Times They are a Changing!
Jun 15th, 2009 by Michele Brannon-Hamilton
I was the first one at work to jump into Vista and Microsoft Office 2007. I figured why fight it. I was teaching computer literacy classes to senior citizens and they were throwing questions at me that didn’t seem to make a lot of sense: “How do we shut down the computer? How do we print?” It wasn’t that I hadn’t heard these questions before but they were coming from my advanced students who should know how to perform these simple tasks. I mean suddenly they can’t remember how to shut down the computer? Obviously something wasn’t right.
It took about one minute on my new Vista based laptop to discover that I didn’t know what I was doing either. Where was the start button? How do you print and where is the “File” toolbar anyway?
Suddenly, I was a newbie and I still had to go to work the next day. How would I face the students? After the initial panic subsided, I noticed the teeny tiny question mark symbol in the top right hand side of the screen. It was HELP!
I typed in “print” and found that the cute flowery symbol at the top left of the screen actually hid the secrets of file. Honestly, I would have sat there all day and it never would have occurred to me that the flowery thing ‘did’ anything.
Today, I’m very happy with my Vista operating system and all things Office 2007 related which can only mean one thing – they’re going to change it all aren’t they?