hateful technology

With all the news items about computer worms and viruses, I've been careful in recent years to maintain an active subscription to an anti-virus program, Norton Antivirus. A few days ago, my subscription expired, so I decided to upgrade to the latest version and to sign up for two more years.

I usually breeze through these processes; I figure they were designed for the general public, and I know a thing or two about computers. So it's usually not that hard.

9:30 am. Discovered that for some reason, my computer has not recorded a subscription number. I have a serial number, a product number, an activation number, and a few other numbers, but not the right number. I start the long procedure; the short procedure is only for people with a subscription number.

9:45 am. Finish answering questions, submit my credit card information, supersize the subscription (to two years), and start to download.

10:00 am. Lose the download, start again. Find the first download. Start running the program I've just acquired and realize that that was just the program that you run so that you can actually download the software. OK, so I wait for the download.

10:30 am. Finish running the installation program. Multiple reboots later, program is finally starting to download the files needed to run the anti-virus software. (Our wireless system does not come back right away after a reboot. It takes several shutdowns and restarts before we have true internet access. Of course, during this delicate installation procedure, it's essential to have internet access, so I've stopped and started the internet connection multiple times.)

10:45 am. See an error message, go to the web site (helpfully pointed to by the error message) and realize that this is a known problem. A very well-known problem. Start to follow the procedures to resolve the problem.

11:00 am. Robert senses my building frustrating and gently suggests that perhaps he could work on the problem.

11:30 am. I run out of the house to get an errand done by noon when the place I'm going closes. Run a second errand, then come back for breakfast.

12:45 pm. We've eaten, read the paper, washed the dishes. Robert is working on the problem.

1 pm. I go upstairs to check on things, start back-seat driving, and immediately retreat.

1:30 pm. I check back in. I complain that a web browser, Firefox, that I installed at the behest of my some customer support organization always takes over email. Robert is currently struggling with it because when he clicks a web link, Firefox pops to the front but can't show the content of the web page. So he copies the web link from Firefox to the browser that works, Internet Explorer. This is getting old. He decides to remove Firefox so that Internet Explorer can once again display web pages.

2:00 pm. With Firefox off the system, we still can't get IE to display pages automatically. So Robert installs Netscape. I'm back to square one with browsers, except that I'm now using a different unwanted browser.

3:00 pm. I come back to see how things are going. Robert has by now checked internet chat rooms and has found other frustrated computer users experiencing the same problem.

3:30 pm. I realize I should stop checking in because it just makes me cross. Robert has printed out pages of instructions.

5:30 pm. Robert comes downstairs looking slightly pale. It has occurred to him to look at system log files. He's also finished the set of "suggested fixes" and finally, on the last step, done what we could have easily done in the beginning -- remove the software, reinstall, and reboot. That was the whole solution.

I wonder what happens in households where the residents don't have a combined 50 years in the computer industry, where they don't have degrees in computer science, and where they even need help learning how to use the internet. At least I won't be dealing with this for another two years.