* Woman #1: "What this Linux thing?"
* Woman #2: "It's a program that if you have it on your computer, you can't turn the computer off."
* Woman #1: "Oh."
Last year, the temp agency I was working for was arranging a contract for me, and some additional "computer skills" tests were necessary. The branch manager asked what kind of computer I was comfortable with. I said, "Windows PC," although I had used several others. She cut in right then and asked, "Word or Excel?"
* Customer: "I installed Windows 98 on my computer, and it doesn't work."
* Tech Support: "Ok, what happens when you turn on your computer?"
* Customer: "Boy, are you listening? I said it doesn't work."
* Tech Support: "Well, what happens when you TRY to turn it on?"
* Customer: "Look, I'm not a computer person. Talk regular English, not this computer talk, ok?"
* Tech Support: "Ok, let's assume your computer is turned off, and you just sat down in front of it, and want to use it. What do you do?"
* Customer: "Don't talk like I'm stupid, boy. I turn it on."
* Tech Support: "And then what happens?"
* Customer: "What do you mean?"
* Tech Support: "Does anything appear on your monitor? I mean, the TV part."
* Customer: "The same thing I saw last time I tried."
* Tech Support: "And that is what?"
* Customer: "Are you sure you know what you're doing?"
* Tech Support: "Yes, sir. What is on your screen?"
* Customer: "A bunch of little pictures."
* Tech Support: "Ok, in the upper left corner, do you see 'My Computer'."
* Customer: "No, all I see is that little red circle thing with the chunk out of it."
* Tech Support: "You mean an apple?"
* Customer: "I guess it kind of looks like an apple."
Then it took me fifteen minutes to convince him that he had a Mac. Even after showing him "About this Macintosh." I spent another fifteen minutes trying to convince him that Windows 98 wouldn't work on his Mac. He said it should work because Windows 98 is for PCs, and he had a PowerPC. I think he's still trying to get it to read that CD, because I never could convince him.
Two night forepersons at our company were discussing our new computer network after just having been to a brief orientation session. One of them wanted to know what "windows" were, so I explained. Just as she seemed to be catching on to the concept, the other foreperson piped up. "Well that's great, because we have ninety-five windows on there!"
* Tech Support: "Do you have any windows open right now?"
* Customer: "Are you crazy woman, it's twenty below outside..."
* Tech Support: "How can I help you?"
* Customer: "Well, everything is working fine, but there is one program that is not."
* Tech Support: "What program is it?"
* Customer: "It's called 'MSDOS Prompt'."
* Tech Support: "What's wrong with it?"
* Customer: "Well, I click on it, a black screen shows up with NOTHING but a sign that reads: 'C:\WINDOWS>', and it just sits there and doesn't do anything. I have to turn off the system to go back to Windows."
For my work-study job, I work tech support at a small college. One night I was working Help Desk and the phone rings. I pick it up to have a student telling me she can't get the computer to work.
* Me: "What operating system are you running?"
* Student: "Hunh?"
* Me: "Do you have a Mac or a PC?"
* Student: "Um, I don't know."
* Me: "Ok. What does the screen look like?"
* Student: "It's yellow."
* Me: "Ok. What does it say on the computer CPU?"
* Student: "What's that?"
* Me: "The big grey box."
* Student: "It doesn't say anything."
* Me: "Never mind that...do you have a little 'Start' button at the bottom of the monitor?"
* Student: "Monitor?"
* Me: "The thing that looks like a TV sceen sitting on the grey box."
* Student: "Oh! That! No. No start button."
* Me: "Ok. Is there a little apple symbol anywhere on the screen?"
* Student: (very puzzled) "Why would I have fruit on my computer?"
* Customer: "I have Windows Thirty One."
* Tech Support: "Ok, this program requires either Windows 95 or Win32s. Do you have Win32s on your system?"
* Customer: "No, I have Windows Thirty One, not Thirty Two."
* Tech Support: "Windows 3.1 is the operating system. Win32s is a program that makes your computer fast like Windows 95."
* Customer: "What's Windows Ninety Five got to do with it?"
* Tech Supprort: "You need either Windows 95 or Win32s to run this."
