(re)installing software [was: Re: Wondering...]

[Patrick Armbruster]

Tech support. I was working for tech support in 1995 (yes, the 
year the infamous new OS from Redmond came out). The question is 
time/money. If a system starts to fail, whether it's Mac OS 9, 
Windows 95, Windows XP or Mac OS X, you can start searching for 
your mistake. Depending on what the initial mistake was (or what 
software did what to your system), this could take everything 
from half an hour to a week or be endless. That was the time 
when I started to set up my systems in a way where I can 
reinstall and re-setup (with backups) in about three hours. If I 
can't find out what's wrong (or how to correct the problem) in a 
specified amount of time, I go the three hours path that always 
works.

Patrick

Am Mittwoch den, 10. April 2002, um 12:01, schrieb Scott J. Kramer:

> Maybe I was overreacting to what often appears to be an overzealous use
> of "reinstall" as a magic bullet solution.  Isn't that what 
> stressed-out
> tech support folks tell customers to do? :-)