A Letter On Behalf of the World's PC Fixers 638
Barence writes "PC Pro's Steve Cassidy has written a letter on behalf of all the put-upon techies who've ever been called by a friend to fix their PC. His bile is directed at a friend who put a DVD bought on holiday into their laptop, and then wondered what went wrong. 'Once you stuck that DVD in there and started saying "yes, OK" to every resulting dialog box, you sank the whole thing,' Cassidy writes. 'It doesn't take 10 minutes to sort that out; it requires a complete machine reload to properly guarantee the infection is history. No, there is no neat and handy way I've been keeping secret that allows you to retain your extensive collection of stolen software licenses loaded on that laptop. I do disaster recovery, not disaster participation.'"
Get over it. (Score:3, Insightful)
Newsflash: there are douchehats in every profession.
Computer fixers deal with people who click 'ok' on all the addons their favourite 'free' download site suggests.
Computer programmers deal with specs and users that want features they don't understand, and will never use.
Mechanics who deal with people who figured the 'little oil can light' wasn't anything serious and kept driving.
Accountants whose clients figure they didn't need to file their taxes for the last 3 years, or that it was acceptable to write off that hooker as a 'business expense'.
Teachers whose students are dumber than bricks, and have parents who insist its your fault.
If you don't like it, get a factory job.
Wow, it's pretty short (Score:1, Insightful)
"Buy a Mac"
Oh snap!
Re:One thing is for certain. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Dirty little secret among PC Techs (Score:5, Insightful)
You've never tried this, have you? The sort of person who is easily frustrated by technology but has been barely getting by on windows gets utterly enraged when presented with different UI paradigms. I know because I tried this "fix" a couple of times for people. The problem isn't that either UI is too difficult-- the problem is that you're dealing with somebody who is utterly refusing to learn anything, and handing them a new OS is asking them to learn quite a few things all at once.
Re:God I can relate! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Get over it. (Score:5, Insightful)
Mechanics who deal with people who figured the 'little oil can light' wasn't anything serious and kept driving.
Mechanics generally draw the line at fixing the results of that for free. Yet computer repairers are often expected to do exactly that.
Re:Get over it. (Score:5, Insightful)
If you are doing this professionally, fine. You're getting paid to deal with the headaches, you generally get paid an hourly rate to sort it out.
The referenced article refers to someone telling a friend that their problem is not something they can fix in 10 minutes for free. I feel this is totally reasonable.
Ive lost count of the amount of free support I gave to friends and family when I used to fix computers for a living. Some of it I was happy to do either due to the relationship I had with the person or the amount of good will they had generated through our personal history. Others were imposing on what was little more than an acquaintance to avoid paying a professional when they had no intention of ever repaying the favour.
Re:Get over it. (Score:5, Insightful)
When it's strictly business, lousy customers and messy problems come with the territory. For whatever reason, though, anybody whose profession remotely touches computers(even if your background in SAN architectures makes you no more qualified than anybody else to reload windows on a hosed box) is liable to be asked to perform a multi-hours slogging match under impossible constraints by assorted acquaintances and relatives of some distance...
Re:Dirty little secret among PC Techs (Score:3, Insightful)
I've converted more than a dozen individuals and families to the Mac. All have lived happily ever after.
A before you all geek rage on me, I have steered a few of the young-uns with a clear interest in computers as more than tools toward Linux.
Re:I quit using PCs (Score:5, Insightful)
You mean you quit using Windows on a PC platform. "PC" does not equate to "Windows Machine".
Correct target? (Score:4, Insightful)
How about a screed against his fellow technical people?
You know, the one who *create* the malware and junkware and root kits and junk operating systems and whatnot.
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Saying no (Score:3, Insightful)
If you have a neighbor who is a plumber, electrician, contractor, or handyman, you'll find that they demand to be paid for their time and their work.
However, those same people will come to you for help with their computers and expect it for free. I'll help out my immediate family and a few friends, but I just only have so much time and patience and energy. It's not even the money. I just don't want to deal with it.
Re:Wow, it's pretty short (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Says who? (Score:5, Insightful)
And that's good advice. But you have to make a clear distinction between altruism and enabling co-dependence.
There's the nice, sane, reasonably intelligent people (like your family) for whom providing a little technical support is non-onerous. Then there're the pinheaded droolers who rush from trojan to trojan, steal every bit of software they run, and plug USB cables into network ports...and make them fit
The latter class far exceeds the bounds of kindness, unless your definition of kindness also extends to running down to the local crackhouse to pick up your brother's latest order.
Some people shouldn't have computers any more than they should have children or any kind of metabolic protection against intoxicants.
Re:Says who? (Score:5, Insightful)
Ah, well, it sounds as though you have a good reciprocal relationship with your family and friends, where you help each other with things in your area of expertise. If that is the case, by all means pitch in. Cooperation is wonderful. The problem comes if you don't have reciprocal relationships, i.e. they ask for free computer help, but come moving day, they and their truck are nowhere to be found. I believe THAT is what the article is complaining about.
