"Help" joke

Befuddled PC users flood help lines, and no question seems to be too
basic
AUSTIN, Texas - The exasperated help-line caller said she couldn't get her new
Dell computer to turn on. Jay Ablinger, a Dell Computer Corp. technician, made
sure the computer was plugged in and then asked the woman what happened when she
pushed the power button.
"I've pushed and pushed on this foot pedal and nothing happens," the woman
replied. "Foot pedal?" the technician asked. "Yes," the woman said, "this
little white foot pedal with the on switch." The "foot pedal," it turned out,
was the computer's mouse, a hand-operated device that helps to control the
computer's operations.
Personal-computer makers are discovering that it's still a low-tech world out
there. While they are finally having great success selling PCs to households,
they now have to deal with people to whom monitors and disk drives are a foreign
as another language.
"It is rather mystifying to get this nice, beautiful machine and not know
anything about it," says Ed Shuler, a technician who helps field consumer calls
at Dell's headquarters here. "It's going into unfamiliar territory," adds Gus
Kolias, vice president of customer service and training for Compaq Computer
Corp. "People are looking for a comfort level."
Only two years ago, most calls to PC help lines came from techies needing help
on complex problems. But now, with computer sales to homes exploding as new
"multimedia" functions gain mass appeal, PC makers say that as many as 70% of
their calls come from rank novices. Partly because of the volume of calls, some
computer companies have started charging help-line users.
The questions are often so basic that they could have been answered by opening
the manual that comes with every machine. One woman called Dell's toll-free
line to ask how to install batteries in her laptop. When told that the
directions were on the first page of the manual, says Steve Smith, Dell director
of technical support, the woman replied angrily, "I just paid $2,000 for this
damn thing, and I'm not going to read a book."
Indeed, it seems that these buyers rarely refer to a manual when a phone is at
hand. "If there is a book and a phone and they're side by side, the phone wins
time after time," says Craig McQuilkin, manager of service marketing for AST
Research, Inc. in Irvine, Calif. "It's a phenomenon of people wanting to talk
to people."
And do they ever. Compaq's help center in Houston, Texas, is inundated by some
8,000 consumer calls a day, with inquiries like this one related by technician
John Wolf: "A frustrated customer called, who said her brand new Contura would
not work. She said she had unpacked the unit, plugged it in, opened it up 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?'"
Seemingly simple computer features baffle some users. So many people have
called to ask where the "any" key is when "Press Any Key" flashes on the screen
that Compaq is considering changing the command to "Press Return Key."
Some people can't figure out the mouse. Tamra Eagle, an AST technical support
supervisor, says one customer complained 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. Dell technician Wayne Zieschang says one of his customers held the
mouse and pointed it at the screen, all the while clicking madly. The customer
got no response because the mouse works only if it's moved over a flat surface.
Disk drives are another bugaboo. Compaq technician Brent Sullivan says a
customer was having trouble reading word-processing files from his old
diskettes. After troubleshooting for magnets and heat failed to diagnose the
problem, Mr. Sullivan asked what else was being done with the diskette. The
customer'