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94% Of Americans Blame Their Computer

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Computers are causing stress.  A lot of stress.

In fact, a new survey commissioned by Crucial.com, a seller of memory upgrades, proves it.

The nationwide survey revealed that more than half (52%) of U.S. adults who own a computer have been unhappy with the performance of their computer in the past 6 months, with an overwhelming majority (94%) of those who have experienced performance problems indicating that their computer performance issues have caused them to experience stress.

When those who have experienced stress as a result of their computer’s performance issues were asked to compare computer-induced stress with other forms of stress, they indicated that their computer performance issues, such as slow loading programs, unresponsiveness, and crashes, were more stressful than choosing what to wear (47%), traffic jams (27%), going through airport security (21%), dealing with finances (19%), filing taxes (18%), managing their overall health (14%), and arguing with their spouse (13%).

More stressful than being in traffic?  Going through airport security?  Filing taxes?  Yup, I believe it.

Being in the technology business you would think that I would be one of the few exceptions to this trend.  But I’m actually one of the 94%.  At the age of 47 I’ve endured more than 25 years of disappearing network connections, unexplained freeze-ups, painfully slow performance, strange application behavior and all sorts of other problems with my devices that give me stress.

And, if anything, the problem has gotten worse, not better.

We’ve been using cell phones for more than a decade but why is it that I still frequently experience dropped calls?  How come it takes so long for my smartphone to connect to the Internet so I can look up a phone number?  How are these people using all those great location based services (that rely on GPS) without killing their batteries in a couple of hours?  Why does my network printer sometimes disappear from my network?  How come my Windows 7 workstation periodically freezes on startup?  In fact, why does it still take so long for a typical computer to fully start up? Why do I get a “visual basic” read error when periodically receiving an email in Outlook?  What the hell is “stack overflow” and what does that have to do with why I can’t print out an invoice?

It’s because we live in an app world.  There are now hundreds of thousands of apps (they used to be called applications but the world has gotten that much lazier over the past few years) written by tens of thousands of application developers around the world.  Some are great.  Others are not so great.  And no matter how hard Google or Microsoft or Apple may try, they can’t test the reliability of them all.  So the world becomes proliferated with lousy software.  All in all, I think we are in a better place because of these apps.  But not without a cost.  And that cost is stress.  Stress when you’re lost and your navigation application can’t load.  Or stress when you need to find an email that you know exists because your search function found it yesterday but today your search function doesn’t feel like finding it.

It’s because the programming environment has changed.  Back in the day we use to (rightfully) complain about Microsoft’s dominance.  Today Microsoft is fighting for its life against Google, Apple and hundreds of other knock-offs of its office, browsing and database applications.  This has provided the consumer with more choice, lower cost and...increased stress.  Because now it’s not just about buying software, it’s figuring out the compatibility of that software with the device you own, its version and its operating system.  Developers who want to hit it big are now being forced to write not for just one platform (Windows) but for many platforms like iOS 5.0, iOS 6.0, Linux, Honeycomb, Ice Cream Sandwich, Jelly Bean (not to mention Frosted Flakes and Rice Krispy Treats).  It’s no longer a Microsoft programming world.  It’s a jungle of programming tools like Ruby, Python and Perl.

And, as is usual with software development, the products are way ahead of the hardware.  Smart programmers are writing cool applications to do great stuff, except that the devices they’re writing for aren’t quite yet up to the task.  This is no different from the past when Microsoft programmers would create great applications and users would be forced to upgrade their computers and infrastructure to take advantage of the latest new features.  Today’s applications assume that batteries have indefinite lives, memory is always available and a super-high-speed Internet connection is accessible anywhere on the earth or above it.  When those ingredients aren’t in place users face lags, freezes, downtimes.  You know:  stress.

Please know, I’m not complaining.  This is progress, and it’s good progress.  With change comes stress.  And technology is always changing.  Hence the survey results above.  But when 94% of people surveyed all agree that something causes them pain and suffering it’s a problem.  And it’s a problem that can be fixed.  If only we all agree to change a few things ourselves.

For starters, most of the people in this country do not live in New York and San Francisco.  They are not 22 years old.  They did not go to Stanford.  They couldn’t tell you what NFC, XBRL or HTML is.  They’re at best vaguely familiar with the concepts of tethering, DRM and 4G.  That because these people are smart enough not to care. They have other, more important things to care about:  like their jobs and their families.    They are normal, nice, hardworking people who live in smaller towns and cities and are still using Windows XP.  They don’t need a lot of function and features.  They don’t care about new builds or product launches.  They just want something that works.  When they pick up their house phone there’s a dial tone and it works.  When they turn on a TV there’s a signal and it works.  When they turn on their oven it works.  When they open their refrigerator it works.  Hardware makers, software developers and technology implementers like me need to change our mindset.  We need to make stuff that works reliably, consistently and for a long time before moving on to the next great set of features or creating that next great killer app that will blow people’s minds.

But users:  you’re responsible too.  You know why 94% of us are so stressed about using computers?  It’s because we don’t invest enough time in learning about them.  Admit it:  you skimp on training, don’t you?  You don’t pay for the support you know you need, am I right?  I’m embarrassed to admit that I know nothing about how my car works yet heavily rely on it every day of my life.  I admit that I’ve considered divorcing my wife and marrying my mechanic on more than one occasion.  I take my car in every 3,000 miles.  I rely on him for service.  I do this to avoid the stress of breaking down somewhere on the Jersey turnpike at ten at night.  The same goes for computers.

There is no such thing as “user friendly.”  Every user interprets a computer’s “friendliness” differently.  I can list 50 clients who think one of our CRM applications is the easiest thing in the world to use and then create another equal list of clients who think it’s impossible.   Each user in a company needs to be trained differently.  And each user needs a different level of support.  The guy with the pork-pie hat behind the wheel of his ’85 LeBaron may be great at closing deals, but he can’t type his name in under 10 minutes.  Yet the kid with the black rimmed glasses and six empty cans of Red Bull on his desk is a whiz.  They’re both valuable to the company.  But they both have different skills sets when it comes to using a computer.  Users need to recognize that, accept it as fact and build into their budgets the necessary funds needed for training and support.  Many of my clients run out of money after buying their software and hardware.  They figure their users will just figure it out.  Some do.  About 6%.

The rest?  They’re stressed.

Besides Forbes, Gene Marks writes weekly for The New York Times and Inc.com.