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- The exasperated help-line
caller said she couldn't get her new Dell computer to turn on.
Jay Ablinger, a Dell Computer Corp. technician, made sure the
computer was plugged in and then asked the woman what happened
when she pushed the power button. "I've pushed and pushed
on this foot pedal and nothing happens," the woman replied.
"Foot pedal?" the technician asked. "Yes,"
the woman said, "this little white foot pedal with the on
switch." The "foot pedal," it turned out, was the
computer's mouse, a hand-operated device that helps to control
the computer's operations.
- Compaq's help center
in Houston, Texas, is inundated by some 8,000 consumer calls a
day, with inquiries like this one related by technician John Wolf:
"A frustrated customer called, who said her brand new Contura
would not work. She said she had unpacked the unit, plugged it
in, opened it up and sat there for 20 minutes waiting for something
to happen. When asked what happened when she pressed the power
switch, she asked, 'What power switch?'"
- Seemingly simple computer
features baffle some users. So many people have called to ask
where the "any" key is when "Press Any Key"
flashes on the screen that Compaq is considering changing the
command to "Press Return Key."
- Some people can't
figure out the mouse. Tamra Eagle, an AST technical support supervisor,
says one customer complained that her mouse was hard to control
with the "dust cover" on. The cover turned out to be
the plastic bag the mouse was packaged in.
- Dell technician Wayne
Zieschang says one of his customers held the mouse and pointed
it at the screen, all the while clicking madly. The customer got
no response because the mouse works only if it's moved over a
flat surface.
- Disk drives are another
bugaboo. Compaq technician Brent Sullivan says a customer was
having trouble reading word-processing files from his old diskettes.
After troubleshooting for magnets and heat failed to diagnose
the problem, Mr. Sullivan asked what else was being done with
the diskette. The customer's response: "I put a label on
the diskette, roll it into the typewriter..."
- At AST, another customer
dutifully complied with a technician's request that she send in
a copy of a defective floppy disk. A letter from the customer
arrived a few days later, along with a Xerox copy of the floppy.
- And at Dell, a technician
advised his customer to put his troubled floppy back in the drive
and "close the door." Asking the technician to "hold
on," the customer put the phone down and was heard walking
over to shut the door to his room. The technician meant the door
to his floppy drive.
- The software inside
the computer can be equally befuddling. A Dell customer called
to say he couldn't get his computer to fax anything. After 40
minutes of troubleshooting, the technician discovered the man
was trying to fax a piece of paper by holding it in front of the
monitor screen and hitting the "send" key.
- Another Dell customer
needed help setting up a new program, so Dell technician Gary
Rock referred him to the local Egghead. "Yeah, I got me a
couple of friends," the customer replied. When told Egghead
was a software store, the man said, "Oh! I thought you meant
for me to find a couple of geeks."
- Not realizing how
fragile computers can be, some people end up damaging parts beyond
repair. A Dell customer called to complain that his keyboard no
longer worked. He had cleaned it, he said, filling up his tub
with soap and water and soaking his keyboard for a day, and then
removing all the keys and washing them individually.
- Computers make some
people paranoid. A Dell technician, Morgan Vergara, says he once
calmed a man who became enraged because "his computer had
told him he was bad and an invalid." Mr. Vergara patiently
explained that the computer's "bad command" and "invalid"
responses shouldn't be taken personally.
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