Do you have good friends who don't know a lot about computers but like to have pranks played on them? I've learned a couple lessons the hard way and I think they would make good pranks. I suggest you be present to help the user out of the prank if it appears that they are getting too frustrated.

#1-Press the "insert" key. On the computers I have had it deletes the letter following the letter you type. Try it you'll see what I mean. It can drive you crazy. My keyboards don't show that is on.

#2-Go to the internet settings and select the option that "never" updates web pages. I just learned this one the hard way. Very frustrating.

Please do not credit me with these ideas. I may even delete this post shortly if I see that it is going to get people mad at me.

I've accidentally pressed Insert key, took a while to figure out

I use a laptop with a little touchpad in front, but I use a mouse. Occasionally the touchpad thinks I pressed it and moves the cursor, so I'm typing along, and then all of a sudden the text is going somewhere else

Or sometimes I'll accidentally press Home or End key and same thing, all of a sudden the text that I'm typing in goes somewhere else

If your friend uses Google Chrome, install this chrome extension into his browser:

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/ncage/hnbmfljfohghaepamnfokgggaejlmfol?hl=en-US

It is very simple and yet very devious -- all the pictures on their internet will change into various pictures of Nicholas Cage. It's pretty easy to disable or uninstall, but only if they know how to access chrome settings and think to look for it as an extension.

Take a screen capture of a persons desktop with nothing open. ctrl and prt screen on most computers. Move all of the icons into the far bottom corner as far off the screen as possible. Open Paint and paste the screen capture and save it as a jpg. Go into display setrings and set the background to the jpg you just created.

Now on the screen will be a picture of the old desktops but none of the icons will work because they are just part of the background picture. The real icons are hidden in the bottom of the picture.

>Do you have good friends who don't know a lot about computers

Yes.

> but like to have pranks played on them?

No.

When my son was 10, he was very into April Fools jokes. He changed the customized portion of Word's Spell-check as follows:

"the" was corrected to " " (a blank space).

So was "a", "to", and "this".

I had a document to get out. Of course, I was typing "the" frequently, but as soon as I finished typing it, it disappeared (was replaced by a blank space). I'd go back, retype it, and it would disappear again. He was at school and I had to get a work plan out. We had a little talk about appropriate and inappropriate practical jokes that afternoon.

My best computer prank was that someone had a FAX function on his new computer at home, so to test it, he FAXed a page to the FAX machine at work.

I saw the page print out, and figured out he must be testing the FAX function on his home computer, so I made a copy of it on plastic, and then flipped it over and made another copy on paper that was a mirror image of the actual page. And put it back on the FAX machine.

Then he got to work, looked at the FAX machine and could not figure out what was wrong with his home computer FAX function, that it was sending mirror images.

David,

Your son's prank was clever but your experience would have put me into a very bad mood. I'm at my worst when I'm facing a deadline and the computer isn't working right.

Too bad he was at school. A few minutes of frustration wouldn't have been too bad if he had been able to fix things quickly.

Stories like yours is why I included this in my post:

"I suggest you be present to help the user out of the prank if it appears that they are getting too frustrated."

Daryl

Daryl: Part of the post-joke discussion was how to avoid such problems in the future. The next year, he followed our plan and had remedy instructions in a sealed envelope.