Not simple anymore

Living with computers used to be simple — in the 20th century that is.

Back then equipment manufacturers and software makers would use the term “user-friendly” to entice you and to make you believe that it would be plain sailing. The expression now is somewhat passé and the concept has shifted to something else. Besides, after all these years, consumers’ awareness and overall IT knowledge have drastically improved, implying that they are ready to handle more complex products. Strangely, you still hear the sempiternal “the Mac is easy, Windows is not” although even this concept is a bit dated.

Today, three of the main the aspects that have become annoyingly complex are antivirus software, updates and cloud storage.

Of course, computing was safer until circa 1995 when viruses started to become a real threat to data. However, the early antivirus software introduced was also rather simple to manage. Just install it on your machine, allow automatic updates, et voilà. Unfortunately today you have to choose from a large array of various products: simple antivirus, Internet security, anti-hacking, anti-spam, etc. What is the best choice? What is the safest one?

Assuming you take them all or buy a programme that provides a combination of all these types of protection, the installation and the settings are anything but easy, not to mention that such a big piece of software will constitute a burden on your device, slowing it down significantly. Good installation and handling of an antivirus has become as difficult as installing Windows from scratch.

How many times have you been unable to perform this or that operation only to discover that it is actually your antivirus that is preventing you from doing it, because it is “protecting” you from digital threats? Then your savvy friend tells you to tune up your antivirus differently, or to disable it temporarily, and so forth. More hassle in the end.

Updates, especially in the world of Windows, are a known annoyance. They tell you that they are important because they fix or improve the system. Still, they are time consuming, they prompt you to restart your computer and in some cases — rarely, one must admit — they simply damage your main system, forcing you to revert to a previous state, provided you know how to do this.

Managing cloud storage is another cause for headache. Again, it should be simple: instead of storing files on your local hard disk just save it onto the cloud space you have been allocated or you bought. Alas, if only it could be as simple as that!

There are various types of cloud storage. Some are straightforward, like Google Drive, others are trickier to manage like Dropbox for example. The latter, however, brings powerful functionality and by synchronising your data across all of your devices (computers, smartphones, tablets), lets you retrieve them from any of these devices, wherever you may be. It is precisely this synchronisation feature that can be dangerous if you don’t know exactly what you are doing. You may lose files accidently, overwrite the wrong ones, or open some and not find them in the state you saved them the last time you worked on them.

Whether Goggle Drive or Dropbox or OneDrive (Microsoft’s), with or without data synchronisation, you also have to learn how to set the sharing attribute on the folders inside the virtual drive, so as to share or not to share the files with friends, family or colleagues. Errors in sharing files can, understandably, lead to unpleasant surprises or embarrassment.

In the overwhelming number of cases, the difficulty and the eventual lack of simplicity are largely counterbalanced by the benefits. 

There is little doubt about how much we can do and achieve today with all these tools when they are handled and managed properly and efficiently. Learning your way through to overcome the hard part can greatly help. 

After all, everything in life has become a reason for continuous learning, and not only in the field of IT. Longing for the good old days or for a simpler life is not the way to go.