[ubuntu-uk] Ubuntu User experience survey

[alan c]

On 29/05/11 17:33, Barry Drake wrote:
> On Sun, 2011-05-29 at 11:13 +0100, alan c wrote:
>>  ' the Ubuntu survey, I think it is a little beyond our scope Alan - it
>>  seems a bit too technical for us'
>
> Alan, I agree totally.  This is the real strength of Ubuntu - even a
> Windows user can make it work!

I was asked by a long time xp user recently if I would help in putting 
Ubuntu on his PC for him. He had been given my name by a dual booting 
more experienced friend. The PC was not functioning with XP, you could 
start up, but clicking on stuff did not get sensible responses. I 
don't do Windows (life is too short) and the person was happy to leave 
it as it was and not use xp, and (dual) boot into Ubuntu. So I set it 
all up and copied over stuff, set up thunderbird and imported OE stuff 
into it etc.

Ubuntu worked well, the PC was not fast, but was ok.

Towards the end of the exercise, I was showing him stuff and asking if 
it was ok for him etc, and he suddenly said
'What was that you just did?'
I had copied some text and pasted it. I showed him.
'I never knew how to do that!' He said. So I suggested he maybe could 
go to a class or whatever for the basics, anyway he now *knew* copy 
and paste!
He said he had gone to classes but had never been able to keep up and 
had never been confident to ask for detail and slower, explanation.

I got him to practice a couple of times, and it was not  a problem.

This person has now been using Ubuntu alone with no further help from 
me for a few months now. I did check back once to confirm  use of 
fspot and his photos, no problems.

I was interested to see this as an example were a person had continued 
to use xp to a point when it was impossible to continue and xp was 
wrecked, and at a user level of experience less than basic, yet he was 
perfectly happy with Ubuntu with virtually no 'training'.
-- 
alan cocks
Ubuntu user