THE generation that Ian Mabb used to teach has grown up with computers.

The average nine- or ten-year-old is unlikely to be phased by e-mail, mouse clicks, digital photography and surfing the net, but the majority of his pupils these days are somewhat older.

Until July last year, Ian was a primary school teacher at Fordingbridge Junior School, but he left to concentrate on running Tutors For Computers, which offers one-to-one computer tuition at the client's home.

Ian (41) acknowledges that there are plenty of computer training courses around, but says that the key difference with his service is that his clients dictate what they want to learn and how quickly they want to learn it.

"Most people don't want to sit through exams and learn about Quark and Dreamweaver," Ian tells me.

"They want to send e-mails and attach photographs to them and that's about it.

"If all they want to is e-mail, why force them to do anything else?"

He estimates that 80 per cent of senior citizens buy their computers purely for e-mail and internet.

"They haven't grown up with computers and haven't had to work with them and don't feel confident about going to classes," he says.

"One to one at home is ideal for them and once people have got the confidence to experiment and realise they can't break the machine, they are away.

"They just have to get over the myth that it's difficult and complicated."

He says that most books on computers are incomprehensible to the novice.

"It's the simple things that throw them like not being able to tell the difference between a left mouse click and a right mouse click," he says.

"Losing documents and photos can be very dispiriting when they haven't got a clue how to retrieve them.

"A big plus of this job is being able to give simple solutions to problems."

Not all his clients are drawing their pensions by any means there is a large chunk of the population in professional jobs, who have thus far managed to escape the computer age, but are now finding it snapping at their heels.

One lady from Verwood telephoned to ask for help with a Powerpoint presentation which she later presented to the UN in New York.

Ian and his two colleagues, who work part time, cover an area centred around Fordingbridge, which includes the New Forest, Bournemouth, Poole, Andover, Salisbury, Shaftesbury and Tisbury.

Ian can help choose a computer in the first place and then help you get it up and running.

Whether you want to e-mail, surf the net, buy and sell on eBay, set up your own website or master wordprocessing, Ian can give the tuition to make it happen.

For the housebound and the less mobile in particular, computers open up a world of communication that in another age would not have been possible.

Lessons cost from £15 to £23 an hour like most things, the more you buy, the cheaper it gets.

"You get to work with such nice people, who are so grateful for even the small things you teach them.

"Once, an 84-year-old wanted to e-mail her daughter and tell her about the grapes she had grown, so I showed her how to take a photograph of the grapes and attach it to the e-mail she was absolutely delighted that her daughter on the other side of the world could see the grapes that she had picked that morning."

To contact Ian Mabb, telephone freefone 08000 757560, click on the link below, or e-mail: tutors4computers@hotmail.co.uk