Vocal Diagnosis

Diagnosing a computer over the telephone is pretty much not possible at the best of times when the person on the other end doesn't know how it's ended up in the state it has. Therefore even attempting to figure out why it's fell over is often fruitless, though the usual cause of the problem is that it sits between the keyboard and the chair.

Calling up somebody who works with computers and saying to them, "My computer has [symptoms], and what it was... [insert totally random concoction of completely irrelevant anecdotes that that has absolutely nothing to do with the state the computer's in at this moment in time]. What do I do?" will usually generate the response "Bring it in."

When was the last time you phoned up a garage and said, "My car won't start. What it was, like, I saw a dead bird on the by-pass, swerved to avoid it, like, nearly hit another car because I cor see jack shit out my near-side mirror as next door's kid hit it with his bloody football. So then after I went round the roundabout to go back and scoop it up to chuck it in the field, like, I saw Paul's red Ford Zetec coming down the road. You know Paul, from the Red Lion pub who bought the Zetec 'cos he wrapped his Toyota round the lamppost last Christmas? Anyway I later saw him down the pub, he was totally pissed out of his head and to cut a long story short, my car won't start. What do I do?"

The scary thing is, these people turn up with the PC under their arm, and proceed to tell exactly the same story again complete with a sheet of A4 paper with copious other issues with the computer that lead to more anecdotes that basically boil down to "the computer's infected with malware and viruses because your Norton ran out eighteen months ago and somebody's put Kazaa on it." Now if you'd said that on the phone you'd have probably had it back by now!