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BBC Writer Tries PC Repair, Finds Poor Software
twitter writes "BBC author Paul Rubens tried out amateur computer repair and wrote about it. All of the software was for Windows, and he finds what most of us do: "Most of the problems I've been called to look at have been caused by viruses and spyware, some by strange software [conflicts], and only one by faulty hardware." He then flames the whole world of computer repairmen as 'a bunch of unqualified amateurs.'"
Luckily he wasn't trying out the amateur software development.
If we went by his definition of unqualified amateurs, most OSS developers would have been in the same category, but look what these "unqualified amateurs" have done to OSS?
Rock that crushes, Paper & Scissors that don't matter.
But because computers are so complex, it's inevitable, and usually not very long, before they stop working as they should.
This is your first mistake. Computers are not inherently complex (even Windows). People have a habbit of making computers more complex than they need to be (i.e. installing whatever whenever and expecting it to remain on there and stable forever). If people would just take the time to understand that they do not need 10000 things in their tray and took the 10 minutes to read exactly what each of those things they installed did they would quickly learn what the Uninstall Program feature is for.
When a domestic appliance goes wrong, you can ring a repair man. When your car breaks down you can call the garage. But when your computer system goes wrong, who do you call?
Google or a manual. Just like I did for my burned out tail-light on my car, the squeaking dryer, and the rattling my engine made when it spun a rod. Now, in the case of the spun rod there was nothing *I* could do without taking it to the dealer to repair but at least I had an idea of what to expect when they told me what was wrong with it.
The simple truth is that although computer systems are sold as consumer goods like fridges or washing machines, there's no computer equivalent of a qualified service engineer who you can get to come around and fix things.
You bought software or your hardware from somewhere I would guess (if you built this stuff on your own you have enough knowledge to fix it on your own). Take it to them. Dell, Gateway, Apple, whoever. If you're talking about software issues, call the company of the software you installed, oooh, it's Spyware problems. You only have yourself to blame for not researching carefully what you put on your computer. Just because you can modify your computer more easily than most pieces of hardware you own does not mean you should be absolved of all responsibility when it breaks. I wish that more people would understand that.
It seems incredible, but millions of families and thousands of businesses have no-one to turn to but a bunch of unqualified amateurs to fix the most complicated pieces of equipment that have probably ever existed. It's a scary thought.
What do you suggest? A school where they teach spyware removal? Or do you propose they learn about securing their networks (wireless and wired), their computers w/firewalls, spyware and virus protection (and frequent scans/updates), and keeping abreast of new news about OS updates and protections to the latest and greatest things out there? Why not spend the 20 minutes reading one of my posts or the 10000000 other posts out there that tell you exactly what you need to know:
1. Get a software firewall (ZoneAlarm) that tells you when an internal software package is calling home.
2. Get AdAware, SpyBot, and SpywareBlaster. Keep them up to date and scan frequently.
3. Install all the latest updates for your OS and keep them up to date.
4. Don't install something that you don't understand. Check with Google first. It's not hard to spend the 5 minutes with a Google search on the name of the program you want to install to find out if it phones home (and if you don't at least you have ZoneAlarm to give you a heads up).
5. Get some sort of virus protection (i.e. NAV or AVG)
6. Realize that regular maintenance is required for ANY piece of hardware (cars, HVAC, etc). Do you not change your oil every ~3000 miles? Do you not check your air filters in your home every month or two? Do you not add water softener salt every month?
I just gave five pieces of software that are free, easily found on reputable/major distribution sites, and that have probably been repeated elsewhere thousands of times. It amazes me that someone who claims that he can fix other people's problems didn't find this software and then had the audacity to claim that the software out there sucks.
If only more people were w
If they knew what they were doing, they wouldn't be wasting their time cleaning spyware off grandma's machine for $12/hr.
No boom today. Boom tomorrow. There's always a boom tomorrow. - Cmdr. Susan Ivanova
"a bunch of unqualified amateurs"
Perhaps if they were paid more than your typical McDonalds employee they'd be a bit better than said fast-food dispensers.
