(No Title)
Could it be that the new IT business subculture is so far removed from conventional business expectations that it can actually consider ignoring a problem a solution to it? The more I actually deal with tech support departments (cough cough, ahem, Linksys routers), the more I see that you can get away with almost anything. Intel has even tried the finger-pointing deflection game.
This is all about a Linksys WAP/Router I’m trying to get working. Installing the new firmware only makes it about half better. How could you just dump out an upgrade without finishing the job? How could you release an OS with a security hole so wide it could cripple nearly every computer it is installed on?
Of course, the real people having to address these problems are the neighborhood geeks. When Average Joe has a computer problem, he doesn’t call the appropriate service number as listed in the manual (that he may or may not have kept, or these days may not have even been given) and explain to the friendly, slighly English-speaking representative that the DHCP renew is timing out on his router every time the lease expires. This is because Average Joe doesn’t understand anything about how these more complicated components and machines work. So, Neighborhood Geek comes by and fights it for three hours with Joe looking over his shoulder nervously only to figure out that the problem lies somewhere beyond his skills and the skills of anyone else who didn’t play a major role in screwing it up in the first place.
Where is the solution? Getting hardware from a company that would actually support it probably adds at least a 300% premium to the price. Average Joe certainly couldn’t afford that, and until Average Joe starts paying for services Neighborhood Geek can’t afford it either.
Last firmware upgrade date is 7/1/2003. We’ll be watching…