There are times I truly hate computers and the ‘geniuses’ behind them. Well, maybe hate is too strong a word to use. How about really dislike…
It’s not the computers themselves, but what happens when something doesn’t work as intended. And no one admits that it isn’t right. Or how to fix it. Or in a way that makes sense.
My security system gave a warning this morning that I was not protected in three of the four categories of computer protection that was part of my system. The fix button did nothing but tell me there was an error that could not be fixed. The ‘needs attention’ buttons did not bring up any displays to work with. The link to check for updates worked and kept telling me I was all up-to-date on my ‘shots’. I tried everything I could think of, including rebooting, to get my security back but the message remained.
I spent the majority of the day fearful to do anything but email, and even then I wasn’t real sure about how wise that was.
My common practice when up against something like this is to ask my love to figure it out. Bless his heart, he did everything I did and then went to the company’s help desk. Figured that was the best way to get around what seemed to him to be a registry problem – upload the whole thing again and start fresh. And uploading the current version would be better than using the disc that came with the machine two years ago.
Lo and behold – on the home page of the help desk – there was a message in the midst of all the rest of the info that we overlooked at first, saying in effect that the most recent update had something screwy in it for North Americans and not to worry we really were fully protected and they were working on a patch to take care of it. ITMT, if we really wanted to do something about the not-protected-message, we could download the whole system again.
My love’s first comment after reading that message was “And why didn’t they send an email telling you everything was really okay?” You’d think that with the way they can send out instant updates and messages to computers all over, they could’ve sent out that same message without waiting for customers to come to them.
So frustrating to have spent so much time trying to fix something that didn’t need fixing. And feeling like a dummy for not knowing what to do when there wasn’t anything that needed doing. Computer programmers need to come around to this side of the screen ever so often…
Hmmmm, I should probably broaden that last statement to include ‘experts’ of all stripes – pretty important to see things from the viewpoint of the novice when it is the novice, and not the skilled technician, who is the actual user of the information.
There, that’s off my chest. Thanks for listening.
Hi Judy!
Ouch! I hate when that happens!!! And one of the reasons I’m always uneasy about automatic software updates. When I was at GE, we always made it a standard practice to be running one update back from the current update to be sure the ‘new stuff’ really was as problem free as possible. With antivirus and security suites, that’s not always possible these days but on at least one of my computers I leave the update setting to manual (just in case something goes wrong). Then if something does happen, I have at least one computer to go on the web and investigate what’s going on when an update causes problems. You don’t mention the company involved but I’ve had Norton/ Symantec, Apple, and Microsoft all install updates on my computers with serious problems. And if they can do it, you know it can happen with any company. And I hate being a beta software test site which sometimes seems to be right where we are! In a couple of cases, I even had to roll back to a prior software backup when my desktop wouldn’t even boot!
All I can say is “a;lsdf;lksd a;lsdflkoei a;lsdfjfu0923keur!!!!!!!!!”
(insert your own obscenities where appropriate).
Computers – I love them but hate what aggravation you can go through…. and don’t know how folks without a strong computer background cope sometimes! You definitely have my sympathy.
– Dave M.
Thanks, Dave. I’ll take whatever sympathy and understanding I can get!