Boycott everything - they're all trying to fuck you one way or another
It seems incredible, but millions of families and thousands of businesses have no-one to turn to but a bunch of unqualified amateurs to fix the most complicated pieces of equipment that have probably ever existed. It's a scary thought.
Sure it seems scary at a glance (I hire a professional builder to fix my home, I hire some kid down the street to fix my computer) but after a while it does not seem so outrageous. If you're silly enough to download enough viruses or spyware to make Windows not load or your Internet connection stop working, you'd be silly enough to hire an 'unqualified amateur' to fix it.
Guy asked me for a quarter for a cup of coffee. So I bit him.
that we stop getting shoddy articles from amatuer journalists. They have no business offering their opinions or articles. /sarcasm.
The Blaster Master Fighting for Truth, Justice, and Evil Pie since 1979
Folks don't mind paying $50+ per hour for their vehicle repairs, but nobody wants to pay that sort of money to get their operating system de-loused.
I think that's a major part of the problem. It's hard to make money as a retail computer repair technician, and it's not a fun career. I would guess that the good ones aspire to move away from retail as soon as they are able.
Never ask for directions from a two-headed tourist! -Big Bird
I don't think he's calling the repairmen amateurs... but the people that joe user ends up turning to. Maybe the kid down the street, or the guy next door who hooked up his own router. Most people don't call someone for PC repair, they just find "someone who knows something" ... no shit that person is an amateur.
I know people, and am someone who learned back in the mid 1990s how to fix computers, and managed to keep up with current hardware trends to offer service superior or at least as good as a place like Staples, or a box-store repair center could provide.
In the world of computer repair though, you often get what you pay for. If you're outsourcing your computer repair to the kid down the street, you might get lucky if they're smart and read slashdot, or you could get someone who thinks you upgrade RAM by adding a hard drive.
Saskboy's blog is good. 9 out of 10 dentists agree.
If people went around treating their refrigerators as bad as they did their PCs, then we would have the same problem. Put the fridge in the middle of the street, let people take food, put food in, plug it into a DC power source etc. That thing would break in a heartbeat. However all we do is open/close the fridge and occasionally defrost/clean it. Have someone use their PC to goto ONE website ONLY (ie microsoft.com) with a direct pipe to the site - that computer will be bug free for a while. Maybe even 10-15 years just like my last fridge.
Get Paid to search
We really are a bunch of unqualified amateurs. That is, except for a top-level 3% or so (I could be wrong..... I could also be wrong about putting myself in this category). What matters is persistence and continuing research & education (self-taught properly niched persons, not that tech school stuff that is one of the greatest rip-offs and causes of problems in IT today)
What it comes down to is a very specialized people with a knack for dealing with themundane problems encountered on the desktop today. Server maintenance, network design and upkeep is simple in comparison to the myriad of problems encountered by a low-level desktop tech today, in retail or in a SMB environment.
The author does bring up some interesting points, however, regarding the difference between car/washing machine repairmen and computer techs..... there is very little one can do to ensure they are being serviced properly in todays marketplace that, at this time, can have no place for certification and the like.... "A+ Certified and Toilet Trained: Equally proud of both." to quote.
We built our systems, tuned them, made them perform better than they should, kept them virus free, and done it for less than going with a retail box just so we can be called amateurs. Sorry, but only pros can do things like that.
What's really sad though, is that all you need to do to use a computer and have almost no problems is well... RTFM. =/
-illumina+us "I put on my robe and wizard hat..."
A car is something that gets you to your job, and you invest thousands in (tens of thousands for most people). $50/hour for a few hours isn't all that much.
$50/hour for 3-4 hours ($150-$200) is often 20-40% of the original computer cost. When Dell is offering $549 packages deals with a flat screen, most people's knee-jerk reaction is that $50/hour is 'too high'. And it is too high, for most people and what they do. If it's related to their work, they can expense it. If it's just an email/gaming machine, they can buy a new one that's faster anyway.
creation science book
PRICE.
No one wants to pay $50 - $100 an hour for a qualified person to come to their house and tell them that their computer would run fine if they would stop visiting so many porn sites.
