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Written by Tony Phelps
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Monday, 21 November 2005 |
“My truck has an oil leak. What do I do to fix it?”
This is a great analogy for the way computer problems tend to be
reported, even by people who are relatively sophisticated in terms of
IT. Of course, the question cannot be answered by anything except
another question, and probably a whole series of questions – and so the
initial part of the answer is usually “That depends.”
The analogy is used to highlight an attitude to IT problems that seems
to be quite pervasive. IT experts are by and large not yet mind readers
(although allegedly there is a beta product due for release to provide
that capability, code-named BrainReader) yet expectations are high of
them being able to fix a problem based on the most general information.
Frustration can set in on both sides when a series of questions are
felt to be unnecessary on one side and un-answered on the other.
To be fair, IT people work with IT every day and after a few years of
experience, not only do IT people get an intuitive feel for how things
are supposed to work, but it also becomes second-nature working out
what questions to ask (of the software or hardware, that is, not the
users of it). What may seem to IT people to be blazingly obvious is in
fact completely obscure to the first-timer, and it is easy to lose
sight of that.
So, when you have a problem with IT that one way or another leads to
you talking to an IT expert about it, bear in mind that there are
several versions of your software, dozens of competing equivalents, and
probably thousands of configuration combinations. If something is going
wrong, be ready to say as exactly as possible what you did, and what
resulted. Above all, if there is an error message, read it and make a
note of it. Most error messages are not all that helpful, but they
provide a strong indicator of which direction to head down, and simply
saying “Oh, I didn't read it...” is not useful to you or your IT helper.
And just in case – no, there is not really a product called BrainReader. |
