ID: 114
Tech
Tech Support
Just in case you think you are TC (technologically challenged). The following is an excerpt taken from a Wall Street Journal article:
1. Compaq is considering changing the command "Press Any Key" to "Press Return Key" because of the flood of calls asking where the "Any" key is.
2. AST technical support had a caller complaining 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.
3. Another Compaq technician received a call from a man complaining that the system wouldn't read word processing files from his old diskettes. After trouble-shooting for magnets and heat failed to diagnose the problem, it was found that the customer had labeled the diskettes, then rolled them into the typewriter to type the labels.
4. Another AST customer was asked to send a copy of her defective diskettes. A few days later a letter arrived from the customer along with photocopies of the floppies.
5. A Dell technician advised his customer to put his troubled floppy back in the drive and close the door. The customer asked the tech to hold on, and was heard putting the phone down, getting up and crossing the room to close the door to his room.
6. Another Dell customer called to say he couldn't get his computer to fax anything. After 40 minutes of trouble-shooting, 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.
7. Yet another Dell customer called to complain that his keyboard no longer worked. He had cleaned it by filling up his tub with soap and water and soaking the keyboard for a day, then removing all the keys and washing them individually.
8. A Dell technician received a call from a customer who was enraged because his computer had told him he was "bad and an invalid". The tech explained that the computer's "bad command" and "invalid" responses shouldn't be taken personally.
9. A confused caller to IBM was having troubles printing documents. He told the technician that the computer had said it "couldn't find printer". The user had also tried turning the computer screen to face the printer - but that his computer still couldn't "see" the printer.
10. An exasperated caller to Dell Computer Tech Support couldn't get her new Dell Computer to turn on. After ensuring the computer was plugged in, the technician asked her what happened when she pushed the power button. Her response, "I pushed and pushed on this foot pedal and nothing happens." The "foot pedal" turned out to be the computer's mouse.
11. Another customer called Compaq tech support to say her brand-new computer wouldn't work. She said she unpacked the unit, plugged it in 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?"
12. True story from a Novell NetWire SysOp:
Caller: "Hello, is this Tech Support?"
Tech: "Yes, it is. How may I help you?"
Caller: "The cup holder on my PC is broken and I am within my warranty period. How do I go about getting that fixed?"
Tech: "I'm sorry, but did you say a cup holder?"
Caller: "Yes, it's attached to the front of my computer."
Tech: "Please excuse me if I seem a bit stumped, It's because I am. Did you receive this as part of a promotional, at a trade show? How did you get this cup holder? Does it have any trademark on it?"
Caller: "It came with my computer, I don't know anything about a promotional. It just has '4X' on it." At this point the Tech Rep had to mute the caller, because he couldn't stand it. He was laughing too hard. The caller had been using the load drawer of the CD-ROM drive as a cup holder, and snapped it off the drive!
13. Another IBM customer had troubles installing software and rang for support. "I put in the first disk, and that was OK. It said to put in the second disk, and had some problems with the disk. When it said to put in the third disk - I couldn't even fit it in..." The user hadn't realized that "Insert Disk 2" meant to remove Disk 1 first.
14. In a similar incident, a customer had followed the instructions for installing software. The instructions said to remove the disk from it's cover and insert into the drive. The user had physically removed the casing of the disk and wondered why there were problems.
As Ripley would say, believe it or not!
ID: 15735
Tech
Q: Why do Hondas and Hyundais have standard rear-window defoggers?
A: So your hands don't get cold when you're pushing them.
Q: What is the difference between a Porsche and a Porcupine?
A: With a Porsche, the pricks are on the inside.
ID: 7669
Tech
Perhaps the Most Truthful: on Microsoft marketing:
"There won't be anything we won't say to people to try and convince them that our way is the way to go."
Not on his mind while developing Win9X..circa 1981...
"640K ought to be enough for anybody."
On the solid code base of Win9X... thanks WPW!
"If you can't make it good, at least make it look good."
from "OS/2 Programmer's Guide" (forward by Bill Gates):
"I believe OS/2 is destined to be the most important operating system, and possibly program, of all time. As the successor to DOS, which has over 10,000,000 systems in use, it creates incredible opportunities for everyone involved with PCs."
Bill Gates, Free Market and the LA Times Thanks GC!
"There are people who don't like capitalism, and people who don't like PCs. But there's no-one who likes the PC who doesn't like Microsoft"
From the back of an old Digitalk Smalltalk/V PM manual, 1990:
"This is the right way to develop applications for OS/2 PM. OS/2 PM is a tremendously rich environment, which makes it inherently complex. Smalltalk/V PM removes that complexity and lets you concentrate on writing great programs. Smalltalk/V PM is the kind of tool that will make OS/2 the successor to MS/DOS".
from "OS/2 Notebook", Microsoft Press, (c) 1990 - an excerpt from an interview with Bill Gates and Jim Cannavino, p. 614:
Developer: Does the announcement [of the OS/2 joint development agreement between IBM and Microsoft] mean that Microsoft is curtailing any plans for future development of Windows?
Gates: Microsoft has not changed any of its plans for Windows. It is obvious that we will not include things like threads and preemptive multitasking in Windows. By the time we added that, you would have OS/2.
There's a reason they threw it away...
from "Programmers at Work" by Microsoft Press, interview with Bill (found on comp.os.os2.advocacy),
Interviewer: Is studying computer science the best way to prepare to be a programmer?
Gates: No, the best way to prepare is to write programs, and to study great programs that other people have written. In my case, I went to the garbage cans at the Computer Science Center and I fished out listings of their operating system.
Only the finest Microsoft marketing! (submitted by BarryB):
"If you don't know what you need Windows NT for, you don't need it."
