martinlittle.com:thinkThin

I can completely empathise with him on this one. My parents are pretty good with their computer, but one of the recent virus attacks prompted me to check everything was up-to-date on their XP box. After over three hours downloading XP updates over a 56k modem, I was almost in tears. Mix in a few friends, multiply by cousins and season with uncles, and the time consumed is not insignificant.

Using the good old 80/20 rule, I think the large majority of people could be perfectly happy computer users with a significantly simplified device -- email, browser, word processor, spreadsheet, instant messenger & printing capabilities would almost cover it. Sticking that lot on a box with an auto-updating virus checker would remove so many of the support calls without noticeably impinging on flexibility. Many people happily live in this space. A carefully configured XP box can almost do the job ... but you need someone to do that initial configuration. The key word in that second sentence was could. A grand at PCWorld can buy you a whole lot of trouble: scanners, printers, webcams, a broadband connection, some wireless networking ... and you're quickly back in the personal tech support arena.

As noted in the replies to Steven's original article, somewhere in there is a fulltime job (I know -- I've looked for it quite a few times already). Here are the problems:

• people are used to referring to their local expert, getting advice for free. Suddenly charging friends fifty pounds an hour to install a virus checker is just not going to go down well.
• the job could easily become very boring. Installing a wireless router is only a challenge so many times

[Note to my friends, cousins, siblings and uncles: no, I'm not about to start charging you for help; yes, I'll still help you unbreak your computer and set up your moblog. ;-) ]