INDIA may be tops in IT, but for those who have not mastered mouse and motherboard, the changeover is a nightmare! A few years ago a writer friend of mine who was a diehard typewriter faithful finally was persuaded to change over to a computer. He had his first problem on the first day.
The tutor teaching him called out the instructions on the phone: “OK Shyam, let’s press the control and escape keys at the same time. That brings up a task list in the middle of the screen. Now type the letter ‘P’ to bring up the Program Manager.”
“I don’t have a ‘P’ said a distraught Shyam. “On your keyboard sir,” said his tutor patiently.” “What do you mean?” “P” on your keyboard, Shyam.”
“I’m not doing that!” exclaimed my shocked friend. Then there was this woman who called Tech Support for Hewlett-Packard’s DeskJet division for about a month with a problem no one could solve:
She could not print yellow.
All the other colours would print fine, which truly baffled everyone because the only true colours are cyan, magenta, and yellow. For instance, green is a combination of cyan and yellow, but green printed fine. Every colour of the rainbow printed fine except for yellow.
Tech Support had the customer change ink cartridges. They made her delete and reinstall the drivers. After over two hours of trouble-shooting, they were about to tell the customer to send the printer in for repair when she asked quietly, “Should I try printing on a piece of white paper instead of this yellow paper?” Then there was a call from another woman who said that her laser printer was having problems: The bottom half of her printed sheets were coming out blurry. It seemed strange that the printer was smearing only the bottom half.
She was taken through the basics, then went over and printed out a test sheet. It printed fine. She was then asked to print a sheet, so she sent a job to the printer.
As the paper started coming out, she yanked it out and showed it to the hardware engineer who completely at a loss for words finally managed to explain to her to wait until the paper came out on its own. Problem solved.
And another user was all confused about why the cursor always moved in the opposite direction from the movement of the mouse.
He also complained that the buttons were difficult to depress. He was very embarrassed when told to rotate the mouse so the tail pointed away from her..!
And here’s another: A woman at a cyber café looked around agitatedly. The owner came to her and asked if she needed any help.
“About time!” she grumbled, “I pressed the ‘help’ button fifteen minutes back and now you come..!
But the joy with mastering mouse and motherboard is beyond words: A whole new world opens up.
