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Wednesday, June 6, 2007
Why do we have to do all the work?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
In my regular Monday morning telephone call to my mom I learned that the wireless connection on her computer is acting up. She had just gotten the anti-virus updated and was pretty sure that the problem wasn’t the firewall.
She’s 84 and the years are showing on her. It’s about all she can do - despite having worked in the computer world back when all the data was fed into the computer on punch cards - to keep up with her PC. In fact, I think she’s about ready to give up and go back to postcards and notes instead of e-mail.
It made me think of how much computers and the online world ask of the users. There is a lot of routine maintenance that comes with using a computer - at least if you want to have some level of security. You need to mess with the anti-virus protection at times, keep up with any updates to your operating system, make sure the firewall is set up correctly, keep the network running and - the biggest hassle of all - take care of all the conflicts and glitches caused by doing all that.
Imagine if cars were like that - you’d have to do your own oil changes and tune-ups, check the tires each morning and figure out why the power steering is making that funny screetching noise when you turn too tight.
I’m sure not for ignoring all the maintenance - in fact I regularly preach on the need for it - but I keep thinking that there is one heck of a market for a service that seamlessly protects your computer and takes care of the maintenance chores remotely. Are there services that make that claim? Sure. But few would argue that any company delivers what I’m talking about - to make computing so maintenance free that all you’d need to know is the location of the on/off button and all you’d need to do is, well, compute.
There will always be hobbyists who like to mess with computers. I confess. I’m on the list. But they are way outnumbered by the Peggy Husteds of the world who just want to send me an e-mail reminding me that she didn’t want flowers for Mother’s Day and, instead, would like a box of tanning towels (I’m not completely sure what they are but she got them) that she saw on the Shopping Channel.
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