- Running multiple applications at the same time is too confusing. She doesn't understand/notice the taskbar. She always tries to close one thing before starting another. Also, she doesn't notice that she has four copies of gmail open in the same browser -- since she doesn't understand what tabs are either.
- Window geometry is never manipulated. She has never maximized, minimized, or resized a window.
- As a result of the first two problems, inter-window operations such as drag and drop, cut and paste are often impossible.
- She doesn't know when it's correct to left click, right click, or double left click to do what she wants. So she opts for double-clicking on everything: links, buttons, menus, credit card purchases...
- She used to have 10 different "toolbars" activated in word 2003 because she couldn't find the button she needed, and they are randomly positioned everywhere because of accidental dragging (probably from overzealous double-clicking). Then one day she accidentally dragged the main toolbar offscreen, and was no longer able to open, save, or print...
- Corollary to above -- she avoids menus, since they appear to her as a hierarchical wall of text full of jargon. Also, they are difficult to use when you tend to over-double-click, since they close themselves...
- Activating Chinese UI in i18n-enabled programs it is often detrimental, as she doesn't have the tech vocabulary in Chinese either, and it just makes it harder for me to help her remotely.
- She clicks on a word doc attachment in gmail, spends hours editing it, and can never find the file again, because it's really called "C:\Documents and Settings\Username\Temp\awq2a393.doc"
- She will click OK on any dialog box to make it go away, because she is trained to close dialog boxes that way. Even if the dialog box is a security popup warning for a sketchy activeX control.
- She calls firefox "the google" because it was installed by google pack, and opens to the google homepage. She doesn't know the difference between the browser and the internet.
- She doesn't understand why she can't print a web page and have it look nice, without all the extra columns of ad junk.
+ Okay, one thing that does work well for her -- hitting control key twice accesses google desktop search popup to find anything -- even those annoying files in TEMP. She can remember that shortcut.
Once ipad gets traditional chinese support -- I'm going to get her one, and cut my tech support calls by 90%...