I'm usually happy to help out friends with one-off requests, but it depends on the nature of it... or rather I should say, if I'm doing it for free / on the che

I'm usually happy to help out friends with one-off requests, but it depends on the nature of it... or rather I should say, if I'm doing it for free / on the cheap, how much of an inconvenience is it? I won't ask much of anything for quick requests or advice. If I'm at a good friend's place helping them on their machine, I might just want their company to shoot the breeze or have a beer with while waiting for Spybot et. al. to finish. Usually dinner's good enough since it means I don't have to expend any money or effort for it, and redirect it toward something relatively simple for me. I have one neighbor who, under normal circumstances, I would have a hard time agreeing to help for free, but given that he and his construction company helped build our house(along with the fact that we trade wine / honey, and he helps us with other favors), it's something I'm more than willing to deal with. It helps that he generally listens to my advice too(i.e. back up stuff, don't use IE, etc.). On the other hand, I have a friend who I'm just about through with trying to help, though. He has frequently has numerous problems with spyware that infects his machine, and will ignore my advice despite discussing it at length for 30 minutes or more, only to have the same problems arise again several months later. I've even suggested(and even gave a burned copy of) Ubuntu 9 for his mother who "only goes on the internet and uses MS Office" but declined to use it because "he didn't know how to install it"-he didn't care that I could've walked him through it or that it was even easier than Windows... "nope, not Windows, won't do it."