Customer comes in with a laptop running Vista. Says, “the computer is REALLY slow!”.
Now this particular customer is one that goes from house to house fixing people’s problems for a living. We call them “field technicians”. There are really only two field technicians in the entire Palm Springs area that even remotely have a clue how to fix anything… This customer isn’t one of them.
She goes on to state that it isn’t a virus issue, she’s scanned with Norton and other anti-virus software, commissioned the help of another technician to do his checks, and even went as far as having Dell remotely connect to the PC and fiddle around with it’s innards. Obviously they were all unsuccessful.
I take it from her and start working – after reassuring her I’ll try my best. Since the almighty technicians at Dell couldn’t figure it out with their awesome book learnin’s, what chance do i have afterall?
The first thing I do is disable Norton anti-virus and do a quick look-around to see if everything else is in order. Everything cool, I restart… Works fine. Restart and enable Norton… Unbearably slow. Disable Norton and restart… Works fine.
As you could probably gather from my thousands of tweets and blog posts, Norton sucks. No matter what they do to it, it will always suck. It’s been this way for years and will continue to be this way for years to come. Shockingly, Norton was our issue today…
I call her. With perfect timing, I caught her in the middle of stuffing her face where there was obviously a live band playing in the background. I yell, “it’s ready!”. She says, “what was it?!”. Without hesitation I reply, “Norton… It sucks!”. I continue, “would you like me to uninstall it for you?!”. She yells back, “I know how to uninstall it!” [click]
Fine bitch. Forgot how bad ass you are… My mistake.
As expected, when they arrive to pick up the computer, I get the question, “if Norton is so terrible, how come everyone uses it?” and “what specifically about Norton caused this issue?”
Valid questions… At least they would be if there wasn’t a condescending bitchy attitude attached to them. If you stick around I’ll answer them…
1). People are stupid. People buy what advertisements tell them to buy. The more money thrown into marketing, the more return you’ll receive. It’s a general truth with obvious exceptions to the rule. Just because something is popular, doesn’t mean it is the best choice. *cough* Obama *cough* – My blog, remember?
2). I get this question a lot. “What specifically about _____ is broken?”. Fill in that blank with Windows, Norton, Internet Explorer, etc. I am not an engineer for Microsoft, Symantec, or McAfee. I didn’t design the software. I don’t earn money on their sales, nor do I care how well they do in the market. I fix computers. If something doesn’t work, I replace it with something that does.
2.5) … and as I have previously mentioned, explaining anything to a customer that has a ‘deer in headlights’ look makes me want to give them cranial blunt force trauma with the connector side of an internal hard drive. Most of my energy is spent holding back my personal opinions and internal festering rage that boils inside me directly related from your overall stupidity. So don’t try to push me off-guard or Mr. Hyde, the computer repair nerd, will send you back to Canada with some DDR ram embedded deep inside your CMOS!
Norton is the Best!
Customer comes in with a laptop running Vista. Says, “the computer is REALLY slow!”.
Now this particular customer is one that goes from house to house fixing people’s problems for a living. We call them “field technicians”. There are really only two field technicians in the entire Palm Springs area that even remotely have a clue how to fix anything… This customer isn’t one of them.
She goes on to state that it isn’t a virus issue, she’s scanned with Norton and other anti-virus software, commissioned the help of another technician to do his checks, and even went as far as having Dell remotely connect to the PC and fiddle around with it’s innards. Obviously they were all unsuccessful.
I take it from her and start working – after reassuring her I’ll try my best. Since the almighty technicians at Dell couldn’t figure it out with their awesome book learnin’s, what chance do i have afterall?
The first thing I do is disable Norton anti-virus and do a quick look-around to see if everything else is in order. Everything cool, I restart… Works fine. Restart and enable Norton… Unbearably slow. Disable Norton and restart… Works fine.
As you could probably gather from my thousands of tweets and blog posts, Norton sucks. No matter what they do to it, it will always suck. It’s been this way for years and will continue to be this way for years to come. Shockingly, Norton was our issue today…
I call her. With perfect timing, I caught her in the middle of stuffing her face where there was obviously a live band playing in the background. I yell, “it’s ready!”. She says, “what was it?!”. Without hesitation I reply, “Norton… It sucks!”. I continue, “would you like me to uninstall it for you?!”. She yells back, “I know how to uninstall it!” [click]
Fine bitch. Forgot how bad ass you are… My mistake.
As expected, when they arrive to pick up the computer, I get the question, “if Norton is so terrible, how come everyone uses it?” and “what specifically about Norton caused this issue?”
Valid questions… At least they would be if there wasn’t a condescending bitchy attitude attached to them. If you stick around I’ll answer them…
1). People are stupid. People buy what advertisements tell them to buy. The more money thrown into marketing, the more return you’ll receive. It’s a general truth with obvious exceptions to the rule. Just because something is popular, doesn’t mean it is the best choice. *cough* Obama *cough* – My blog, remember?
2). I get this question a lot. “What specifically about _____ is broken?”. Fill in that blank with Windows, Norton, Internet Explorer, etc. I am not an engineer for Microsoft, Symantec, or McAfee. I didn’t design the software. I don’t earn money on their sales, nor do I care how well they do in the market. I fix computers. If something doesn’t work, I replace it with something that does.
2.5) … and as I have previously mentioned, explaining anything to a customer that has a ‘deer in headlights’ look makes me want to give them cranial blunt force trauma with the connector side of an internal hard drive. Most of my energy is spent holding back my personal opinions and internal festering rage that boils inside me directly related from your overall stupidity. So don’t try to push me off-guard or Mr. Hyde, the computer repair nerd, will send you back to Canada with some DDR ram embedded deep inside your CMOS!
Temper Check… okay.
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