Customer ignorance issue of today, place smart ass comments below

[gneebore]

Re: Customer ignorance issue of today, place smart ass comments below

If it can happen to Apple, probably linux also. Lately I've been slipping a little on online bills, online purchases, etc. I used to do that stuff with a linux "live" cd. At least you know you get a clean OS when booting. For a while I would do it with a "Tails" live cd. It's surprising though how many sites won't take TOR browser though. The tails cd seemed to take longer to boot, etc. So I waffled a bit between that and peppermint live cd's.

It's almost to the point that a person should be doing it for checking email even. I'm becoming more amazed how personal email creditials are becoming like SS#.

Interesting note. I have friends around 60 who only have ONE email account. Can you believe it? It was quite an eye opener for them when I told them I have 2 main accounts and about 6 accounts for junk email only. That's right, you don't want to be spammed when you buy a chair at the furniture store, give them a junk email. I think there are a lot of individuals over 50 that don't do this, my wife included.

For a while I have been using a version of Linux called Puppy. It is a small. less than 300 meg os, that loads from a cd rw into a virtual drive in memory. I do not know how or where it actually saves any information, possibly in an incrypted file on your hard drive. Never really saved anything anyway like passwords and such. I just like use it for the quick and easy games I can find online. Like Text Twist or some of the Pogo.com games. they do seem to run better in the basic less memory intensive Puppy Linux

[tonerhead]

Re: Customer ignorance issue of today, place smart ass comments below

We had a secretary that insisted on using her Mac at the office because windows was so horrid and full of security problems. We gladly pointed out to her the only reason no one went after macs at the time was windows had a reported 96 percent of the os market. Macintosh had less than 5 percent. So the hackers are going after the biggest target and ignore the smaller target. Then surprise surprise she discovered, quite by a few of us rubbing her superiority nose in the air attitude in it, a really bad hack had been discovered infecting all Macintosh systems. Seems someone had written a script for Safari browser cookies that installed a key logger on a Mac. Yeap hers had the malware. And actually had three different keyloggers installed.

If it can happen to Apple, probably linux also. Lately I've been slipping a little on online bills, online purchases, etc. I used to do that stuff with a linux "live" cd. At least you know you get a clean OS when booting. For a while I would do it with a "Tails" live cd. It's surprising though how many sites won't take TOR browser though. The tails cd seemed to take longer to boot, etc. So I waffled a bit between that and peppermint live cd's.

It's almost to the point that a person should be doing it for checking email even. I'm becoming more amazed how personal email creditials are becoming like SS#.

Interesting note. I have friends around 60 who only have ONE email account. Can you believe it? It was quite an eye opener for them when I told them I have 2 main accounts and about 6 accounts for junk email only. That's right, you don't want to be spammed when you buy a chair at the furniture store, give them a junk email. I think there are a lot of individuals over 50 that don't do this, my wife included.

[gneebore]

Re: Customer ignorance issue of today, place smart ass comments below

Mac users really do think they have something special. I'm a big Linux fan (Debian). I gave up on Windblows at home a long, long time ago. Even Linux now is starting to bug me a little. Daily patches of patches, starting to get concerned with hacking. AppArmor starting to slow up boots, etc. It's no win out there anymore with any OS.


With us, we often get requests and complaints about copier security changes. M$ dumps SMBv1 and it's our fault. If we reactivate SMBv1 then we've entered a security issue to customer. MFP manufacturer's are not writing code for any box over a few years old anymore, yet it's our fault.

Then you have the over zealous IT pro who is super security conscious. Like the time a college shut down SNMP campus wide, rather than just deleting public read/write and create a new read write fields. Man I just laughed at that one. Many users couldn't print/scan after that. But it's our fault. Did they bother to consult with us first? Hell NO!

I was a fairly regular user of Linux a while back. But the lack of software compatible with what I needed and actual lack of drivers for new printers I had to stop using it on my laptop and went back to the latest version of windows that my older laptop would run. Yes I had a nice older Celeron laptop with only two gig memory and a 125 gig hard drive. i did find out for certain distros of Linux that if there were drivers for Macs you could use those drivers with some of the distros of Linux. I think Redhat or Suse based/similar distros can't actually remember which ones. Mr know it all supervisor was rather slow on the uptake when we actually had a customer that used Linux on his three pc's because all of the software was free and he could be relatively safe concerning viruses and malware infecting his systems. He needed drivers for a fairly new desktop MFP and could not find them before we delivered the machine. Fun part was when we delivered the machine mr " always install shared drivers" had no idea what linux was or even how to install or find drivers. Then I had to get involved. First thing I did was ask the new owner to look at the cd he had and see if the were any drivers for Macs were included. They were so I told him to see if his distro would accept the mac drivers and as they say viola he had a print system installed. And then when there were any more driver problems with any system of course it was me that got sent out to troubleshoot the problem. Worst part was there were two other tech that were a hell of a lot better with windows and the copier line the new company sold before they bought the company I worked for.

