[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index]

Re: What they're up to



  On Mon, 24 Nov 1997 dski@cameonet.cameo.com.tw wrote:
  
  > Once you get past "My Computer" and "My
  > Briefcase" and get into system settings, help text, and error messages, you
  > find a mass of mumbo-jumbo that even old hands often find difficult or
  > impossible to understand.
  
  Indeed. The "simplification" of Win95 makes it very difficult to
  support.
  
  People set up Microsoft Internet Explorer, and it asks them for the
  network address of their "postoffice". The Help text says to ask the
  sysadmin if they don't know. So they ask me. I don't know! I never
  set up any "postoffice"! I ask them: "does it ask for your SMTP
  server, for your POP3 server, or for your mailbox address, or what?"
  They don't know. It just asks for their "postoffice". 
  
  In the end neither the computer illiterate nor the computer savvy
  user is served, because the one can't help the other.
  
  The word "postoffice" is 100 times more intuitive than "RFC1532
  compliant end-node maildrop", right? So it makes life simpler, right?
  
  Yeah right.
  
       ,_
       /_)              /| /
      /   i e t e r    / |/ a g e l