>This is like buying a fridge, taking it home, and having the light globe
>continually blow, calling the manufacturer, and being told that "This is a
>common problem, we charge $25 for solutions, can I have your credit card
>number please?"
OK.. While the frige model is simplistic we can still draw some meaningful
analogies.
First let's look at the reasons that you might buy a particular model of
refrigerator. You probably bought it based on feature set, maintainability,
usability, performance, product familiarity, name brand recognition, because
it's company policy, just to name a few... There's certainly other reasons
but, you get the idea.
So dazzled by all the hype, you buy the WIN model and haul that sucker home.
Now this particular fridge is real popular with vendors and they bombard you
with all kinda things that you can add to make it bigger, better, faster,
larger capacity, more ice, and so on. As a matter of fact, there are
thousands of vendors and hundreds of thousands of different components for
your fridge and you can install them yourself in billions of different
combinations. There are very few restrictions to what you can install. You
don't need any special training, no certification, no tools, in most cases
you don't even need experience. Hey... You can install 4 different ice
makers from 4 different competitors and have them all work at the same time.
In fact there are 1700 different light bulbs that you can get for this
model.
So one day you go to the fridge to get a cold beer and notice the bulb is
not working... Damn defective refrigerator!
Who you gonna call?
What resonse would you expect under those conditions?
If I made the refrigerator, I'd tell you to put it back the way it was when
you got it and see if that fixes the problem. Which is exactly what most PC
manufactures do.
You want me to troubleshoot your fridge under these circumstances... Credit
card please :-)
Steve Robertson
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Received on Wed Mar 07 2001 - 19:46:06 GMT