[gneebore]

Re: Customer ignorance issue of today, place smart ass comments below

Exactly what we are doing.

I still has to get used to the arrogant attitude of the MAC users that "their" system is far superior to the "inferior" Windows environment.

Hans

We had a secretary that insisted on using her Mac at the office because windows was so horrid and full of security problems. We gladly pointed out to her the only reason no one went after macs at the time was windows had a reported 96 percent of the os market. Macintosh had less than 5 percent. So the hackers are going after the biggest target and ignore the smaller target. Then surprise surprise she discovered, quite by a few of us rubbing her superiority nose in the air attitude in it, a really bad hack had been discovered infecting all Macintosh systems. Seems someone had written a script for Safari browser cookies that installed a key logger on a Mac. Yeap hers had the malware. And actually had three different keyloggers installed. Worst part was she was also one of those that was also a "I own a Mac I don't need an anti virus program like all you windows users do" so she did not use any anti virus software either.

I have used Linux for quite a while at times. Started way back when Red Hat was the preferred software. Then tried quite a few others and settled for a while on Mint and used that in a dual boot system. problem was the newer distros are not as easily set up to use Wine that allows running windows games and software like the earlier distros were so I kind of only use Linux now when I periodically restart the pc with a antivirus cd that has a linux based distro and will access the internet to download any updates to the anti-virus software running in a virtual drive in system memory.

[tonerhead]

Re: Customer ignorance issue of today, place smart ass comments below

Mac users really do think they have something special. I'm a big Linux fan (Debian). I gave up on Windblows at home a long, long time ago. Even Linux now is starting to bug me a little. Daily patches of patches, starting to get concerned with hacking. AppArmor starting to slow up boots, etc. It's no win out there anymore with any OS.


With us, we often get requests and complaints about copier security changes. M$ dumps SMBv1 and it's our fault. If we reactivate SMBv1 then we've entered a security issue to customer. MFP manufacturer's are not writing code for any box over a few years old anymore, yet it's our fault.

Then you have the over zealous IT pro who is super security conscious. Like the time a college shut down SNMP campus wide, rather than just deleting public read/write and create a new read write fields. Man I just laughed at that one. Many users couldn't print/scan after that. But it's our fault. Did they bother to consult with us first? Hell NO!

[copiertec]

Re: Customer ignorance issue of today, place smart ass comments below

Exactly what we are doing.

I still has to get used to the arrogant attitude of the MAC users that "their" system is far superior to the "inferior" Windows environment.

Hans

Now more than ever before.

[Hansoon]

Re: Customer ignorance issue of today, place smart ass comments below

If I could make the copier do what it was supposed to print and scan with my laptop then the customer had to get a Macintosh computer service company in to figure out the problem.

Exactly what we are doing.

I still has to get used to the arrogant attitude of the MAC users that "their" system is far superior to the "inferior" Windows environment.

Hans

[gneebore]

Re: Customer ignorance issue of today, place smart ass comments below

I had an interesting one some years ago.

Customer had an MFP set up to scan to folder on a server share. I got a couple calls about not being able to scan, but every time I attended the call, in the morning, it seemed to be working. After some prying they finally showed me the 'server', which turned out to be a Windows XP box and not really a server OS at all. Apparently when everyone in the office was in for the day they started having issues, exactly 10 employee PCs! Non-server Windows OSs can handle only 10 concurrent connections, so once the 10th PC was turned on and accessed the 'server' the MFP was bumped and not allowed to reconnect. Call out for not scanning! Argh!

Customer was completely oblivious to the restriction on the XP machine.

