PC Mechanic

Wow, can't believe it's been 2 months since I last blogged... time simply flies when you're having fun working on customer sites. Like I said to my good friends Josh Lee (The FinServ Guy) and Jim Webber, I've become a 'One Blog Wonder'!

Anyway, over the weekend, my husband and I at an extended family gathering, once again, were bombarded with computer problem questions... the usual frustrated complaints also come with a bit of heat: "gee, you're in the computer industry why don't you guys build it properly? why do I have to download this patch and that patch, and the computer is still running so slowly?" 

Is it just us in the computing profession that cops with this? have we really not done our job right in the first place, to create a trouble free set of software running on complete trouble free hardware? that's guaranteed to run with great performance for the entire foreseeable future?

I personally hold the belief that the computing equipment deserves much more love and care than it currently gets from the typical home user. For the family car, which has a lot less number of complex engineered parts than a computer and its associated software, we are asked to take it to the car mechanic for regular service, tune up every 6 months or for every 10,000km use. As a car owner, I understand that this is the necessary and important regular tender love and care I need to give to my car, in order to expect good performance from my vehicle. Perhaps we need to educate our users of this necessary preventative approach to maintain personal computers and ensure a long and happy life of our computing equipment and its associated software.