Law of Cascading Problems
First off let me say that my Ma, who'll be 84 on Wednesday, does really well on the computer. She's been online for 5 or 6 years now and can email, surf the web, Google and even has an account at Amazon.com.....which she uses! She knows what she uses really quite well. But try to explain change to her computer world and....well that's a challenging experience.
She's been on AOL the entire time she's been online and even with my explanations doesn't really understand that there's another way to dial into the internet that may be actually easier; using a regular web browser and an email client program. But after years of carping about fixing her AOL problems, I've come to realize that she does well on it so let sleeping old ladies lie.
But....over the last weeks she's been complaining about being disconnected from AOL after only 3 or 4 minutes. Again, quite proud of her....she actually called the AOL helpline and explained to me [after asking me if I knew what she had to go through to talk to a real person...gee really!] that the nice man in India checked her system and the problem is that she's never updated her AOL software. She's on Version 5....AOL is on Version 9. Thus the disconnect problem.
I called and verified this with a nice AOL guy in Pakistan who confirmed this and said all we had to do was to go to Wal-Mart, pick up the new Version 9 CD and install it and our problem would be solved adding that to be sure I uninstalled the old AOL software before installing the new. Check. So off to Wal-Mart I went last Friday to pick up the CD and install it. And this is where Craig's Law of Cascading Problems began.
Craig's Law of Cascading Problems says that, with computers, whenever you are faced with an answer that is too easy beware; in applying the easy fix you will generate a never ending series of new corollary problems that become increasingly harder to fix. And so it was.
I uninstalled the old AOL version and ran through the entire install of the new AOL Version 9...that is until at the end a warning box appeared stating, "Version 9.0 requires at least Internet Explorer Version 6.0, please install IE 6.0.....Good-Bye". My Ma has IE Version 5.5. Muffled cursing ensued as neither the nice guy in Pakistan, nor the instructions on the software CD nor on the AOL help website had made any mention of this. I had no clue that AOL was in any way linked to Explorer. But being the model of serenity these days I told Ma that there was a problem and I would have to download something on my computer, put it on a CD and return the next day, thinking that surely I would find IE version 6.0 on a download site somewhere and retrieve it.
Silly me. Microsoftİ, being who they are, likes to expunge all earlier versions of a product once a new one comes out. There is not a complete IE Version 6.0 to be found on the internet. So, I thought, I'll go to Microsoftİ and download the larger Version 7....the new browser. Being somewhat savvy in these things I looked up the machine system requirements necessary to run Version 7.0...Ma's computer being 5 or so years old. It looked like her machine would handle IE 7.0 or so I thought until I read the fine print. Version 7.0 is not compatible with Windows Millenium Edition. Ma has Window Millenium Edition. More cursing ensued. How can they offer a new browser that won't run on one of their own operating systems. Apparently Microsoftİ is trying to expunge the Millenium edition too.
I found this out over the weekend and knew I would have to report my findings, Ma has become an email junkie and is getting the jitters about not having the Internet. So today I just had to, in the simplest of terms, explain to her the problems. "We couldn't update your AOL because the browser, which you didn't even know existed and have never seen is out dated. They no longer offer the best updated browser that is the simplest fix and the newer browser won't run on your operating system, which I know you've never heard of, because Microsoftİ rushed a dog of a product out and now denies it ever existed".
I asked her if she understood any of this. She said, "well maybe I need to call an expert.......the nice man in India said all I needed to do was get a new CD at Wal-Mart".
She's been on AOL the entire time she's been online and even with my explanations doesn't really understand that there's another way to dial into the internet that may be actually easier; using a regular web browser and an email client program. But after years of carping about fixing her AOL problems, I've come to realize that she does well on it so let sleeping old ladies lie.
But....over the last weeks she's been complaining about being disconnected from AOL after only 3 or 4 minutes. Again, quite proud of her....she actually called the AOL helpline and explained to me [after asking me if I knew what she had to go through to talk to a real person...gee really!] that the nice man in India checked her system and the problem is that she's never updated her AOL software. She's on Version 5....AOL is on Version 9. Thus the disconnect problem.
I called and verified this with a nice AOL guy in Pakistan who confirmed this and said all we had to do was to go to Wal-Mart, pick up the new Version 9 CD and install it and our problem would be solved adding that to be sure I uninstalled the old AOL software before installing the new. Check. So off to Wal-Mart I went last Friday to pick up the CD and install it. And this is where Craig's Law of Cascading Problems began.
Craig's Law of Cascading Problems says that, with computers, whenever you are faced with an answer that is too easy beware; in applying the easy fix you will generate a never ending series of new corollary problems that become increasingly harder to fix. And so it was.
I uninstalled the old AOL version and ran through the entire install of the new AOL Version 9...that is until at the end a warning box appeared stating, "Version 9.0 requires at least Internet Explorer Version 6.0, please install IE 6.0.....Good-Bye". My Ma has IE Version 5.5. Muffled cursing ensued as neither the nice guy in Pakistan, nor the instructions on the software CD nor on the AOL help website had made any mention of this. I had no clue that AOL was in any way linked to Explorer. But being the model of serenity these days I told Ma that there was a problem and I would have to download something on my computer, put it on a CD and return the next day, thinking that surely I would find IE version 6.0 on a download site somewhere and retrieve it.
Silly me. Microsoftİ, being who they are, likes to expunge all earlier versions of a product once a new one comes out. There is not a complete IE Version 6.0 to be found on the internet. So, I thought, I'll go to Microsoftİ and download the larger Version 7....the new browser. Being somewhat savvy in these things I looked up the machine system requirements necessary to run Version 7.0...Ma's computer being 5 or so years old. It looked like her machine would handle IE 7.0 or so I thought until I read the fine print. Version 7.0 is not compatible with Windows Millenium Edition. Ma has Window Millenium Edition. More cursing ensued. How can they offer a new browser that won't run on one of their own operating systems. Apparently Microsoftİ is trying to expunge the Millenium edition too.
I found this out over the weekend and knew I would have to report my findings, Ma has become an email junkie and is getting the jitters about not having the Internet. So today I just had to, in the simplest of terms, explain to her the problems. "We couldn't update your AOL because the browser, which you didn't even know existed and have never seen is out dated. They no longer offer the best updated browser that is the simplest fix and the newer browser won't run on your operating system, which I know you've never heard of, because Microsoftİ rushed a dog of a product out and now denies it ever existed".
I asked her if she understood any of this. She said, "well maybe I need to call an expert.......the nice man in India said all I needed to do was get a new CD at Wal-Mart".
