national average for my age group ?
I certainly have no illusion about my limitations. In the late nineteen fifties on joining the military, they put as all through a battery of academic tests. Joining the police, we had a few too, but they were very particular about spelling, dictation to be exact, a potential recruit was permitted very few errors ? Therefore I do wonder if its all age related ?

Yet I've heard and seen people of both sexes ten, fifteen years my senior, speak most eloquently and insightfully on radio and TV. Perhaps then, it does boil down to IQ after all ?

Dear o sung wu,

I don 't for one moment believe on the reliance on negative
stereotypes about older people.
They don't take into account individual differences and
instead treat all old people as though age were their
single most important characteristic.

For example, it's widely believed that the old are not
such productive workers as the young. When actually they
have better job-attendance and productivity records.

Then we're told that many of them are infirm (more than
80 per cent of the population over sixty-five are
fully capable of getting around on their own. We're told that
a high proportion of the aged are senile, whereas less than
10 per cent of the aged under seventy-five display
symptoms of senility. We're told that many of the elderly
are confined to nursing homes or old-age homes. Only
4 per cent of those over sixty-five are in this situation.

In addition, there are a variety of beliefs about the
typical personalities of the elderly - that they are cranky,
forgetful, sexless, highly conservative, and the like -
beliefs that either ignore the vast differences among
people, after all individuals grow more different, not more
similar as they age, or have no basis in fact whatsoever.

No matter how inaccurate the public stereotypes of the
elderly may be, it provides an implicit justification for
excluding them from significant roles in the economy,
family, and other areas of society.

Ageism against the elderly is often subtle, but it is
pervasive. Take a simple example, television commercials.
These adds almost always present youthful, attractive,
active people. When older characters appear, they are
likely to have health problems and to be promoting
health related devices, or funeral plans. Advertising,
like so many aspects of the media, often reflects the
"fountain of youth" theme that courses through a
culture in which people are encouraged to believe that
creams, soaps, lotions, colourings, vitamins, diet
pills, exercise machines, sports cars, or whatever,
will make them look like a young adult forever.

Your problem o sung wu is that you are just a slack old bugger, nothing to do with IQ, or age.

What you should have done was spend 10 years playing fool video games. If you had you would have finally got bored with that, & pulled the thing apart, to hot it up.

This leads to $$$ spent by parents fixing the thing, & some knowledge of the innards of the things by kids. Oh the other thing you could do is be interested in the things.

When it comes to computers I am like my wife or daughters with cars. I just want the damn thing to go. I am not the least bit interested in mucking with them, or TVs or vacuum cleaners for that matter. As my mother used to say, there is none so slow [to learn], as one who doesn't want to know.

The worst thing about age I find, apart from not being able to remember names, is that you have the time to step back & see what a bloody awful job most of our public servants, & politicians are doing.

I do hope you have a computer tech as good as mine, although at that price I doubt it. Mine can fix anything, in no time, usually has the bit it needs, [if it does] in the car, has never had to format the thing to eliminate a virus, & has never charged more than $80, including traveling time.

As my old mate used to say, it's no good getting old, if you don't get lucky.

Just ignore young smart-arses when they roll their eyes at anyone older! Mostly they don't know all that much themselves. About 15 years ago I subcontracted a nice young IT expert to set up and manage the GIS (computer mapping) component of a project - GIS was relatively new then. He worked on an hourly basis as needed, which was mostly when we couldn't make the program work. After watching him regularly sit at the computer cursing it, I tentatively asked what was the problem: 'I never know what's wrong with it! (though in the end he always worked it out). The project team took up his regular slogan 'If only I had a dollar for every time it does that' - ie something you don't understand. I've never been fazed by IT guys since. The test for a really good IT person is whether they are honest enough to say that half the time they don't have a clue themselves and have to work by trial and error.

On the other hand, I have a remarkable role model for growing older with technology - a 98 year old friend who is currently writing her 4th book. I helped edit an earlier one (when she was only 93) - she had typed it on the computer and we were testing layout options to discuss with the printers. As I played with fonts and headings, she leant over and corrected me - I said (defensively), 'I know how to do that!', to which she replied led 'Ahh but I'm just pointing out the short-cut I learnt in the advanced Word course last week.'

o sung wo those words could be said about me, I have those troubles with computers.
But we must face another point of view, we came to them late.
Kids can do things we never will.
BUT as a full call ham radio operator I can still help the young in that, my subject.
As we age we do not need to think as you do, I think using the thing is proof we are not dead yet.
I too think some experts are full of it! taking weak shots to justifie a self image thing that many would not like.
One point however, as I age the need to commit to learning is a must or I fail every time

IQ doesn't come into it, o sung wu.

In this example at least, you managed to out-bluff yourself.

Paying $215 to fix a "battered ol' computer" simply says that you have not made yourself aware of the cost of a replacement machine. Which has stuff-all to do with understanding computers, and everything to do with being able to read a Dick Smith or similar catalogue.

For example, this week in our neighbourhood, Aldi has a machine on sale for five hundred bucks that will last you another five years at least.

http://www.aldi.com.au/au/html/offers/2827_26141.htm

You don't need to know much about machines to realize that a) a 3.3Ghz processor is pretty quick, and b) two terabytes is a shedload of disk space. The rest of the jargon you can pretty much take for granted as saying "reasonably state of the art".