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Ghosts Inside The Machine - 2
November 4, 2007

In our last episode we discussed how things that go bump in the night are often associated with unearthly things, especially around Halloween. The problem however is when you have a computer problem “Who you gonna call? Ghostbusters”. While the idea of having Dan Aykroyd or Bill Murray make a visit is appealing, my concern is with the giant 112 ft 6 in Stay Puft Marshmallow Man.

However, if I am having a computer crashing problem I think that the geek squad would offer better support then the Ghostbusters. But what you will not hear about in the Geek Squad commericals is that you need to have someone offering the service who understands and appreciates that computer polatform (Mac vs. PC). I am not talking about racial profiling but something much more damaging to our everyday businesses which is computer platform profiling and platform bias.

It’s easy to obsever this when you hear the whispered, under the breath jokes such as, “I know what the problem is. You need to get a real computer”. This is a real problem in our companies and few support people are willing to admit unless confronted by the graphics police.

The Computer Platforms wars are still going on and most people have already chosen a side. We see this everyday in the Mac Commercials. While cute, these commercials really show a growing problem in our computer support staff known as computer platform bias. Like all kinds of bias this one is unhealthy and it manifests itself in crashing computers or slow performance because of a lack of scheduled maintenance. And it's not one sided there are PC folks who dislike Macs and Mac people that dislike PCs.

While this story is tongue-in-cheek – it’s also a real problem. This problem does exist and can hurt productivity. In some companies I visit I see many people working on poorly maintained computers losing as much as an hour a day.

The problem is if you put a Mac biased person in charge of all support then your PCs will suffer and if you put a PC biased person in charge then your Macs will suffer. The solutions of course is to find a computer support person who goes both ways - not that's anything wrong with that.

Posted by Howie Fenton on November 4, 2007 | Comments (0)