Tech adventures with Walt
Tags: zoom, teamviewer, digitalliteracy, seniorcitizen
Published: 2022-05-03 05:13:55

I spent over an hour last night trying to set up video chat on a good friend's computer. His name is Walt and he is a senior citizen and lives in Oregon. I live in California. The quite arduous process kind of went like this:

1. Start on Facetime. He has an iPhone; I have a MacBook Pro, but not an iPhone.
2. He mentions he wants to be able to video chat on the laptops. _Sure thing, sounds easy enough._
3. Try to navigate the installation of zoom on his laptop by giving him directions over Facetime on his phone. This takes some time. He has to point the phone camera at the screen frequently.
4. Finally get zoom installed. He does have access to his Gmail account so I send a zoom link. He manages to get in.
5. The audio does not work. At first I can't figure out why. He is not muted, his video is on. He can hear me.
6. I need access to his settings. He shares screen, I request control. But zoom audio is funny and I can't manipulate zoom controls on his computer using our zoom screenshare/control.
7. Sigh. I install TeamViewer on his system via zoom remote control. I get a TeamViewer session going, get connected.
8. We now have:
   A. FaceTime running for audio.
   B. Zoom running to diagnose the problem.
   C. TeamViewer running so I have actual granular control of things on his system, including zoom, so I can find out why his outgoing audio is not working.
9. The zoom timer runs out. Fortunately I have created a shortcut on his desktop to the zoom room, assuming my zoom link will be persistent through restarts of the zoom. I tell him to double click it to reconnect to the room when I restart it. The link does not work. Smh. I email him a new link and he joins.
10. On his machine, using TeamViewer to remote, I finally find some setting deep in the audio settings in windows that has disabled his mic. I turn it on. **We have audio (on zoom)!**
10. Now as if all this wasn't enough, my internet keeps getting jumpy and gappy and the video sucks probably because we are streaming _so much stuff simultaneously._ The internet borks and disconnects. I cannot reconnect to my local wifi for some reason and we are back to FaceTime on the phones laughing about this. "Is this what we are going to have to go through every time?" asks Walt. "No, just this time." I lie.
11. We are both ready to abandon ship. You can only polish the brass on the Titanic for so long. I think of one final thing, something he mentioned at the beginning; "My sister talks to her son on Google..."
12. Wait... whatever happened to Hangouts? Is that a thing? (no) What is it called now? ([google meet](meet.google.com)) Well, may as well give it a shot. I fire it up. I invite Walt via email. He connects immediately.

Angels were singing in heaven at this point. Hallelujah. It just _worked_, the first time. Amazing.

Now, that being said, if we had _led_ with Meet, we would've had the same weird mic setting problem. But hey, we did find something with easier-to-use controls than zoom that Walt immediately understood from the start.

The moral of the story is... there is no moral. 

Good luck zooming with gamgam. You're gonna need it. :D