I Surinder
I Surinder
April, 2003
This is one of those new computer stories. Lots of fun to get a new computer, right? I started to have an odd problem: sometimes, and only sometimes, when my computer comes out of its standby mode, the monitor doesn’t—it just stays blank and black with its little on/off button blinking at me. So, I pushed the “?” on the new and expanded proprietary keyboard on my ComDellGateP computer to get online support from the manufacturer. I was immediately connected to a service bureau in India. I say this since all three of the people I ended up dealing with had Indian first names (Arvind, Surinder, and Sanjay).
It’s like AOL Instant Mail—you type in something, someone on the other side of the world responds. Except today, they were experiencing “network difficulties” and sometimes each response took 10 minutes to come. I started off with Arvind who asked me some basic questions, but offered no solutions. After about 45 minutes this morning, I had to leave and was told to come back online when I could. So, this afternoon I went back and told them I was ready to rock and roll. My new case manager was Surinder. After the usual exchanges of “Did you mean…?” and “Yes, that’s what I meant” or “No, this is what I meant…,” Surinder told me that this was a normal thing that could happen if a program was running in the background. Huh?
And then he told me that the only thing I could do was to shut down the computer when this happened and do a cold reboot. What?
Then he told me how to improve system performance, which was not the issue here. Whether QuickBooks starts up when the system starts would seem to have nothing to do with whether the monitor remains blank, black after the computer wakes up from its standby nap. Right? Darn tootin’.
After an hour and a half of meaningless blather and frustration, I asked Surinder to please answer two basic questions I had asked: (1) is there any cure, (2) what does changing my startup menu have to do with the monitor? I had asked these questions twice before and never had gotten a response.
At this point, Surinder passed the case over to Sanjay. Sanjay then proceeded to ask me the same basic questions that Arvind had asked this morning when all this fun started. (They say they are going to read the file of all the correspondence to date on the matter, but I guess they don’t. Easier to ask the same question again.) So, Sanjay said that what he wanted me to do was the same thing Surinder did: uncheck some stuff that starts up when I start up my computer to improve performance. He told me that if I wanted this stuff, I could just open it manually. Say what!? Manually? Is that why they have a way to open programs automatically? Perhaps I should do my math on an abacus instead of using a spreadsheet program.
Now two hours into this cross-world acrostic, I asked my question again: What does this have to do with my problem? Guess what, no answer. I tried again saying that perhaps he wanted me to experiment with start-up programs to see if anything was interfering with the monitor. Was that true? Could I just do this on my own without this online conference? Guess what, no answer. Instead, I received a response telling me to try for a BIOS upgrade. BIOS upgrade? Isn’t that like your doctor saying, “Well, you have a case of the sniffles so let’s do a heart transplant?” I nicely thanked Sanjay, hang up, put my computer in the standby mode, and scream.
April, 2003
This is one of those new computer stories. Lots of fun to get a new computer, right? I started to have an odd problem: sometimes, and only sometimes, when my computer comes out of its standby mode, the monitor doesn’t—it just stays blank and black with its little on/off button blinking at me. So, I pushed the “?” on the new and expanded proprietary keyboard on my ComDellGateP computer to get online support from the manufacturer. I was immediately connected to a service bureau in India. I say this since all three of the people I ended up dealing with had Indian first names (Arvind, Surinder, and Sanjay).
It’s like AOL Instant Mail—you type in something, someone on the other side of the world responds. Except today, they were experiencing “network difficulties” and sometimes each response took 10 minutes to come. I started off with Arvind who asked me some basic questions, but offered no solutions. After about 45 minutes this morning, I had to leave and was told to come back online when I could. So, this afternoon I went back and told them I was ready to rock and roll. My new case manager was Surinder. After the usual exchanges of “Did you mean…?” and “Yes, that’s what I meant” or “No, this is what I meant…,” Surinder told me that this was a normal thing that could happen if a program was running in the background. Huh?
And then he told me that the only thing I could do was to shut down the computer when this happened and do a cold reboot. What?
Then he told me how to improve system performance, which was not the issue here. Whether QuickBooks starts up when the system starts would seem to have nothing to do with whether the monitor remains blank, black after the computer wakes up from its standby nap. Right? Darn tootin’.
After an hour and a half of meaningless blather and frustration, I asked Surinder to please answer two basic questions I had asked: (1) is there any cure, (2) what does changing my startup menu have to do with the monitor? I had asked these questions twice before and never had gotten a response.
At this point, Surinder passed the case over to Sanjay. Sanjay then proceeded to ask me the same basic questions that Arvind had asked this morning when all this fun started. (They say they are going to read the file of all the correspondence to date on the matter, but I guess they don’t. Easier to ask the same question again.) So, Sanjay said that what he wanted me to do was the same thing Surinder did: uncheck some stuff that starts up when I start up my computer to improve performance. He told me that if I wanted this stuff, I could just open it manually. Say what!? Manually? Is that why they have a way to open programs automatically? Perhaps I should do my math on an abacus instead of using a spreadsheet program.
Now two hours into this cross-world acrostic, I asked my question again: What does this have to do with my problem? Guess what, no answer. I tried again saying that perhaps he wanted me to experiment with start-up programs to see if anything was interfering with the monitor. Was that true? Could I just do this on my own without this online conference? Guess what, no answer. Instead, I received a response telling me to try for a BIOS upgrade. BIOS upgrade? Isn’t that like your doctor saying, “Well, you have a case of the sniffles so let’s do a heart transplant?” I nicely thanked Sanjay, hang up, put my computer in the standby mode, and scream.
posted by Bud Hirsch at 9:36 PM
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