Rtfm!

[pete_1967]

Men and women have different approaches to dealing with technology problems, according to a gadget helpline.

The service found that 64% of its male callers and 24% of its female callers had not read the instruction manual before ringing up.

12% of male and 7% of female customers simply needed to plug in or turn on their appliance and 17% women and 9% men had nothing discernibly wrong with their appliances.

The company, Gadget Helpline, surveyed 75,000 calls received between 25 September and 23 October 2009.

The helpline has 120,000 subscribers in the UK, most of whom are over the age of 35. The average age of helpline staff is 21.

Women spent 32% longer on the phone to their helpers than men - but 66% of the helpline staff preferred speaking to them, the survey found.

"There is evidence of a gender divide in technology, although a lot of it comes down to interpretation," Joanna Bawa, chartered psychologist and editor of the Usability News website, told the BBC.

In general terms men treat technology as something to be understood and conquered while women are more motivated by appliances that benefit them, she added.

Sync stress

The helpline's busiest times were Monday mornings and Boxing day, said founder and chief executive Crispin Thomas.

Getting gadgets to communicate with each other was the subject of a large number of requests for help.

"Syncing one gadget with another causes problems," he said.

Newly released products also seem to cause teething problems - many of Mr Thomas' customers had difficulty setting up their Blu-Ray players in 2008 when they first became mass market.

He does not believe that appliances are becoming more complicated, but thinks that they are expected to do a lot more.

"Generally speaking, in a production run, 5% of appliances will contain a manufacturing fault," he added.

"But 15% - 20% get taken back to the shop for return."

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/8346810.stm

[Hlingler]

A recent survey by Forum Staff has determined that over 75% of first-time posters here asked how to enable root-user GUI login, so that they could (attempt to) get their media players to play MP3s[MPEG,WMV], and/or to (try to) get Flash Player working in FireFox (which was usually cited as "slow"). A further solid majority asked for Linux anti-virus recommendations, and/or wondered/complained why video drivers were not working on Rawhide (however, to their credit, 100% had attempted multiple [re]installs of one or more 3rd-party drivers) after a failed YUM/kernel update had broken their networking driver/setup.

A full 99% had never read the site TOS.

V

[adrianx]

The service found that 64% of its male callers and 24% of its female callers had not read the instruction manual before ringing up.

Okay, like the "asking for directions" cliché...

...and 17% women and 9% men had nothing discernibly wrong with their appliances.

Now, that part confuses me.

[tashirosgt]

95% of the manuals are prepared by a small overseas company named "To English The Appliance Manuals We Translating". They produced this famous document:
http://www.from-jp.co.kr/board/board...2=00000&lock=N

[marcrblevins]

Admitted, I rarely read the manual first, I just use my technical skills, plugs the product in and give it a try. Looking for the bells n whistles.

Later on I see a feature not understandable, hit the manual!

Cheers

[John the train]

Originally Posted by tashirosgt

95% of the manuals are prepared by a small overseas company named "To English The Appliance Manuals We Translating". They produced this famous document:
http://www.from-jp.co.kr/board/board...2=00000&lock=N

When I worked on an electrical help desk we got quite a few calls re. a TV which didn't come on when plugged in. We knew, because we'd been shown, that there was a power on switch neatly tucked away round the side of the surround. Was it in the manual? No! Having said that, tashirosgt evidently shares my suspicion - also held by a friend who's a retired technical author - that manuals are written in Chinese, translated into Serbo-Croat and then into English.