Re:Saying no (Score:5, Insightful)
1) Friend: How should I fix ${generic_problem} with my computer?
2) Me: Install Linux
3) ???
4) Repeat as required
5) Profit!!! Well, maybe not "profit", but they stopped asking me for help, anyway
Re:This is why I set down ground rules (Score:4, Insightful)
7. Oh, and YOU buy the beer.
UAC to the rescue! (Never thought you'd hear that) (Score:4, Insightful)
UAC works fairly well for this in Win7 /if/ you can get away with not giving them an admin account. Just like not giving root on the linux box. I've done this for two sane people, set up autoinstall of updates (including Windows defender), and so far no problems.
Of course you usually can't get away with that because users really really want to install that cool malware. And by users I mean family members.
Switching to a Mac solved this.. for a while (Score:2, Insightful)
I switched to using Macs in 2001. Which was great because I could just tell everyone I knew who used Windows "oh sorry, I use Macs.. I really have no idea". This worked pretty well until about 2007 when my parents finally got a Mac. On the plus side, stuff usually just works for them now, so it's not really a big deal.
I find (Score:3, Insightful)
That most geeks are the problem in that situation. Geeks in general seem to have less social skills and social graces than most people. They also seem to get a bit big-headed about their abilities and computers in general. Their attitude is "You should know that," and "RTFM noob." They feel put upon and act like martyrs when someone has the audacity to ask them for help.
Well guess what? Act like that and it shouldn't be a surprise people aren't so nice. Even if you do help them, if you are abusive about it they don't feel like you really did them much of a favour.
I'm not saying that geeks are always the ones at fault here, but I think it is more often than not. When you are nice and polite, help when you can, say no nicely and explain why when you can't, people are nice back. I've had good luck with that in general, and not just with family.
Some time ago I had a roommate who was a plumber. I helped him with his laptop. Old piece of shit, ran really poorly. While I couldn't make it great, I made it better. Took a fair bit of work, probably 4-6 hours of my time and really isn't worth it for something that old when you get down to it, at least had I billed him. However I did it to be nice. In turn, I got a lot of minor plumbing problems fixed. Heck he redid my kitchen drain without asking or charging for the parts (which were only like $10), he noticed it was rusting out and would be a problem in the future, and since it was cheap and simple he just did it.
Really it is on you to be the nice open one with people. If they are jerks, then you cut them off and stop helping. But you can't expect people to come and lavish help on you and only then do you open up to them. Be nice and friendly, you'll find many people are back.
Re:Get over it. (Score:5, Insightful)
I would say that part of the reason is that the tools needed to fix a PC are typically portable and/or highly available.
But this applies to other areas, the tools for working on cars (except really major repairs) are highly available and portable. Granted good ones cost a lot, but you can do minor things on your car (replacing spark plugs, changing oil, etc.) with stuff you buy at Wal-Mart. The difference is that you're paying a mechanic for their knowledge of how to use those tools. Why don't people realize it's the same thing for computers? Sure many of the tools are available for free, and are extremely portable, but knowing how to use them is the difficult part. It's quite easy for a novice to completely hose their computer using the same tools a skilled PC repair-person would use to fix it.
Having a teacher tutor involves them spending a predetermined (usually) amount of time with a student and that typically resonates in a person's mind as an act that requires pay.
So why do people not have the resonance when it takes 2 hours or more to repair their PC? And why do so many of them, despite obviously not knowing how to repair it themselves (or they wouldn't have asked you), seem to think it should have taken you only 10% of that time?
No, the problem is a lot of people, for some strange reason, think because they can successfully turn their PC on and browse the web that they're qualified to judge how easy and how quickly people can fix their PCs. They won't do the same thing to mechanics simply because they can turn their car on and drive it around. They won't do the same thing to a tutor even though they can read and write. But when it comes to PCs, many, many people are total jerks to those they want (often darn near demand) fix them. And as any IT worker can tell you, this attitude transfers to the office as well. Everyone's encountered numerous employees who think you're taking too long to fix their PC, even though they have no clue what you're actually doing.
But yes, a good solution is to say no. I only fix PCs for people who have treated me fairly in the past now. Everyone else I either politely put off (say I'm too busy, or I don't know what's wrong), or I just politely tell them I don't do PC repair. But I still boggle at the attitudes so many people cop when it comes to PC repair. It just makes no damn sense.
Re:Switching to a Mac solved this.. for a while (Score:5, Insightful)
Showing every one that using an OS with limited option limits the options you have.
Re:Says who? (Score:4, Insightful)
My son's orthodontist office called me in a panic one afternoon: "Can you fix our network, like, today?" Long story short, I now handle whatever computer or networking problems they have in barter for my boy's braces. I'm thrilled to death to get a price break on their services and they feel the same way. It's a great arrangement that I hope to continue for a long time.