He was a scientist who wrote FORTRAN code, etc., but retired about 10 years before PCs were invented.

But he wanted to get online and was enthralled with the idea of Linux and Free Software and so forth. So we got him set up with a dial-in account on a Mac IILC.

J typed up detailed instructions for him and we spent a few hours trying to get him up to speed with it when we visited for a few days.

No matter what anyone thinks, PC and Mac GUIs are not "intuitive". You have to be able to think about it the way the designers want you to use it.

Early on, he would call J and tell her that he could only get the internet to work if he moved the mouse pointer around in circles a certain way. If he moved it counter-clockwise, ... :-/

A few weeks later, J got calls saying nothing was working right, that he had followed all of her instructions, but it wasn't working.

So, I flew up to Boston one Saturday with the expectation that something was wrong and I'd be able to get it going again without too much trouble... When I got there and he showed it to me, there were masses of modal dialog boxes on the screen. It never clicked with him that he had to do what was necessary to get the dialog box to go away (usually by clicking "OK") before he could try again or do something else.

It gave me more respect for people who have to train new users!

Cheers,
Scott.