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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.
...he didn't try to become a pilot!
-Valiss
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
If they knew what they were doing, they wouldn't be wasting their time cleaning spyware off grandma's machine for $12/hr.
You're right, I charge $40/hr
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.
Fortunately, the hardware problem ended up being a temporary issue.
"Play is the only way the highest intelligence of humankind can unfold." -- Joseph Chilton Pearce
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."
Computer!? You said the secret word!!! AAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!
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'.
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
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.
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
My father is a veteran systems administrator with 35 years of experience in the industry. His and his girlfriends' home PCs keep getting virii, spyware, and adware.
It's not that dad's an old coot, he actually keeps his skills up to date. It's that Windows is so unbelievably insecure he just can't keep up with it. He uses antivirus software, he tries to keep it up to date, he has multiple spyware scanners/removers which he updates regularly, and he just can't keep the systems clean. Every year or two it gets too unbearable and he just has to wipe the machine and reinstall from scratch, or replace it.
If my father can't do it, then no normal mortal computer owner should be expected to do it.
I think I've got Dad just about convinced to buy a Macintosh. When he hears that I have absolutely no problems with malware and I don't even have to have special software to prevent it, he gets very interested.
There are two reasons why so many amateurs are the only ones doing this kind of work.
The first reason is that computers often cost more to fix than what was paid for them in the first place.
It can take a few hours sometimes to fix some of the more persistent viruses and malware out there. As a consequence, only businesses seem to be able to afford my services.
The second reason is that home users have unreasonable expectations. Many seem to think that once I've touched their computer, I own it, and anything that goes wrong after that is my fault, not theirs.
I've only made a couple of home user calls. My first call was on a PC that had 26 viruses and over 100 malware and spyware-related issues.
In another case I had to tell a lady that she could buy a new PC for about $200 less than what it would cost me to rid her aging computer of demons.
Surprisingly, I have noticed that I charge $20/hr less than Geek Squad out of the local Best Buy. However, the home computer market is a touchy one.
Proverbs 21:19
Heh. Lightweight. I break their computer and then they have to pay me to get an all-new one. And if they're too cheap to get one, problem solved.
I imagine like many a young geek I was not alone in repairing PC's for access to food, money and girls. I didn't have qualifications other then being born into a household where computers were modded on a regular basis.(my appleIIc dual booted between an ibm board and the apple board) Of course what was important to me as a young geek isn't as important now. Fixing someones PC is a pain in the ass. Inevitably there is going to be something you didn't expect - like very few people keep motherboard manuals, and how do you look up jumper info when the only machine around is the one your repairing. When I was 16-20 it provided pocket money and access to girls and food (pasta for powerpoint anyone?) but as an adult I long ago realized that my time is more valuable - if I was doing it for a company I would expect min $50 an hour, I spent the years accumulating the experience and refining the skills. The average home user isn't willing to pay the 50$ an hour so they get 16-19 year old kids(unqualified amaturs)fixing their pc's. I have nothing against these kids, and I imagine many of them are more capable then me with some of these technologies. As long as the home user refuses to pay professional rates for PC service then that market place will stay the domain of young geeks, and provide them a place to use their skills for food, girls and money. Let em have it - if you are worth professional rates work in the professional market - don't work in the home market and crowd out the kids.
The rock, the vulture, and the chain
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.