I ran across this article about how an entire generation of people also do tech support while visiting home for the holidays.
The Tech-Support Generation via MSNBC
Next week, millions of college students and young professionals will head home for the Thanksgiving holidays. We’ll sit with our families in warm, candle-lit dining rooms eating stuffed turkey, reminiscing over old photographs, preparing holiday shopping lists and … Please. Let’s be frank. We are going home to fix our parents’ computers.
yup…
Update:
Engadget also has a quick blurb on this - including links to helpful programs to load onto your usb flash drive before heading home.
In: 
Submit: 
Sounds familiar. Wiped my brother’s HDD and re-installed XP while I was there.
November 29th, 2004 at 3:47 pm
I restarted and cleaned my wife’s grandmother’s computer (which isn’t even online, go figure, windows comes with its own bugs).
My parent’s machine needed a little more TLC:
- cleaned up the cache and temp folders (bulging with over 500MG of garbage
- installed Ad-Aware (no system should be without, here is the link if you don’t already have the latest version):
http://www.lavasoftusa.com/
- installed a driver so I could run my external HD through their firewire port (OK, so this really doesn’t count as service to their machine, at least not for their purposes)
- installed Winamp, simply sacreligious that it wasn’t on the machine already. I mean, honestly.
November 30th, 2004 at 4:17 pm
Honestly? I think you meant siriusly, Kieran.
December 1st, 2004 at 9:59 am
You said it, for the record.
HEY EVERYONE, TROY IS MAKING FUN OF HIMSELF, COME CHECK THIS OUT!
SIRIUSLY!
December 2nd, 2004 at 4:25 pm