----- Original Message -----
From: "Malcolm Smith"
Subject: RE: OT: How do you store your precious moments for posterity?
And no different is the buying public in wanting the latest, that does
more
and more but is slowly becoming remote from any ability to use computers
as
they were a few years ago. Manufacturers need to create a market to sell
more and more..and most of the public read the computer jargon in adverts
or
listen to salespeople (often agreeing with things they have zero
understanding of) and are no wiser at the end.
What I am running into daily is people who have decided that they should
"join the 21st century", and have gone out to buy a digital camera. The
sales people don't know the product, but they know if you buy "this one",
they make a commission, so that is what they flog.
The consumer has been taught two things over the past 25 years:
1) Photography is as easy as point and click.
Film cameras taught them that.
2) If it is Digital, it is better.
Legions of self interested people people have taught them that.
So, the go off to Best Buy or similar and pick up a camera, and expect it to
be easy. When they blow it, they might make another attempt at the owners
manual, but they are often written by and for geeks, which leaves about 95%
of the buying public standing on the platform wondering where the train is.
Sure, the resources to learn are out there, if one knows where to look, and
more importantly, knows what to look for, and has time to make the search.
Big iffs.
BTW, my clientele is primarily professionals: doctors, lawyers, teachers,
and university students, I am not dealing with mopes and fools for the most
part in my day to day work life.
What I am dealing with is people who have enough to do already in their
lives without learning an entire new technology.
They use computers at work, but when something goes wrong, they call up tech
support and it gets looked after. They know how to run the software they
need to run for their work if they use a computer, and don't know or care to
know, or have time to learn, a bunch of new technology.
They are expecting that the technology they have been sold will work the way
it is advertised to work, and that it will work reliably.
This is the real world outside of some jet propulsion lab or techno geek
email list that bears little resemblance to the way most people live.
I wonder if Shel, had he not discovered the PDML, or any other mail list
devoted to technology, would be as well versed and as confident. He
professes to be a jamoke about this stuff, but the reality is quite
different.
William Robb
