The “Couples Living with Technology” Therapy Session – HT033

Jim and Andrew finally record the show they have been talking about for 4-5 months, a show with their wives; to be able to capture a glimpse into the flip side of living with a Tech Guy, as well as the technologies that they use in their everyday lives as a result of their tech husbands.

Jims’ wife, Sarah, is the Technology Coordinator at Jim and Sarah’s church, and works with various technologies including Windows 7, Microsoft Office, media presentation software, and the management of media services within the church community.

Andrews’ wife, Michelle, is the General Manager of a Gymnastics Club who have gymnasts attending the gym from 2 through to 62 years of age.  The technologies in Michelle’s life include Windows XP, Windows Vista, and Windows 7, as well as Microsoft Office, and Quick Books for running the finances in the business.

Both Sarah and Michelle’s work environments use Windows Home Server to perform a role of file server, as well as bringing the workstation backup and recovery capabilities we so often talk about on the podcast.

Both husband and wife teams work as the defacto help desk for both businesses, with the guys essentially being a second level of support when the gals exhausting all previously explorer options.

In Michelle’s organization, Andrew performs all “last resort” remote support is provided by Team Viewer, which allows you to share a remote control session over a web interface, as well as Skype desktop sharing; likewise Jim uses the remote support feature within Microsoft Live Mesh.  Sarah also uses Live Mesh if she is working from home, or needs to quickly jump onto one of her work PCs, which in turn saves 20 minutes in the car to and from the office.  As data mobility is becoming more important, both gals use the ever popular Dropbox, rather than carrying around a USB drive, as would have been the norm a couple of years ago.

Dropbox is also becoming increasingly useful for sharing data within both immediate families, for sharing items such as photos the recent wedding of Jim and Sarah’s son, when Sarah was interstate visiting her family.

When asked about the most important technology in their lives that they could not do without, Michelle considers that her iPhone is her number one piece of technology.  She uses it for tracking her running program with Runkeeper, as well as using various training programs from the Apple iTunes Store, as well as mobile Google searches – and it’s also not a bad phone!

Sarah’s most important piece of technology is her laptop, and using a Blackberry device doesn’t quite have the functionality required to perform her day to day tasks, including and not limited to email, remote controlling machines at her work, and online scheduling volunteers for events.

Next we all talk about the difference between the guys and the girls, with respect to keeping computer parts and pieces “just in case we need them”, versus the girls who believe in the minimalist approach, as well as some of the things the guys do that the girls don’t necessarily find as cute as the guys think it could be.

Talking about the girls “technology nemeses” the two guys are big fans of social media and services such as Foursquare and Twitter, and the ability they introduce to share information back and forward in next to real time, whereas Michelle finds the more social media applications a bit too much sometimes.  Sarah’s biggest technology bug-bear is the home entertainment system, which has a side use of being an integral part of Jims’ podcasting rig.

The guys talk about research and decision making criteria involved in making a technology purchase.  Andrew will research something to the point of often deciding that he doesn’t need it, Jim tends to procrastinate a bit, whereas both of the girls if they decide they need something will go out and buy it.

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