 The magazine of the Melbourne PC User Group Editorial Ash Nallawalla ash@melbpc.org.au |
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This Issue
This issue is supposed to have as its dual themes
Product Support and
Information Centres. Not one article on these themes has been received from members. One of these days there
will be an issue containing just the SIG reports and the few regular columns. I am not keen to reprint
articles that have originated in other club magazines just to fill PC Update. I joined Melb PC mainly
for its magazine, and if the magazine did not meet my expectations then I would have spent the money on a
commercial magazine instead. If every one of our 3500± members wrote only one good article ever, then
we would be in a good situation. The Sydney user group magazine Printscreen's October issue is exactly
one page long due to lack of member support and I can empathise with its editor.
Beginners
I am not a beginner, and I cannot write articles for beginners as I have
forgotten what they need to know - at least in the context of a structured article. Next year I would like to
produce a 'Beginner Issue', but I have no guarantee of receiving articles, so no promises from me either! If
you are a beginner and feel that this magazine is out of your depth, please go to a New User SIG meeting and
ask anyone you meet there who you regard as 'knowledgeable' to write an article for PC Update.
Questionnaire
I think that most of you are past the beginner stage, but I will only know
for sure if you fill out the mini questionnaire which appears in this issue and return it to me. This is not
the questionnaire we have all been waiting for but it is a hasty effort on my part mostly containing
questions pertaining to this magazine. As an incentive, ten respondents chosen at random will be given a
coupon for free public domain software from our library. If you can't be bothered filling it out then you are
partly responsible for the future direction of this magazine. I will assume that you are happy with it. Fair
enough?
Information Centres
Many large organisations have a formal or informal information centre which
supports PC users. The UK IBM PC User Group magazine Connectivity has a regular column on this subject, and
all four articles in this issue come from that source. We have members in major corporations who may wish to
write about their information centres in a future issue.
Product Support
There are two main views of product support: one from the supplier's
viewpoint, and one from that of the end user. If you are a user of only pirate software then this is
academic, but what should a user of legitimate software (or hardware) expect for his/her money?
From the software user's viewpoint the ideal situation would be bug-free software and complete, well-written
literature which would obviate the need for a support hot-line. Upgrades should be cheap. Some software
appears to be in this category - Q&A comes to mind.
From the hardware user's viewpoint, the situation is clearer - the product must not fail, and there must be
a free warranty period.
Another difficult question in the minds of buyers is whether to buy directly from the USA or to pay more and
buy locally. It is perhaps unfair to point one's finger at a local supplier's prices unless one knows all the
facts. I used to be an auditor working for a chartered accountancy practice many years ago and was horrified
when I first noticed that an imported $900 TV set, for example, cost the distributor less than $500. Audits
of other industries revealed similar 'anomalies', but I also saw evidence of their operating overheads, which
consumed much of their seemingly high profit margins.
All this is of little consequence to the buyer, who will try to get the cheapest price. For example, Xerox
Ventura Publisher sells for about US$450 from mail order houses in the US but costs about $1400 here. Should
I risk sending a credit card order to the US and pay about $100 in tax if the item turns up? Or should I take
a $900 trip to Honolulu and pay the street price of, say, US$600? Or should I stay at home and pay almost the
same amount for an Australian copy? The choice is difficult, and depends on the product. If the product is
subject to revisions, then I need to be assured that the US-sourced copy would be upgraded from afar. The
larger software corporations are sophisticated enough to ensure that only Australian-sourced copies are
upgradeable in Australia. Only a deter-mined individual can bypass such schemes. Some US companies will not
sell to foreign addressees, and yet others will happily do so even if they have Australian distributors. If a
product were static, e.g. soft fonts, there would be little risk in sourcing it directly from overseas.
I don't have a high opinion of hot-line telephone support. Many of these numbers are always busy and the
response is not always satisfactory. This is a difficult service to provide, and I would prefer its value to
be deducted from the price of the package, and replaced with a `user-pays' service only for those who need
it.
Hardware support is a complex issue, particularly when it comes to cheap clones. Sometimes the supplier is
maligned unfairly for selling the lowest-priced product, when the buyer is to be blamed for creating this
demand. Many PC users are hobbyists who refuse to pay a bit more for minimum quality and so they suffer.
Cheap machines seldom have a graphics card that supports more than one video mode, e.g. CGA, HGC, EGA etc.
Such cards cannot support software which insists on a certain video mode. What would you do if you are a
dealer who sold a machine with a Hercules card and the customer wastes your time with vague complaints but
the problem is really with his software that requires a CGA card? One dealer we know has anticipated this
problem and, since a customer query costs him $20, has chosen to fit a multi-mode video card in this popular
brand PC for an additional cost of $12. I bet some people will go elsewhere to save that money. Clones are
assembled with cards sourced from many suppliers. Two dealers can supply the same brand and model of hard
disk with two different controller cards of differing quality. Sometimes the same brand of PC will have
different 'innards' at different times depending on the supply situation. There are many similarities with
the purchase of a car, aren't there?
Reprinted from the November 1988 issue of PC Update, the
magazine of Melbourne PC User Group, Australia
