Question;: what do non-geeks typically use their home PCs for?
Please boost this to get a varied response.
This is research for a HPR episode
Discussion
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@kevie I am a geek so I do not count. But my wife uses a real PC for online banking and research (different kind of topics). Sometimes also gaming. But that got rare
@kevie My mom uses hers for banking, email, looking at the stock market, and generally looking up stuff on the internet
@kevie my partner uses theirs for planet coaster and making music in Logic Pro
@kevie
- Photobooks/Photos
- Vacation planning/research
@kevie Work- has to have MS Office or compatible open source stuff, mostly for .docx, .pdf, excel. Also work VPN. Teams (spit).
Browser for YouTube, social media, even some actual websites! Internet shopping. Food delivery app.
Backup of phone photos
Music library
Saved videos (fanvids!) so VLC to play them (too geeky?)
Family recipe files
Looking up places I'm going to on Google maps to put pins in which I can then access on the phone when I'm out.
@kevie ordering stuff over the Internet. Source: Varoius phonecalls by my Sister 馃槄
@kevie Reading email (Outlook), a very small amount of social media (only Mastodon) and looking things up on Wikipedia (and fixing spelling mistakes I find there) (Firefox) and adding data to a research project I'm working on (Access). If I ever manage to find an A3 laser printer I'll be doing some specialised word processing / text formatting.
Mrs Wife uses her laptop for email, shopping, accounting, writing documents and simple spreadsheets, watching films, and general Web browsing. She runs #KdePlasma on #Fedora #Linux and likes them both, but she wouldn't know how to set up or maintain her system beyond installing the apps she wants and setting up the GUI the way she likes it. She doesn't play games (that's what her phone is for). She's never used the command line, and finds it terrifying. She's never automated anything in her life.
@adhisimon @CppGuy @kevie My main argument contrary to only needing a web browser is that some websites behave poorly when confronted with a browser running on Linux. I was in a video interview and had a popup chat window and another popup fail to appear. I'm convinced that reflected poorly on my interview and I lost the opportunity. Making matters worse is you can't fully test the conference channel fully beforehand.
@kevie I was going to answer that but I live in a household of only geeks! And even when we had offspring still living here, they were geeklings!
@kevie LM user here, I use mine for day trading and financial research during NYCE hours. I mainly use the Zen browser.I I use KeepasXC for password and MFA stuff. I have a few machines/servers thay I SSH and Remmina to. I use LibreOffice for most office needs. I use Freetube to watch YT vids. I use a paid app Insync to sync some directories to Gdrive. I use GRSync to sync some directories to local servers and other machines. I edit audio / podcasts with Tenacity.
How many non-geeks are you expecting to find on the Fediverse? ;D
@kevie MacBook Pro, 14", used for web browsing (Firefox mostly, occasional digressions into Vivaldi), email, reading ebooks, looking up knitting patterns, etc.
@kevie @thelovebug
Firstly I am a geek, but in different things to some
At home and at work I use a windows laptop, but that's necessary to feed my artistic geekery for the software I use at home.
I also have an iPad Pro
@kevie What do you call a geek? I know a senior citizen who uses her laptop to make quilt patterns from photographs using Excel. But she's a retired contract negotiator who's an Excel expert.
@dick_turpin lets file that under 'browsing' 馃槀
@kevie On a more serious note. I'd argue 90% of users are not 'Geeks', and of that 90%, a high proportion use a computer (iPad, Tablet, etc) for browsing, specifically online shopping, either from high street stores such as NEXT, FatFace or Amazon, and booking holidays.
85% of non-Geeks use Facebook or Instagram, with only a small portion using 饾晱, but I don't think your question is that simple or at least the question is too wide. A better insight would be age ranges. 10 - 20, 20 - 40, etc.
@dick_turpin I totally agree, geeks likely make up <5% of computer users. The issue is that when your social group are geeks you tend to start to think of it as the norm.
I understand what you are saying, but it's not a deep analytical look, I'm just needing to know what the majority of everyday people use their PCs for.
Thanks for taking the time to respond 馃憤馃徎
@kevie It's a fascinating subject. I remember conversations at events such as OggCamp, where you could tell people were totally immersed in the FOSS world, giving them a false impression that, for example, Linux was huge, yet after twenty-plus years, we're still only (just about) 2% of the market share. We find it hard to comprehend that someone with an iPad whoafully underuses it. "I watch YouTube, post a few times on Facebook and send an email now and again.
To you and me, criminal under use.
@kevie
Online shopping
