Technical glitches

Just to keep me on my toes, this past week I experienced some computer problems, which, needless to say frustrated me no end!

First of all, I could not access my accounting software all of a sudden, although no changes, to my knowledge, had occurred since my last usage, except for an automatic online update. After several trials on my own, which produced no immediate solution, I spent two full afternoons with the company’s customer support (located in India) discussing the issue and trying different ways to bypass the stumbling block. No concrete findings were reached with them online either.

The more and more I was asked to try different things, the more convoluted the results became, until I got tired of being on the phone although I had the facility of a head set. Eventually, again by myself, I proved that I could bypass the original problem by re-loading the software onto another computer with a different operating system. Bottom line is that some sort of a glitch developed between the software and the operating system on my first computer, but, at least now I can operate my data and the application on my other, older system, which is not where I’d like to be, however, for this purpose.

While I was working on this predicament, my patience was really tested again by a different hurdle, this one relating to Netscape mail.

I have never been a fan of Internet Explorer, which I use only when absolutely necessary, but for many years I have favored and have been happy with Netscape both as a (great for my taste) browser, and for its user friendly, well embedded, and additional email facility. Over the past several months, however, since its merger with AOL I have been experiencing degraded performance and service to my great displeasure.

Since this past weekend, to my great surprise, I could no longer login into my Netscape mail. With no direct customer support, I searched related user forums, which confirmed I wasn’t the only one to get the same error message without any further explanation.

Thanks to other fellow users I found out that Netscape had made changes to email ids and we shared leads on how to solve this unexpected nuisance. Although the original ids are still valid, they cannot be accessed thru Netscape anymore, but must be made active through AOL & AIM. A short note in this respect, appended to the displayed Netscape error message, would have made life easier for the users, but some things don’t make sense any more these days!!

When I finally got to read my accumulated mail I found a Nescape message that confirmed the already implemented change! Why send out information post facto when it’s not accessible anymore to the public it is addressed to? Well…..that’s one way to loose customers I’d say!