I have worked on at least 100 home PCs in my lifetime and have not found a single one that was free of pornography. Don't get me wrong, if someone wants to look at porn, that is their business, not mine. But don't get all pissed off when fat-young-heiffers.com loads your machine with digital nastiness that you didn't ask for.
"I'm just here to regulate funkiness."
Nobody with skills wants a market (consumer computer service) with whiny, cash-strapped cutomers who don't think they should have to pay the time and cost it takes, when a better market (business computer service) exists.
Computers are like other service industries, except that they require a lot more knowledge and care to prevent the problems from happening in the first place. People don't realize that difference, and expect solving computer problems to be like plumbing, with easy estimates of time and cause.
Promote civility: mod down any post starting with 'ummm'.
I find that most people are very stingy when it comes to getting qualified or unqualified help in getting their computer fixed. They'll drop a thousand dollars to pimp out their car but won't buy a hundred dollar external drive for backup until all of their business records are wiped out. And its next to impossible to convince people that their Windows systems need regular upkeep, which will come out cheaper than feverishly fixing the systems after they failed.
I also had a gig providing free tech support for a small non-profit, and when I had to quit it, I looked for a paid support option for them. I have found highly qualified company that would support the network for about $120 per hour on a regular contract. But before them, I have talked to multiple organizations touting only slightly cheaper support options ($75-100) who were utterly incompetent.
Sure, there are schools to get certified in Computer repair. But people who get this certification usually end up being the "Amateurs".
I did computer service work for 4 years while going to school. It was for a consulting firm. I'd be farmed out to different businesses all over the GTA.
I wasn't great at it. But I knew loads more than anybody and these businesses. After the first service call, all computer related problems were automatically our fault. You constantly had to deal with irate people. No wonder I only made a fraction of what the company I worked for was charging for my time.
The thing is. I learned this stuff on my own. Taking apart my first computer, perpetually upgrading it, writing my own software, etc. I had an interest. Most people don't. They just want it to work. They want this website to show their video clip, or that file to play this sound clip or whatever. They have no interest in knowing what you should and shouldn't do and how it all works.
The people who KNOW how it all works usually don't want to do it. I sure don't. After working in computer repair service for four years, I hardly want to help out my best friends let along do it for "someone somebody knows with a problem". And there is the catch. People who know, who are good at it, and who can do a good job, don't want to. It's the Janitorial job of the IT world.
--- tracer.ca
Who wants to get roped into answering the phone at all hours from someone who cant figure out how to avoid a virus or worm? I wont answer that call from anyone. Get WebTV and shut the fuck up.
You cant pay me enough to swing by in the middle of my day to remove porn-popups, if you are gonna keep using IE, and not reign in your 13yr boy with a perpetual woody.
I dont care if you have a pair of 44Ds in your blouse, I aint fixing your machine unless you are prepared to sit on my lap while I load my "Spybot".
When I sit down in front of a Linux server I can whip out super professional tools like strace and ltrace and lsof and dig through /proc, whip out gdb, etc. and follow everything step by step through the source code. Everything's usually simple enough that I can fit the entire system in my head and see where the broken piece is (except for PAM). The system invites me to do this. I can diagnose problems scientifically, professionally, and quickly.
When I sit in front of a Windows box, with some exceptions, all I can do is push the same set of buttons that the user has been pushing, and see if I can find a combination that works.
PCs force me to become an amateur. Reason: bad tools available.
The problem isn't completely with technical incompetence, the problem can just as easily and will more probably be with care and respect for the customer.
It's a service issue, not a knowledge issue most times when you run into a computer tech who seems to be bumbling something up. Did they check to see what the problem actually was? Do they care enough if they're only making $7-10 an hour from their employer to save your enterprise business plan or presentation? Probably not.
Actually the whole thing is a lot like having a car. You can go through a bunch of different mechaniacs who are either dishonest or lazy, but once and a while you find that one shop where they're commited to service. I don't know about you, but I end up holding on to that shop's business card like it's solid gold. And that's an industry where there are standards to meet. I pay more for better, and I'm always happy with the result.
