sweetnjguy29's Journal: Advocating Open Source / Freeware to the Masses

I had an extremely frustrating experience this morning with a co-worker who needed help installing programs on her new laptop computer. It is a nice rig, AMD64, ATI mobility RADEON, good number of ports and accessories.

However, she was having trouble with her e-mail. AOL e-mail of course. She couldn't send attachments. And she was upset that Microsoft Word was only a trial version that was about to expire.

So, what did I do? I suggested installing Kerio firewall and Avast! virus scanner along with some spyware utilities to make sure that nothing funny was going on. I also recommended Firefox and Thunderbird, along with a few other software utilities. I downloaded the installers at home and put them on my USB key.

When I actually got infront of the laptop, she didn't want me to install "FoxFire" or any of the other common techie tools I wanted to install on her system. I installed the virus scanner and ad-aware. Adaware found 44 adware objects, which I showed her, and removed. That scared her enough to let me install the Kerio firewall. She wanted me to hold off installing anything else, including OpenOffice.

However, an other co-worker who knows computers installed Microsoft Office, bootlegged of course, to her computer. He also uninstalled the virus scanner. I am sure he is going to uninstall Kerio, because he dislikes it.

Her main objection was that she wasn't familiar with the programs. She liked her Symantec anti-virus and AOL spyware blocker (which didn't protect her computer at all, btw). She was just about the name brand. She did't want to research or investigate.

So, the question is, how to you educate someone who doesn't know the difference between an Microsoft Windows and Microsoft Office? And someone who isn't willing to learn?

Do I insist on having complete control of the tweaking process?