[Tfug] [stein.les at gmail.com: TCS General Meeting]

[keith smith]

Good points.  I was a member of the TCS about 1993 and one other time about 5 years ago.  

One thing I noticed was 90% of TCS was retired folk, or atleast the menbership ot the Linux SIG.  This is a hobby to them.  Some did not see a computer until they were 40 or 50.

Now some are computer professionals however that number I would guess is below 10%.

The first computer I saw was an IBM with 64k and one or 2 floppies that were 160k single sided if I recall right.  That was 1981 or 1982.

That was about 25 years ago.  So if someone is 65 in 1981 they were 40.

Different audience.

Keith 
 
Jim Secan <jim at nwra.com> wrote: OK, like TR, I've been staying on the sidelines of this, mostly because of
excellent guidance I received from a grizzled old Chief Master Sergeant
during my AF days - "never try to teach a pig to sing, it only annoys the
pig."


But, FFCOL people!

This whole "discussion" has been a microcosm of why the greater Linux
community of geeks and the greater Windoze community of users (and I
emphasize USERS here) never seem to communicate worth a diddlydamn.  Yes,
its gawdawful magnificent that there are several dozen windows managers
that you can paste over the top of Linux.  Yes, many of these are great
stuff, and will save CPU cycles out the wazzoo.  However, given the speed
at which most CPUs run these days, the average Windoze user DOESN'T GIVE
SQUAT ABOUT THIS.

What a Windoze user wants, and I often fall into this same category, is a
set of computer tools that allows him-and-or-her to do what they want to
do.  And typically, what they "want to do" has to do with computers ONLY
because the tools run on a computer.  They don't want to have to do a lot
of fiddling to get their tools to work (and lets leave the sophomoric snide
comments about "tools" for the under-12s, please) and they don't want to
have to (a) download six other tools so that tool X will work, and (b)
relearn how tool X works every two or three years (or even months).  They
want to spend their time using the computer to do what they enjoy, or need
(for work), to do.

So, for a TCS-type Windoze crowd (and I'm not included the Linux SIG people
in this grouping), you want to show them the windoze-like things they can
do in Linux, with emphasis on things they want to be doing, which is not
load six different windows managers.  They want to design quilts, they want
to check Internet stock sites, they want to download pr0n (if truth be
told), they want to send e-mail to Aunt Zelda and get the latest
grandkiddies pictures off the Internet where their kids posted them, and
they want to download and use music and videos.  THAT'S your audience, folks.

And emphasizing that they can do just about anything they can under Windoze
on Linux (using KDE or GNOME) and can stop worrying about spending hours
each week on anti-virus, anti-snooping, anti-spying downloads and cleanups
is a major selling point.  Just don't try to sell them things they do not
want. 

Me, I'm bailing out of both camps and Going Mac.


Jim

At 10:29 PM 8/28/2006 +0000, you wrote:
>:)
>
>Now get off my lawn!
>
>..damn kids!
>
>Cheers,
>Bowie

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