On the Box of Windows 2.11 for 286 (submitted by GLDM)
"New interface closely resembles Presentation Manager, preparing you for the wonders of OS/2!"
On code stability, from Focus Magazine (submitted by Benedikt Heinen Microsoft programs are generally bug-free. If you visit the Microsoft hotline, you'll literally have to wait weeks if not months until someone calls in with a bug in one of our programs. 99.99% of calls turn out to
be user mistakes.
[...]
I know not a single less irrelevant reason for an update than bugfixes. The reasons for updates are to present more new features.
Unconfirmed quotes:
Microsoft's GUI innovations... 1983 (thanks E.R.)
"Imagine the disincentive to software development if after months of work another company could come along and copy your work and market it under its own name...without legal restraints to such copying, companies like Apple could not afford to advance the state of the art."
Even more 1984 predictions (thanks Scott Renyen)
"The next generation of interesting software will be made on a Macintosh, not an IBM PC."
ID: 17832
Tech
"One day a friend of mine called me up to tell me he was thinking of buying a computer. This guy is particularly sensitive to criticism and not exactly in the upper echelon of the IQ range, and personally I don't think he should own a programmable VCR much less a computer, but he's a good guy, so I said "good for you." The following conversation ensued:
* Him: "Well, I have a couple questions though, that I thought I should ask you, cause you know about those things, right?"
* Me: "Yeah, ok, what do you want to know?"
* Him: "Well . . . what one should I buy?"
* Me: "What do you want to do with it mostly? Play games, word processsing (blah blah blah) . . .?"
Twenty minutes later . . .
* Him: "Well, I think probably I should get a real fast one, you know, cause I want it to go fast so I don't have to wait for the Internet."
I proceed to explain, SLOWLY, about the difference between megahertz and modem speed, which takes another twenty minutes.
* Him: "So how much is this going to cost me anyway?"
* Me: "It all depends on what you want. Some stuff costs more."
(Now, let me say here that at the very beginning of all this I had stated that neither a monitor nor a printer would come with a computer itself, unless you went for a package deal. He was, at this point, saying that he wanted to spend about $500 and that everything had to be from the same manufacturer. This was when the 550 P3 had just come out, so prices were still higher than $500 for any system you could go buy in a Circuit City, which he said he HAD to do.)
* Him: "Well, you know, I just want the basic stuff, a monitor, and a printer and a scanner, and maybe a camera, plus the stuff to make cards and print photos and all that, and the stuff to take care of paying my bills, and online."
* Me: "Ok, well, you need to get a system first, then think about the extras. You really need to learn the basics first. A computer with a monitor and a printer is probably going to be a minimum of $800 to $1000, if you really want them all to be from the same company."
* Him: "REALLY?! Well, ok, but I probably will need two printers, so it'll be more then, huh?"
* Me: "What?"
* Him: "Yeah, you can do that, right, hook up two of the same printer to one computer?"
* Me: "Well . . . NO, you can't."
* Him: "But I'll need to do that!"
* Me: "No, really, you won't. Why do you think that?"
* Him: "Ok, wait, I know, what about two computers? Can you do that? Can you hook two computers together?"
* Me: "But . . . why? No."
* Him: "But I am going to NEED that! You can't do that for me?!"
* Me: "Ok, ya know what, what the hell are you talking about?!? No one ever NEEDS to do what you are talking about doing so why do you think you need to do this?"
* Him: "Well, when I go to print out that manuscript I'm going to write, it'll probably be like 800 pages or so, so how am I ever going to get one printer to print that much, and one computer probably can't even hold that much in one thing, right?"
Inside, I was going ballistic at this point, and it did boil over, especially since there is NO WAY there is 800 pages worth of anything in this guy's head, but I explained that (a) one computer can in fact "hold" that much and a whole lot more, and (b) one printer (unless it is a huge Xerox or other office type industrial machine) CAN'T hold that much paper in one shot.
I hope that none of you nice tech support people never EVER get a call from this guy, because I guarantee you it will be the worst call you ever get in your life. You guys may all have to get together and dedicate a page to him, posting only his calls, just to vent your anger. He is the cupholder guy, the NOSMOKE.EXE guy, the guy who insists he "hasn't changed anything" when he really edited his AUTOEXEC.BAT and CONFIG.SYS to include lines like "and don't say I'm bad and an invalid," and the guy who has everything plugged in but nothing where it is supposed to be plugged in. He WILL have his powerstrip plugged into itself and will insist that it is NOT. May the force be with you all; you'll need it."
ID: 2767
Tech
My computer is like Britney Spears; cheap, white, and plastic.
ID: 11652
Tech
THIS IS A TRUE STORY!!! My cousin works as a technical support receptionist at a computer company. This is an actual conversation he had one day:
"Hi, I'm having trouble with my computer. It's not working!"
"Well, I'll do my best to help you."
*gets technical information for computer from caller*
"OK, can you press 'Control', then hold down 'Alt' and, then 'Delete'?"
"Hey, it's in French!"
"What is?"
"The keyboard?"
"*sigh* Well, can you press..."
"Oh, darn, I just noticed, the power's off!"
"Well, can you turn it on, please?"
"How?"
"Press the power button."
"Where is it?"
"It's normally a big button on the actual computer, not the monitor."
"Like the lizard?"
"Pardon me?"
"Oh, OK, I got it."
"OK, now press 'Control' and then 'I'..."
" 'I' as in Isabel or 'I' as in Irene?"
And so on and so on..... :) Customers can be so...difficult...
ID: 17022
Tech
What's purple and commutes?
An Abelian grape.
ID: 17021
Tech
Why do mathematicians like national parks?
Because of the natural logs.
ID: 354
Tech
How do you know if a dummy has been sending e-mail?
You see a bunch of envelopes stuffed into the disk drive.
+10,000 Jokes