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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.'"
So this weekend (yep, my holiday weekend) a close friend of my parents needed serious help. Her external drive (where she unfortunately saved all her data without backups) had stopped working. This was her entire business (stupid mistake, but common among end users). She had already spoken to one "IT Pro" who had taken a look, said the drive was completely dead and told her to send the drive to one of those low level recovery services which cost $3000. I took the drive, plugged it in to USB, and copied her files right off. Turns out the firewire connection on the drive had died. This "IT Pro" didn't even have the brains to try a different connection type! When someone tells me they've got a friend or brother or son in IT I assume only that that person is an idiot. Often I'm correct. If you don't know what your talking about, shut your mouth. Don't try to oversimplify or make something up. It makes all of us look bad.