Whiskey Tango Foxtrot..

[dmsalem00.livejournal.com]

Customer called in today, had a ____ computer, shipped in 1992.

After 20 minutes of my flunky Robert(see cary, robert doesn't mind) trying to find out the guy's service tag, we gave up, and just tried to help him(we's good people here).

Poor Robert's never used windows 95 before. I had to walk him through a lot of the T/Sing. Guy couldn't connect to the internet, so he called up AOL. They told him he didn't have enough free space on his hard drive.

In the days of 500GB Raid Arrays, this raised a red flag. I had Robert figure out how big of a hard drive he had. (I was listening the whole way on the speakerphone.). He had an 80MB hard drive. I knew this would end badly.

I checked the system requirements for Windows 95. 50-55 megs for a clean install. Ok, I figured, that's not bad. Doesn't leave much room for a paging file, but then, 95 didn't have that big of one. Then I had him ask what verion of AOL he was trying to install.

When I heard him say "America Online Version 9.0" I clutched my chest and fell out of my chair flat on the floor, nearly throwing Robert into a giggling fit on the phone with the guy. After the pain in my chest left, and my breath returned I signalled Robert to wrap up the call. It ended with Robert insinuating to the guy he might as well buy a new system altogether.

Comments

[mrkamikaze.livejournal.com]

Service tag? Must be Dell...

[dmsalem00.livejournal.com]

could be.

might not be though *wink*

maybe i put 4 underscores to throw people off..

[mrkamikaze.livejournal.com]

I've been in the biz too long. Dell is the only company that uses the term "service tag" that I know of.

[dmsalem00.livejournal.com]

quiet, you ;-p
two words: plausible deniability.

[achernow.livejournal.com]

That's almost as good as when I had a professor call the line and ask "Do you know how to save something in Wordperfect?" I told him File -> Save, he said "I don't have a file menu." It was Wordperfect 5 something.

The 2nd best moment "Hi, do you know where I can get a floppy disk?" I said they sold them at the Union and the bookstore. He said "5 and a quarter inch?"

-A

[dmsalem00.livejournal.com]

<3 WP5

i have a copy of that _somewhere_

[boredevilperson.livejournal.com]

How'd he take being told he should buy a new system?

Some locations at my company are holding on to their old PCs (from '94 or '95) for dear life. They were supplied from a company called Nexar. I've never heard of that company outside of this job and it's clear to see why. These PCs were not well made at all. Anyway . . .

"I want to send this computer back to you at Corporate so you can reload it with Windows 2000, Office 2000 (yeah yeah my company hasn't advanced beyond that version of Office) and oh can you throw a PS2 mouse port on it also? I can't find any more serial port mice in the stores and mine's about to give out" This PC I believe was a Pentium 100 or 133 with 16 MB of Ram with a 600 MB hard drive.

I responded to that e-mail "Sure! Would you like some world peace with that?"

For the record this is someone who I've dealt with for years at that location so she saw the humor in my comment. ;-)

I think they ended up getting a new Latitude for the controller and they bumped down the systems from there so this person got an Optiplex GX150 to replace the Nexar.

[dmsalem00.livejournal.com]

"How'd he take being told he should buy a new system?"

Thankfully, Robert was gentle about it. That's one thing I stress with my techs. If you can't be nice to the customer, I suggest to the bosses you get re-assigned. All in all, the customer took it pretty well.

"reload it with Windows 2000, Office 2000"

PLEASE load mine with windows 2000. I'll go download MSConfig. </3 windows xp. With a fkn passion. As for the mouse, there's no excuse for a USB keyboard or mouse. You can't type fast enough to justify it. I don't care if your mouse has six keyboard keys, a gamepad, and a laser on it. It's still not fast enough to really NEED a USB line.

[thecrazyfinn.livejournal.com]

Actually, a mouse is quite capable of using a noticable amount of bandwidth on the USB bus.

Remember that they are USB Low-Speed devices, and as such aren't operating at the 11Mbps Full-Speed Data Rate but rather at the ~1Mbps Low-Speed rate.

And the connectors are much better than gawdawful mini-DIN connectors.

[boredevilperson.livejournal.com]

Yup Windows XP just ain't there yet. I'm waiting for service pack 20 ;-)

They were using a nine pin serial port connector for the mouse and wanted PS2. They're not just one but TWO steps behind USB lol

As for the USB keyboards etc . . . I actually like the idea of it. Why? No more people who can't figure out what cable goes where. ;-)

[tat2ddeviant.livejournal.com]

what they need to do is resort to elec shock... you plug things in the wrong port.. you get shocked.. that'll make people figure it out pretty quickly..

[boredevilperson.livejournal.com]

No kidding!

And if they try to install any "fun" program off the net (you know the kind that ALWAYS have something like Gator, Alexa, xupiter or one of those things riding on it) a lightning bolt comes shooting down on them.

Or they could manufacturer a monitor with a huge boxing glove inside. Do something stupid and it opens. *BAM*

[littlemskitten.livejournal.com]

he could still get 4.0 or 5.0 on his system. we still support that, they just wanted to get him off their phone. these new techs they got don't know that 9.0 cd has 4,5,6,7 AND 8 on them :)

[dmsalem00.livejournal.com]

you work for aol?

and by that, I mean, they still have a department that's not outsourced? They even finally did it to the cancellation dept, and that was disappointing. I spoke with them regularly.

And wtf, 4.0 and 5.0 still connect?? I didn't know that..

[akacat.livejournal.com]

5.0 definately still connects. If it didn't, my parents wouldn't be online.

And I'm sooo happy to hear that there's someone out there with a PC more decrepit than the one my folks are using.

[tat2ddeviant.livejournal.com]

:sigh:.. I wish I could tell people they just "have to get a new system" ... shit.. we're still supporting (few, but some) Systems that are almost as old as I am... old Novel 3.0, DOS 6.0, Straight Coaxial port to port network...Like today.. I'm dealing w/ a dude that simply doesn't have enough disk space(I.E. this a 1gb, he had 28.7mb...I've managed to get him up to 103mb...but I need at least 330mb..for one of his required processes to run).. so I gotta sit here and pull it outta' my ass...
this guy deff needs a new system.. =(

[dmsalem00.livejournal.com]

well, we didn't so much tell him he needed a new system...

just kinda pointed out that it wouldn't really be cost-effective to upgrade that one at this point.