The thing to remember here is that nobody feels unimportant to themselves. There is no such thing as a trivial problem when it is your problem. I can't count the times I have read complaints about a particular Linux distro not supporting someone's sound card, or their video card, or printer, or some other thing. The (dreadful) response that I most commonly see is 'replace your (whatever) with one that is supported'.
Herein lies the difficulty. What if they can't? What if the customer lives in an area where computer upgrades are difficult to obtain? Many people live in the country, miles from the nearest electronic store. Even more likely, what if they can't afford it? Fact is, computers are costly little devils, even now when the prices are dropping. And for many people it is not a trivial matter to drop a couple of hundred dollars on a new video card, or even $50 on a new sound card. When your customer has a problem, no matter how piddling you personally might consider it to be, remember that they are probably operating under a different set of circumstances than you are. And quite likely, they have fewer options available to fix things than you do. So do your best to come up with a solution that they can use, not necessarily the one that you would have chosen for yourself.
Another real world example here - I recently acquired a copy of a (supposedly) newbie friendly Linux distro I will refer to as "L****ws". The version I got was release 3.0, and this particular company had just released a new update to version 4.0. Not to worry, I was assured that the license fee included the right to a free upgrade from the "L****ws" servers. So I logged onto the "L****ws" web site and registered my new distro. I then happily and innocently connected to the company ftp server and began downloading. But then the fact that I am on a dialup connection reared its' ugly head, and I had to break the connection for an important phone call. I wasn't expecting any trouble, since I was using a download manager that supported resuming.
Unfortunately, I had reckoned without the institutional paranoia that is one of the hallmarks of "L****ws". When I tried to reconnect I was told that the password was wrong. I went back to the web page and reconnected, and found that neither the "L****ws" ftp server, nor their http server, allowed resuming a disconnected download. Apparently there is a time delay on the connection, and after a few seconds the server resets and you need a new password. I submitted a query to the "L****ws" support page (which promised in writing to have a response within 24 hours) and then started checking the user forums on my own to see if anyone else had this problem.
I discovered a fairly long thread in the user forums that showed not only was this a known problem, but that multiple people have been complaining about it for some time. A "L****ws" forum moderator had dropped into the thread and said that customers had basically two options: 1) Get broadband, or 2) order the CD-ROMs from the company. Since the full set of CD-ROMs for the upgrade would equal the total price I had paid for the original package, I decided not to go with that idea. And I do not have the option of broadband available at this time. The "L****ws" moderator responded by airly declaring that price was irrelevant, once you had tried broadband you would never go back to dialup. Well, this might be true. But if you don't use the internet for anything besides web surfing, chat and email then broadband is an unecessary expense. And in my case, I simply can't get it. Physically impossible.
Did I mention that the "L****ws" support page offered written assurances stating that all requests fro assistance from registered customers who were logged in would be answered within 24 hours? On day number six (6) I finally got a rather brief, very polite response that "L*****ws" could not help me with the problem and suggested that I check the user forums. Three days later I went back to check the status of my support ticket and saw that it had been marked as "Solved". If the problem got solved, nobody told me about it.
However, not to worry. There are several Warez sites out there.......
- "Grasp The Concept, Page 1"
- "Grasp The Concept, Page 2"
- "Grasp The Concept, Page 3"
