Boss Radio

The UK government is currently getting static from the opposition because a new computer system for the NHS is way behind schedule and way over budget. This is fair enough, once upon a time the current government were the opposition and they on more than one occasion handed out similar contumely to the then government. All new computer systems behave this way. The sales people come up with a timeline and price based upon the ideal, and the people doing the work get stuck with the reality.

Or do they?

Birmingham County Council also ordered a new computer system and found it arriving late and way over budget, what's more when it did finally get up and running it didn't work properly. This too, we have been led to believe, is par for the course. Anything with this many lines of code is bound to contain mistakes than can only be found with use. Some of the good people of Birmingham decided it didn't have to be that way. Working on their own they started a community project, building up bits of the system between them. Other people joined to program the bits that they were good at, and ultimately they came up with a mirror of the council site, except this one worked, below cost and ahead of time.

May I suggest at this point that anyone thinking of "upgrading" to Windows 7 should upgrade to Linux instead?

I got a call from a friend. She'd downloaded a security program from McAfee and now it wouldn't let her into her computer. The only 'phone numbers she had were either in America or £1 a minute. Mind you, McAfee are nothing if not generous (Note - If there's anyone from McAfee reading this, that means that you're not generous so you must be nothing. Hmmm... I could have been a little cleverer there come to think of it. Which I obviously didn't. Think of it that is. Where was I? Oh yes- ). If you stay on the 'phone for over quarter of an hour someone will ring you back. Right. You've bought their product and then paid them another £16 (Less commission), so then they'd deign to ring you back...

Here's how I see it.

McAfee are an internet security company. They make their money out of people using the internet. This should mean that they want people to use the internet, but in point of fact they'd rather that you didn't, if you don't mind. The internet has this handy little device called 'email', you've probably come across it yourself at some time, it lets you get in touch with people ever so easily over the internet, and that's the problem. They'd rather you didn't. It's far too easy for you little whingers to just whack off a swift letter whenever the fancy takes you, or their software breaks down.

They're not alone in this of course. Boris Johnson, living proof that Tory voters shouldn't have the vote, refused to accept letters from his constituents unless they came through the regular mail with a stamp on them. Fax and email, he said, just made it too easy for people to bother him with trivia and he didn't have time for it. The main difference between Boris and McAfee is that he's a prat who knows no better, whereas McAfee are a major corporation who know exactly how the net runs, it's their business, and they most deicdedly do know better.

So, back to my friend with the recalcitrant McAfee security program.

She wondered if I could go online and find a way of getting in touch with McAfee for her that wouldn't involve taking out a 2nd mortgage. Piece of p!$£ I thought, and came upstairs to turn my mighty machine on.

Finding McAfee was no problem, but that was as far as it went. Although their front page boasted real human beans online and on the 'phone the site had no email addresses or 'phone numbers. It tried to be helpful though. It asked me what software the problem was with. I telephoned my friend back and asked her the actual name of the program. She passed the information on and I went back to the computer. It asked me to choose a problem from this list. The list didn't have 'Stupid computer won't let me in' on it, so I chose 'Install/uninstall problems'. It gave me another list. That didn't have 'Stupid computer won't let me in' on it either, but this time there was nothing on the list even remotely like the problem.

OK. So I tried another tack, clicked on a few obscure buttons, and got taken to online help, which offered to download a diagnostic tool. Incredible. Still, I figured, maybe once that fails it will give me some other method of getting in touch. Go ahead, I told it, download.

It did.

Now I may not have mentioned this but I run on Linux. The stupid program didn't even notice. Instead it tried to run. I was really tempted to load it into Wine and see what happened next but time was a-wasting. It was time to start getting nasty. So I went to the top.

Corporate customers always get a better deal then everyday jerks like you and me. At corporate level someone actually thinks to themselves "What does a customer do if our program locks them out and someone else has to contact us to sort it out?". There is a telephone number.

Ring it. Get told you're ringing the wrong number. Ask politely for a transfer to the right number. Sorry, that's a different area altogether (I don't believe that for a second, but what they hey?) Well can you tell me what the right number is then, please? No, not that number, that one charges a quid an hour. My friend has just paid you for software that's locked her out of her own machine. It's not up to her to pay you to fix it. No, to be honest I really don't believe that there is no other means of getting in touch with tech support.

Finally charm and determination pays off and I get an ordinary 'phone number. The story should end there, but no. I telephone my friend and the impatient little biddy has only managed to get online and has downloaded the diagnostic tool. As it downloads and goes to work she explains that she and her husband just kept switching off and trying again until the stupid computer got tired of it all and let them in. I must try and hack into the Pentagon using that method someday...

For those who like a complete story, the tool diagnosed that the software needed updating and did so. McAfee in one final burst of stupidity had let her download out of date software. I've no idea if the downloads fixed the problem.

And there's another idea I really don't have. I really have no idea why the rest of you put up with this kind of stuff. Windows doesn't work because it can't work. There are too many permutations of hard and software for it to handle, and MS don't help matters by making each new iteration of the system only semi-compatible with its predecesors. Linux doesn't bite. It's just as easy to use as Windows, and it works.

It's also free and doesn't feature any £1 a minute helplines.