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Computer Makers Cater to Big Business, IT Depts.
Carl Bialik from the WSJ writes "By some estimates, twice as many computers are in the hands of individuals and very small organizations than are in the control of corporate IT departments, Walt Mossberg writes in the Wall Street Journal. Yet the computer industry caters too much to big businesses and their IT staff, Mossberg argues: 'The computer industry loves, and caters to, the IT segment because it buys machines in large quantities and is run by a geeky priesthood that speaks the industry language. By contrast, the non-IT camp, even though it is larger in the aggregate, buys one, two or three machines at a time and tends to be nontechnical. ... This focus on the corporate world can have real, and sometimes negative, consequences for consumers and small businesses. For example, some of the big security problems in Microsoft's software in recent years came because the company included features used only by corporate IT staffs in the products it sold to everyone. One was a communications feature, meant for network administrators, which sleazy operators misused to bombard people with ads. Why was that on my PC in the first place?'"
... business goes where the money is. This article should be a Fox News Alert.
What's your IP address?
My own family wonders why PCs from 5 years ago are no longer usable but their 10 year old VCR still ticks.
Dude, where did they get a VCR like that? I want one!
Gee, I thought wake-on-lan was something EVERYBODY wanted!
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Open Source Sysadmin
Heh. You failed attempt at making the home market sound attractive has fallen flat on its ass. The home user market is cheap. They already paid for the box and don't want to pay for service. "It came broken with the little monkey on it" they will argue ...and argue and argue and argue. They want 'home service'. They don' no nuttin bout the 'puter, but want people to explain it all to them. It's a bit hard explaining in detail exactly what went wrong. They have no concept of what goes on, but want a detailed explanation (4 years of education for free) in about 5 minutes. When you try and ultimately fail, you are either 1. talking down to them, or 2. not willing to explain. They will then take your 3 hours of work (while they look over your shoulder and shout 'whats that for?' in your ear, while the kids whine 'is the computer fixxed yet?' followed by the homeowner telling you 'is it going to be much longer?', only to have them ignore your advice as being from a mindless geek who they don't trust to doing a good job anyway, followed by their fucking the machine up exactly the same way they did before, and then yelling at you that you aren't done yet (they cheerfully broke in 30 seconds what your 3 hours fixed, and now they don't want to pay you, or they want you to 'fix it again for free'. Home users are like having 8 year olds running a nuclear plant. There is no way you can win with them (except by telling them that it's broken, buying it from them for $50, and selling them a new machine for $3000, which they will break within a day or so).