Re: House Call

["Patricia M. Godfrey" priscamg@xxxxxxxx]

Robert Holmgren wrote:
> That was then. This is now.

OK. When you said, "Not on a DOS PC" I assumed you were referring
to the days when there were such critters. Because even I
(laudator temporis acti that I am) don't have a DOS machine lying
about. Certainly Xy takes some tweaking nowadays. But for that
matter, so does Windows itself if you want it to run your way
(e.g., get rid of that demnition bow-wow in Search, make it stop
removing your "unused" icons, show file extensions and details
view, etc., etc., etc.)
> My point is merely that you can deliberately not learn anything
> about M$Word, and still get by. It will function as a
> typewriter and more.
But then such users create files that are so malformed (Word will
let one do that, apparently) that they crash other people's PCs
when they try to open them. Or that are infected with Word Macro
viruses.
Look, I'm not arguing that using a PC requires one to know
something about how it works. As I've said before, it's a kind of
tool-a multipurpose one--that man hasn't had to cope with since
we discovered fire and invented the wheel and chipping flint.
What I think one has a right to expect is that the instructions
be clear and accurate, and if you follow them carefully, the
hardware or program or whatever will do what it was advertised as
doing and you expected and wanted. And then you can say "It just
works."
If that's not the case, if the instructions are muddled or
unclear or downright inaccurate, and after you've done your best
to follow them the thing DOESN'T do what it was advertised to do,
or it works but it breaks half a dozen other things in your
system, then I think one has a right to, and should, get good and
angry and raise hell with whoever foisted the piece of offal on
the gullible public.
--
Patricia M. Godfrey
PriscaMG@xxxxxxxx