I’m in the same line of work, and as soon as the folders button was implemented I reverted to asking people to open ‘My Computer’ and click on the folders button. Even then I’d only resort to using that when it was absolutely necessary. I find it much easier to navigate the file system over the phone in a single pane. If you’re actually just saying “Open Windows Explorer” with no further instructions, I’m not suprised they’re getting it wrong (no matter what level of computer savvyness they attest to). Phone support is only as hard as you make it.
Try reading comprehension for $200 Alex. You actually cut out his specific and simple instructions:
I run into the same problem with users occasionally. There are still people (well mostly salespeople and no one is 100% they count as people) who are clueless to what the Windows Key is.
Jim
In which case I just tell 'em to right click on the Start button, and select Explore.
:smack: Ok, you’ve got me there. As you say though, even “windows key” often requires further instruction. My point stands that if you find that users in general know how to open My Computer naturally, why persist in trying to get them to do it your way which takes more explanation and makes you spend longer on the phone. When I was doing phone support every day, the folders button was a revelation. While I didn’t use it as much as windows key+E, it was always the easiest way to get a home or office user into Windows Explorer.
My problem with that was always the fact that it starts you very deep in the tree, and unless you are doing something inside their profile, you have to guide them through “clicking all the minuses” to get back to a flat tree.
My difference is that I do phone support for fellow employees as a small part of my overall job. I go out of my way to teach the users in my company easier ways to do things as it makes their job easier and naturally my job easier in the long run. So the more shortcuts I teach them, the more about computers I teach them, the more self sufficient they become. In an ideal world I would only be coding and doing server support, not Desktop support. I will never get there of course.
Jim
Ah, see here’s a key issue.
Based on my own experience dealing with IT people in academia, and based on what friends who work in the private sector have told me about their own experiences, there seem to be two broad types of tech support people.
There are those, like you, who do your best to help people overcome their computer ignorance, in the belief that it will end up making everyone’s life easier.
And there are those who prefer to keep end users as ignorant as possible, and as dependent as possible on tech support for the slightest thing. These folks treat computer knowledge as if it were some finite resource, as if giving some away means that they will have less, or as if teaching the end users some basic stuff will make their own jobs redundant. Not sure if such attitudes reflect insecurity or an obsession with control; possibly a combination of those things.
Such as?
I see what you’re trying to say, but in this particular example I don’t see how an easier to explain method of doing the same thing is keeping anyone in the dark about anything. After years of dealing with home and office users over the phone, to face to face office desktop support, to server support with the occaisional desktop call, you get a feel for which users are open to learning new ways of doing things, and which ones want to get it done as quickly as possible to get on with other things. Some people just don’t care about learning new hotkeys.
I think it actually comes down to the support staff who like their job, and those who don’t. A support role is (to pull some numbers out of my butt) 90% communication, 10% technical knowledge. Those who don’t enjoy or embrace the communication aspect of the role are the type that like to laugh about “stupid users” and hold people who don’t have their level of technical knowledge in contempt, because they lack the communication skills to talk at the level of the user and treat them as a human being.
I’d say those are the people you describe. I don’t think they actually want to keep people ignorant, they just want to spend as little time dealing with people that aren’t at their technical level because of their inability to adjust their level of communication. Thus they blow peoples questions off with half assed explanations, or just don’t bother explaining things. I think they would prefer that people weren’t “as dependent as possible on tech support for the slightest thing” because they don’t enjoy dealing with “stupid users” but lack the ability to do anything about it.
There may very well be people who have an obsession with control, but I’ve come across far more people who hold non-technical people in contempt than those that want all non-technical people to be in thrall to them. In fact I can’t think of any that I’ve met that would fall into the latter category.
Dear god, thank you. That is exactly what I’ve been trying to express about IT staff. I abhor the obnoxious ones that are true to the SNL skit:
“HERE!”
“apple-shift-alt-option-zero-DUH!”
It’s about helping people with their computers, not getting off on knowing the keybord shortcuts and feeling superior to everyone over it.
Microsoft seems to have real difficulty making an uncluttered interface and doing it well. It’s like the menus in Word that hide half the choices until you realize that you can’t find the option you haven’t used in a week, so you hover over the little arrow and WHAM suddenly half your screen is filled with the missing menu items. Rather than make an uncluttered menu, they just sweep half of it under the bed and hope you don’t notice.
Now they’ve taken that to the next level: just hide the whole menu bar under buttons, the start menu writ large.
Tools - Customise - Options - Always show full menus
Which still doesn’t make the interface uncluttered. It just makes the clutter visible.
I was going to defend MS since I was actaully enjoying using IE7 RC1. So I dutifully installed the offical release. And now I’m pissd off.
The one thing they seemingly fixed in the Release Candidate was IE’s handling of favicons.
For one thing, they seemed stable.
Now I’m losing them again. I changed the icons on my links list to directly link to a special folder I have containing favicons. I save the changes and next time I open IE the damned things are gone again.
Fuck you MS.
Um, this is going to sound stupid, but after installing IE7, my fonts in Microsoft Outlook (not Outlook Express) have changed, and I can’t change them back.
It says “Arial”, but it’s not. It’s some kind of “fuzzy” font that is very difficult to read.
I thought it might be a “cleartype” thing, but that setting is unchanged.
Why the hell would IE7 change just Outlook fonts? Arial in Word and Powerpoint look the same as they always have. 
I think that IE7 enables “ClearType” which screws with your fonts. It can be disabled in the IE7 Internet Options ->Advanced->Multimedia.
It was meant to improve clarity but it only really helps LCD screens and even that is arguable.
If ClearType is turned on, try Control Panel - ClearType Tuning to change the way it’s set up, which might improve things (I prefer it to normal font rendering, both on LCDs and CRTs)
It’s because (at least for HTML emails) Outlook uses IE as the rendering engine, whereas Word and Powerpoint don’t. Basically when you open an HTML email in Outlook, you’re looking at a little windowed instance of IE. On the other hand if it’s doing it in plain text emails too, then I don’t know what’s going on (unless Outlook converts them or something stupid like that).
This is also why Outlook and Outlook Express were so vulnerable back in the bad old days of IE/Outlook viruses; IE provided the vulnerabilities, email provided the method of getting code on to the computer in the first place.
Hmm. For an eternity, this would not work for many workplaces running MS office over a network, because user’s customized settings (toolbars, spellcheck, whatever) always got reset to the default.
I have just retried, and the latest iteration of MS Office now remembers the settings of us poor network end-users.
You have made my day! 
runs off to configure all of my menus and toolbars
Now if anyone can show me how to start Powerpoint with a default blank slide, instead of one with “helpful” blank text and menu boxes already on the slide, I will FedEx you a jelly donut.
Ahhhh…that makes sense. I thank BwanaBob for answering as well, I think you have hit on exactly why there is the sudden difference in just that program - thank you.