So WE as computer techies are to blame for this attitude in non computer techies in two ways; way #1, we undervalue ourselves and in turn make the work we do less valuable. #2 we don't do the work properly because we don't respect it ourselves.
Actually come to think of it, as a freelancer, I'm not competing with these low-balling stained-shirt wearing Linksys cablemodem router admins anymore, I'm going to set my rates accordingly. //more of a rant than I wanted that to be.
Luck favors the prepared, darling.
I've met plenty of people with qualifications (computer science degrees, various certifications, etc..) who couldn't fix the simplest problems or don't even have an understanding of the most basic aspects of the systems. On the other hand, I've met other people who are more than capable and don't even have a college degree or a certification. The bottom line is this: If a person can fix the problem and provide you with an exact description of what caused the problem, and they can reproduce their results, they have the only qualification they need. (ie. they know what they're doing)
The biggest mistake that a lot of people make is thinking that computers are a business. They aren't. They are a technology and therefore you need technologically savvy people to work with them. I have no formal training at all, but most people I know always come to me for help because they know I can figure out and solve any software or hardware issue on a PC. I think it helps that I have a non-formal background in electronics first. I, generally, know how the circuitry works at the hardware level. So it's very easy for me to rule out hardware problems before I explore the software itself. Many times, I find that the culprit is too many apps that are stomping over each other.
When I was a Windows guy, it didn't take me long to discover that most of the instability in my system was caused by all the extras I loaded on for convenience. This was an alien experience to me as it wasn't that way in the Atari ST world I migrated from. I didn't like it, but I wound up finding that the best way to run Windows was to keep it lean and pretty plain vanilla. If I wanted extra apps, I always went for Microsoft products because they usually worked the best with Windows. Norton stuff was very cool, but resulted in a lot of instability (this was Windows 3.1). Then I got sick of having only one place to go shopping and moved to Linux. All problems solved...
-"...bad old ideas look confusingly fresh when they are packaged as technology" - Jaron Lanier (Digital Maoism on Edge.o
I'm an 'in house' computer tech. It's my sole occupation. I don't work on a helpdesk, not that there's anything wrong with that, I actually bring the machine to my desk and repair it.
For a while I tried to work independantly. I paid for some advertising and got a little work. Do you know what I found out. People (consumers, not businesses) don't want to spend money on computer repairs. And when they do they usually hire the wrong people.
I don't mind saying that I'm very good at what I do. And working for myself I had the freedom to do whatever I had to do to please the customer. That stands in contrast to what most 'store techs' have the freedom to do for the customer. They can only do what the customer is paying for... in other words, no extras, no 'going the extra mile'.
The end result was things like this kindly old lady (my first customer) paying $90/hour for some jerk to format and reinstall her pc. And he didn't update windows or tell her about doing so. WTF is that? 3 Months later she needed more work done....
So when I formatted her machine I made sure to instruct her on how to get updates. I made sure to give her a quick tutorial on security in general. I also told her she could ask me questions in the future via email if she forgot anything. And I did all of that *for free* because I care about the service I provide.
I think that a lot of 'rent a tech' types don't really give a damn about what the customer is going through because they're only getting paid $8/hour. (In Canada thats crappy pay).
But do you know what the funny part is? I worked for about half to a third of what my competitors charged. But they were from the big computer stores so I could charge less and make more... but that's irrelevent to the customer. But I found that most people didn't want to pay me, they would wait until it was so bad they couldn't do anything and then they'd take it to a 'store tech' and get crappy service.
So ya, no wonder people think the 'average' tech is a dumbass. It's because the tech is from Big O'l Retail Store and doesn't really give a damn.
You want good computer work, then find someone that does it exclusively. Ask for references. Shop around. But whatever you do don't pay $90/hour for an $8/hour tech to give you $8/hour-quality service.
One can be unfamiliar with LAN or common Linux/Unix issues (or PC-related issues at all) and be quite competent in their area(s) of IT expertise.
