What doctors and computer techs have in common September 28, 2011
Posted by mareserinitatis in computers.Tags: computer, hard drive
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I don’t particularly care to deal with either doctors or computer techs. Occasionally, you’ll find an awesome one…but a lot of them can be a pain.
When I was an undergrad, I was trying to get a poster printed at the computer center on campus. Tried most of the day, and nothing seemed to be working. Finally, I asked them if they had any NT computers that could print to the plotter. Yeah…but they claimed it would make no difference. I didn’t care. I went to the computer running NT (which is what I’d been using on the lab computer), and was able to print it off without a hitch. On the way out the door, the guy was still insisting that it shouldn’t have made a difference.
The problem seems to be that some computer techs think that they are always dealing with computer illiterates. Maybe relative to them, I am, but that doesn’t mean I’m stupid, either. When my computer started giving me problems, the first thing I did was to back it up and then start running the disk repair utilities. When they crashed, I ran a hardware check. Sure enough, there’s an error, so I wrote down the code and looked it up.
I tried to get things fixed through the warranty program I purchased (non-apple), and they said it could be 3-4 weeks before I get my computer back…and I would have to mail it out of state. Sorry, but there’s no way I can go without it for a month.
Instead, I opted to call the two companies in town that do apple repairs. The first person was not terribly helpful. I told him it was a hard-drive error, and he said he would still have to run the diagnostic to see if it was. Hello?! If I can give you the number, it’s pretty obvious you’re just trying to gouge me.
The other person, however, took the number, talked to me on the phone about what I wanted for a replacement and said he could order and have it in by Thursday. He asked if I was okay with restoring my data to the new hard drive, and since I was, he said it would probably take 1/2 hour to swap hard drives, so he could do it while I waited.
Guess which person I’m going to take my business to?
On a slightly related note, I feel naked not having my computer bag with me all the time.
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I’m 59 and female. The young male techs in the IT services department have a tendency to speak to me loudly and slowly when I call them about a computer problem. I usually manage to interrupt them with the diagnostic steps I’ve taken and what I think it might be, citing chapter and verse from the technical documents online.
Once I said gently to a young man “I am much geekier than my age and gender might lead you to believe; you can just talk to me.” The other young guy behind him, who had been listening to him struggling to use single-syllable words, was vastly amused. The guy I was talking to, not so much.
Nothing worse than having someone confront you about your false generalizations. But yeah, I get it a lot, too…definitely because I’m a woman. There have been times where it’s just easier to play along (and occasionally I’ll learn something), but it’s still frustrating.
HD replacement on any recent Mac is a piece of cake, you can do it yourself in ten minutes as long as you have a #00 Philips screwdriver.
Ten minutes if you know how to do it. Knowing me, it’ll be a lot longer than that to look up the relevant info and then another chunk of cash to get someone to fix it because I still managed to do it wrong. (Hardware doesn’t like me…it’s best not to go there.) ;-)
“some computer techs think that they are always dealing with computer illiterates.”
There are a lot of jaded computer techs out there. They are used to dealing with computer illiterates (“Is it plugged in?”) so they just assume everyone they deal with has no idea what’s going on. I’m not trying to defend their attitude, but it’s not a profession generally known for attracting personable people.