We ran into someting similar that a few times too. Mostly when they wanted to add an older machine to a newer network set up when the drivers for the copier/printer had not been written for the new operating system. Worst and most difficult example I can remember was actually with a Macintosh network. We sold a Mita 2530 to a customer and they had all Macs. I of course had never set up a copier to work on a Macintosh network. Read all the instructions and actually got the system printing with their Macs,(OS 10.1). Then three months later we get a call that no one can print. I get there and find out the owner of the company had heard about a new mac os upgrade(OS 10.4) and installed it on all of his machines. Only problem was the newer Macintosh operating systems at the time were not backwards compatible with earlier printer drivers like most of the windows upgrades would handle the earlier drivers as default. So none of their Macs would print. I actually called tech support about the problem on speaker phone while there so they could actually hear what I was being told.. Tech support flat out said they would release the new drivers as soon as their computer programmers could write them for the new operating system for the Macs. Apple would not release the coding for the new operating system so they had to work out a new driver from what their programmers could deduce or reverse engineer. Even more fun the owner of the company hated windows pcs. But because some of the legal files they had to use were only available to people that used Internet Explorer to access the website where they could download the information they occasionally had to use a windows laptop pc. Even more fun I found out the windows laptop was not allowed on their network because the owner of the company absolutely refused to allow such an insecure computer on his system. The laptop actually had a separate dsl connection so they could download the files they needed and then save them to a usb drive. And then they took the drive and uploaded the files to whichever Mac they were needed on. The drivers were finally finalized a couple weeks later in Australia and we could download them from tech support there. I did that and took the drivers first thing the next morning and had them install the drivers and test print afterwards. Actually gave them the user customer support website for the Australian office of Mita. We also immediately dropped any and all support for printing to any one using a Macintosh. If I could make the copier do what it was supposed to print and scan with my laptop then the customer had to get a Macintosh computer service company in to figure out the problem.

[copiertec]

Re: Customer ignorance issue of today, place smart ass comments below

I had an interesting one some years ago.

Customer had an MFP set up to scan to folder on a server share. I got a couple calls about not being able to scan, but every time I attended the call, in the morning, it seemed to be working. After some prying they finally showed me the 'server', which turned out to be a Windows XP box and not really a server OS at all. Apparently when everyone in the office was in for the day they started having issues, exactly 10 employee PCs! Non-server Windows OSs can handle only 10 concurrent connections, so once the 10th PC was turned on and accessed the 'server' the MFP was bumped and not allowed to reconnect. Call out for not scanning! Argh!

Customer was completely oblivious to the restriction on the XP machine.

I love the customers that use a piece of crap computer and refer to that as "our sever", but always call the Copier Company when their devices will not scan or print and think it's the copier. How about investing in a "real" server and stop with cheap workarounds. Gotta love those " we are using a completely wireless system here." Geez... no wonder the copier keeps losing connectivity, with your 20+ devices and your $25.00 wifi router you bought on Shamazon. But, I see all that stupidity and cheapness as job security, keep 'em coming $$$$$$$.

[zed255]

Re: Customer ignorance issue of today, place smart ass comments below

I had an interesting one some years ago.

Customer had an MFP set up to scan to folder on a server share. I got a couple calls about not being able to scan, but every time I attended the call, in the morning, it seemed to be working. After some prying they finally showed me the 'server', which turned out to be a Windows XP box and not really a server OS at all. Apparently when everyone in the office was in for the day they started having issues, exactly 10 employee PCs! Non-server Windows OSs can handle only 10 concurrent connections, so once the 10th PC was turned on and accessed the 'server' the MFP was bumped and not allowed to reconnect. Call out for not scanning! Argh!

Customer was completely oblivious to the restriction on the XP machine.

[copiertec]

Re: Customer ignorance issue of today, place smart ass comments below

We got bought out by another company. I got was sent on three calls where the brand new copier/printer quit printing within the first two weeks. I get there and find out the copier quit printing when the office manager left and turned off their computer. Turned out our supervisor was installing the drivers on that pc and then just sharing the printer on the network when he set up and delivered the copier. You probably know that if you share a printer then that pc must be left on. The users of those particular computers always turned it off when they left the office for more that thirty minutes. Finally had it out and showed Mr. "I know how to set these up, you can't teach me anything" that if a printer is shared and the pc with drivers installed is shut off then the copier/printer is now no longer on the network either. He did not believe me until I set up a machine we were getting ready for delivery the next day in our shop. Set it up on the parts order pc and then shared it on three other pc's. Then turned off the parts pc and the printer would not print from the other three machines either after we sent test prints from all four computers. His only explanation was he set the machines up as shared printers because then he did not have to spend all that extra time installing drivers on the other computers.

" Stupid is as stupid does"- Forrest Gump

[gneebore]

Re: Customer ignorance issue of today, place smart ass comments below

was given a job one afternoon, customer couldn't print or scan to/from copier, got there the next morning, it was working fine, that afternoon customer logged the same call, went in the following morning, it was fine, again, in the afternoon customer logged the same call, I happened to be near, and sure enough....the copier was offline, checked the copier, there were no lights for the network, traced the network across the room to the router, there were no lights on, as the extension lead it was plugged into was switched off at the mains.... I mentioned this to the receptionist, "oh" she said, "that's so and so's desk, he finishes at 1 and turns everything off when he goes"......