A lack of knowledge doesn't always imply incompetence. Sometimes it's simply a lack of knowledge.
Mainframe/UNIX Bit Twiddler and long time Windows/Linux Hobbyist.
The Theorem Theorem: If If, Then Then.
I do this for a living. Thank you to all the crappy software vendors, virus creators and spyware companies.
But seriously...I use this analogy for my customers: You change the oil in your car every 3000 miles, you read the owners manual, you took a driver's test. A PC is a machine just like a car and it needs attention. You need to read up on it and look after it just like any other appliance or machine.
When you're on the highway, you're sharing the road with other drivers...much like when you're on the internet you're sharing it with other people. You have insurance incase someone hits your car...but you don't have virus protection or spyware protection incase someone from the net hits your PC.
Same story, different day.
As little as humanly possible, unless the employer's a commie.
I have gigs of porn, and have never had a problem with malware. The one time I did get something was when I downloaded a crack that included a trojan. Downloading warezed software is inherently risky, but porn seems to be safe - no executables. The only way you could get in trouble is via browser vulnerabilities (and I don't use IE so I'm safe-ish) or something else like buffer overflows in jpeg libraries. Which isn't exactly porn-specific anyway.
Fixing PCs these days is now the equivalent of mowing lawns when I was a kid. Earning money doing something that the adults didn't want to be bothered with.
Yeah totally. Think of some catchy slogan or something.
"Firefox: Lets you fuck yourself without fucking with your computer."
It's easier to fight for one's principles than to live up to them.
I live in a resort town, which means there are a lot of folks who have their second (or fifth) home here. They have computers, they have computer problems, they're used to paying $50/hr to have someone walk their dogs back in Manhattan. They'll gladly pay that for computer service and tell all their friends if you do a good job, even if it costs them $200-$300 for a basic virus/spyware cleanup and antivir/spyware install.
In the same town I've dealt with friends who've asked me to check out their computer, but then decided a $20 memory upgrade was too much money to make their machine work properly. Just make sure your prospective customers know you're going to charge $50/hr (or whatever) and you'll get the right clients. It's a strange but true phenomenon that people who pay more for your services will be less demanding and more satisfied, whereas those who are getting a great bottom-dollar deal always whine and think they are somehow getting cheated.
When was the last time you had to do maintenance on your screwdriver?
And the fact that you have to do maintenance on a computer just means that the industry is still very, very immature. It SHOULD be just a tool. You shouldn't have to learn the intracacies of it just to use it. Case in point: cars. When was the last time you changed a distributor caps, or re-did the points on your engine or had service on your carbureator? Oh yeah. You haven't. Most people your age never have because cars are much more mature than are computers in terms of life-cycle, which is why it's easier to run a car (which is more complex than modern computers). It's getting better (Windows 2000 was a big breakthrough), and it's going to continue to get easier, and easier to use a computer, as it should.
I don't respond to AC's.
That's like complaining that a book is too hard to use because you have to spend all this time learning how to read. Some things have a certain amount of complexity and people need to learn. The car analogy is great, except that you aren't expected to repair your car or computer. You do have to learn how to drive a car, and you should have to learn to use a computer. Learning simple things like "read messages that appear on your screen instead of immediately clicking the ok button", and "do not install random shit that you don't need" would solve 99% of people's problems. The fact that people don't treat computers with the same respect they do cars is the problem. People don't tend to shove random fluids in random holes under their hood and expect their car to work, but they do the equivelent to their computers all the time.
From the article:
When a domestic appliance goes wrong, you can ring a repair man. When your car breaks down you can call the garage. But when your computer system goes wrong, who do you call?
In my experience, most people call their ISP, even for problems that are not internet related. How do I know? I work for an ISP. And they expect their ISP to fix it. They see their ISP subscription as a service contract. When, after some questioning, the ISP helpdesk operator ascertains that the problem is not internet related, or not covered by the support policy, then begins the hard part of convincing the customer. It's often easier to tell the customer to reboot.
You make the mistake of thinking you can educate the fundamental stupidity out of people. You can't.