Isn't it funny that the sample unit of the slick-looking REX 6000 credit
card-size Personal Digital Assistant that Xircom Inc. sent to the Chicago
Tribune for review proved defective?
Isn't it funny that the sample unit that Compaq Computer Corp. made
available for a review of the new full-color screen Pocket PC called iPaq
proved defective?
Isn't it funny that the sample unit of Apple Computer Inc.'s new G4
Titanium PowerBook laptop came with a DVD player that didn't work correctly?
None of this stuff is humorous at all. It is, in fact, about as funny as
the bozos who set up that bonsai kitten Web site.
Here at the dawning of the high-tech industry's sudden slump that I like to
call Internet Winter, all these anecdotal tales of expensive gear with big
promises on the box and duds inside may be building to a critical mass.
Perhaps the customers who were every bit as important to the technology
explosion of the nanosecond '90s as the companies that built the stuff are
finally rising up like Peter Finch did in the film classic "Broadcast News":
"I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore."
As the computer industry's elite gather to ponder Internet Winter and ask
why their soaring sales and eager customers have gone the way of a floppy disk
in a frying pan, they might wonder whether buyer outrage at stuff that doesn't
work as advertised is a big factor.
Gone are the salad years for Microsoft, Intel and the lesser binary robber
barons when people rushed to join the Information Revolution by purchasing
complex and cranky machines, then apologized for their own failures when the
machines didn't work.
Well over half of all American homes have at least one personal computer
and the novelty is long gone for pulling out one's Palm handheld computer and
tapping in names and phone numbers like some kind of sideshow-trained chicken.
Bill Gates, Andy Grove, Steve Case and the rest of the geniuses who built
the wired world where we all now live are beginning to feel the brunt of an
adage as old as the first gold rush: "Fool me once, shame on you; fool me
twice, shame on me."
One of the most heavily guarded secrets in the computer business and the
closely related consumer electronics industry is how many products are
returned by customers because they are defective or the customer cannot figure
out how to use them.
Years ago when I received a tour of the huge CDW Computer Centers Inc.
facility, given by company founder Michael Krasny, I was inadvertently (at
least I think inadvertently) shown a huge pile of boxes holding returned
computers, printers, scanners, monitors and a wide collection of software
titles.
Krasny told me at the time only that returns were running somewhere between
5 and 10 percent. Despite all those disappointed customers and even as it
braces for the chilling winds of Internet Winter, CDW stands as one of the
greatest examples of business success in Chicago's history.
Such success stories are fun to recount whether it be Krasny's or the saga
of the gangling, geeky poker-playing Harvard dropout Bill Gates or the one
about the Hungarian immigrant engineering whiz named Andy Grove, whose genius
brought us that chip known as Pentium and changed our world forever.
This writer certainly is no historian, but I don't think anybody would
argue when I suggest that if Henry Ford had a reputation for selling one lemon
out of every 20 Model As, an angry public would have risen up and shut him
down.
If Sears Roebuck or Montgomery Ward had shipped five broken products out of
every 100 sent to the settlers of the frontier West, we would probably be
getting buffalo burgers at McDonald's because the cowboys wouldn't have had
enough decent guns to exterminate them.
This nonsense has to stop.
It has to stop even though the manufacturers and designers of equipment
like those cited above have very good explanations for why high-technology
gadgets and software can be quite difficult to produce so that everybody who
buys them will enjoy faultless results.
The reality is that personal computers are incredibly complex machines and
the software that runs them, such as Microsoft Windows, is an even more
complex collection of codes. Even the best engineering talent on earth cannot
reconcile each and every piece of hardware and software.
I suspect that if you are the adventuresome type of soul who has been
willing to try new software and devices that sound intriguing, you will have
your own tales of woe that tend to confirm the rough estimate that 1 in 20 of
everything is a dud. Call that Coates' Law: 1 in 20 = dud.
I also suspect that as more people encounter Coates' Law, they are going to
follow a law of their own regarding technology that looks great in the ads and
in the words and pictures on the box but then bombs when bought:
"Fool me once ... ."
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Binary beat readers can participate in the column at
chicagotribune.com/go/askjim or e-mail jcoates@rcnchicago.com. Snail mail him
in Room 400, 435 N. Michigan Ave., Chicago 60611.