We got bought out by another company. I got was sent on three calls where the brand new copier/printer quit printing within the first two weeks. I get there and find out the copier quit printing when the office manager left and turned off their computer. Turned out our supervisor was installing the drivers on that pc and then just sharing the printer on the network when he set up and delivered the copier. You probably know that if you share a printer then that pc must be left on. The users of those particular computers always turned it off when they left the office for more that thirty minutes. Finally had it out and showed Mr. "I know how to set these up, you can't teach me anything" that if a printer is shared and the pc with drivers installed is shut off then the copier/printer is now no longer on the network either. He did not believe me until I set up a machine we were getting ready for delivery the next day in our shop. Set it up on the parts order pc and then shared it on three other pc's. Then turned off the parts pc and the printer would not print from the other three machines either after we sent test prints from all four computers. His only explanation was he set the machines up as shared printers because then he did not have to spend all that extra time installing drivers on the other computers.

[kingarthur]

Re: Customer ignorance issue of today, place smart ass comments below

was given a job one afternoon, customer couldn't print or scan to/from copier, got there the next morning, it was working fine, that afternoon customer logged the same call, went in the following morning, it was fine, again, in the afternoon customer logged the same call, I happened to be near, and sure enough....the copier was offline, checked the copier, there were no lights for the network, traced the network across the room to the router, there were no lights on, as the extension lead it was plugged into was switched off at the mains.... I mentioned this to the receptionist, "oh" she said, "that's so and so's desk, he finishes at 1 and turns everything off when he goes"......

[gneebore]

Re: Customer ignorance issue of today, place smart ass comments below

A few days later I get a call that the MFP won't print in color, and true enough, it's not printing in color. Upon closer examination I see that the IT professional installed an HP4 print driver. Do you think that might be why it's not printing in color? That was the second one that I billed.

Been there done that quite a few times with the networked copiers. Especially fun was one contract IT "specialist" that insisted that "all printers will work with the HP 4 drivers. It's the standard" Finally got so fed up after going to one customer the third time I billed them travel and time spent when the IT genius kept telling them the hp 4 drivers would be fine printing to a 50 ppm copier on ledger sized paper. Yes the service calls were for paper jams when the print driver would only print to letter legal and they were using ledger sized paper. I had to print from my laptop to the ledger sized paper without problems. And then showed the office manager on one of their pc's the lack of proper driver . Handed her the cd from the supply tray of the copier and had her install the drivers and test it. I would specifically refuse to install drivers though when the computer network was under contract to anyone else. We were warned in class to avoid that sort of problem and were also told to make sure there was no IT service agreement with another company. Seems a few of the earlier tech went back and did install drivers and when anything went wrong with any of the pc stations the contract IT people would blame the copier tech and then bill outrageous sums to "fix what the untrained technician screwed up"

[copiertec]

Re: Customer ignorance issue of today, place smart ass comments below

We used to have a very large customer that tried to pawn off their IT work to us, even though they had their own IT department. Most often it was embarrassingly basic. For example:

The maintenance folks reposition a MFP somewhere else in the building. They can figure out how to plug in the power plug. So I get service call saying that it won't print. When I talk to the IT gentleman he says it won't ping. When I get there I discover there is no network cable, and no network port within 100 feet. It seems our IT professional is glued to his fricking desk chair. That was the first one I billed.

A few days later I get a call that the MFP won't print in color, and true enough, it's not printing in color. Upon closer examination I see that the IT professional installed an HP4 print driver. Do you think that might be why it's not printing in color? That was the second one that I billed.

A couple of weeks later I get another call for not printing. More accurately it prints a few of the pages, than drops off the network. I plug my laptop into the network drop and start a continuous ping back to the print server. I get:
<1ms
<1ms
<1ms
<1ms
=5ms
=10ms
=56ms
=247ms
=Request Timed Out
=Request Timed Out
=Request Timed Out
=1047ms
=52ms
<1ms
<1ms
etc. etc.
How can the MFP cause this when it's not even on the network now? It's my laptop doing the ping. That was the third one that I billed. They started doing their own IT at that point. =^..^=

I am all to familiar with incompetent IT Nubs, seems to me these kids graduate college and think they are Bill Gates and don't know there ass from there elbow most of the time... Inflated Egos with no brains but have that piece of paper they worked 4 years or more for that Mom and Dad paid $$$$$$$ for.