* Customer: "I HAVE THIRTY ONE! WHY WON'T IT WORK?"
* Tech Support: (giving up) "Ma'am, your computer is too old. Buy a new one with Windows 95."
* Customer: "I've heard about Windows Three Hundred and Eleven. Wouldn't that be better than Ninety Five?"
My father decided that it would be a nice surprise to install Windows 95 on my seven year old computer. He had one of his employees give him step-by-step written instructions but neglected to mention that my computer is so old. When I got home he had Windows 95 installed and was struggling to install the first piece of software.
* My Dad: "It says there's insufficient disk space. How much stuff to you have on the hard drive?"
* Me: "It was almost full. You shouldn't have been able to get Windows 95 on there."
* My Dad: "Well, I just followed these instructions."
I looked at the instructions and saw that he had backed up everything and wiped the hard drive.
* Me: "If you followed these instruction properly, the only thing on the hard drive should be Windows 95. How much space does that take up?"
* My Dad: "It doesn't take up any space. It's an operating system."
* Me: "No, it takes up a lot of space, and it shouldn't even be able to fit on this computer."
* My Dad: "No, you don't know what you're talking about. The problem is that you have too many files. You have to delete some of them."
* Me: "You already deleted all my files. They're on that stack of disks now."
* My Dad: "Yes, and those disks are taking up too much space."
A friend just got his new Aptiva/Win98 system and bought a bunch of software to go along with it. He installed everything, then complained that when he started his computer up, the screen was so cluttered he was having a hard time finding his desktop. I talked him through the process of making his desktop a more simple place by turning off fancy wallpaper, toolbars, and so on. He rebooted and said it was just as bad as it ever was. Sighing, I took a quick trip over to look at it.
Somewhat to my amazement, I discovered that every time the computer booted up, a half dozen or so program groups opened up on the desktop, and all sorts of programs were spilling their menu contents onto the screen. After some poking around, I discovered that he had installed everything -- everything -- into his StartUp folder.
I asked him why he installed all his programs in there. He said, "Well, I wanted to be sure they'd start up when I needed them, so...."
My father likes to delete things from the Windows System directory because he's convinced that's where the swap file lurks. I have to reinstall Windows 95 almost every day.
A friend of mine had an old system with a small hard drive and not much memory, so she continued to use Windows 3.1 rather than suffer under the strain of Windows 95/98.
She called me one day to help her because her computer will no longer run Windows. Past experience had taught me most of her computer problems were self-inflicted, so I asked her what she had done to the computer recently.
* Her: "Well, I needed more space from the hard drive so I could get more JPGs and WAVs from my friends on mIRC."
* Me: "Ok, so what did you do?"
* Her: "I just deleted all the blank files from my computer."
* Me: "Blank files?"
* Her: "Yes, blank files. I deleted tham all."
* Me: "What exactly is a blank file?"
* Her: "When you run File Manager, every file shows a picture. I just deleted all the ones with the blank page picture."
Say goodbye to every .DLL and unassociated file on her system. She was somewhat indignant when she found out she would have to find some Windows 3.1 install diskettes and reinstall every piece of software she wanted to use.
Back in the early nineties, when I was doing PC/LAN support, I was approached by a nervous salesman. He was very concerned because Excel did not work on his computer anymore. I asked when it had stopped working and what he had done. He explained that he had tried to speed Excel up by deleting some spreadsheet files that he did not need, hoping that that would boost performance.
Now, whenever a user gets into trouble after deleting something, this usually needs immediate attention. So I asked him to tell me exactly what he deleted. The horrifying answer was that he had used the File Manager to delete all Excel files he found -- you know, files of type EXE.
About two months ago, a client called in screaming profanities at me and demanding that I either give him a refund on his one year old system or send a technician out to repair it immediately. His problem was that the taskbar was on the right-hand side of his screen, and he couldn't get it back to the bottom.
A few days ago, a client called in wondering why he couldn't delete items off the Windows desktop. It was soon discovered that he'd already dragged Internet Explorer, MS Outlook, and a few other items off into the recycle bin, and was trying to delete 'My Computer' and 'Network Neighborhood.'
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