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June 4, 2008

Technology is fine...

Its just the users who are stupid.

According to Accenture, 95% of all returned gadgets are in fine working order.  $13.8 billion dollars worth of "I don't know what's wrong with this, it just didn't work."  Translation: "I'm too stupid and lazy to actually read the manual and I didn't read the text on the box before buying to see that it would do what I wanted."

Now we're not going to come out on the side of translated Korean manuals where users have a right to scratch their heads a little.  But we personally run into so many people who fully assemble products and try to run them without even reading the single red page that says "HEY, READ THIS OR YOU'RE GOING TO DESTROY THIS PRODUCT!" that we have to agree many folks are getting just what they deserve.

It's gotten so bad that computer hardware plugs are coming with cardboard and stickers over them when its critical that drivers be installed before plugging them in - and STILL we run into morons who fail to comprehend and tear the unread warning off.

We have a reputation of being great with tech gadgets.  No, seriously we do. And we chalk it up to one thing. Reading the manuals. To be sure, many manuals are a total waste of time, but there's many a return trip to the store that's been saved by an "ah-ha!" moment with a bad manaul.  And we can ridicule the company that produced the manual in good faith when we're done.

OK, that's not totally satisfying, but typically it's faster to read the manual than to stand in the return line...

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