July 28, 2007.  I've spent a lot of time in the last two weeks trying to resolve a problem with Webroot, the makers of Spy Sweeper, an anti-spyware program that I've been using for more than a year.  My experience in attempting to resolve the problem is typical of the way tech companies work.  It doesn't matter what the specific problem was; most of the detaila about the treatment of the problem would be the same.

My first query resulted in a boilerplate reply.  Typically, the first answer is automated and usually has little to do with the specific problem.  I sent a second, differently worded query that resulted in a different "solution."  I tried that, and it didn't work.  Worse yet, it messed up something else (the expiration date on the software).  Only after a strong message stating that I had tried the boilerplate solution did I get a response from a human being.  This person's solution flat-out contradicted the others.  Before I tried it, I pointed that out and got a fourth solution.  (When I later pointed out that I was getting contradictory answers to the same question, one technician had the audacity to say that this was my fault for posting the question so many times.)

In the meanwhile, I was trying to get Webroot to correct the expiration date that had been changed when I attempted one of their solutions.  I have Spy Sweeper installed on my laptop as well, but this is a different version that I purchased in May.  Apparently, when I followed Webroot's suggestions to reinstall Spy Sweeper on my desktop, the two vesions got mixed up.   Of course, they said that this was my fault, too, as I had registered the desktop version (installed in July) at a different e-mail address than my laptop version (installed in May).  Hey, idiots, I had no choice:  as you should know, your software will not accept registration of two versions at the same address.

Is it worth continuing the battle?  I think it is not.  The spyware on my laptop can run until its expiration date in May; the spyware on my wife's desktop, which is from the same three-user version that was giving me trouble on my desktop, works okay.  I have uninstalled the program from my computer.  I don't think I'll try to reinstall it.  If anything, I'll look for another program or try one of the free ones.

I have a new formula for assessing what avoiding being yanked around by tech companies is worth.  The minimum wage in New Jersey is $7.15 an hour.  Although I am retired, I figure my time is worth that – but, for convenience, I'll round down to $7.  I have spent about eight hours total trying to resolve a minor glitch in Spy Sweeper.  The lost time is worth $56.  For that price, I could have uninstalled ths program and bought a different one.  Thus, I reason that, even if a reinstall corrects the problem (which is doubtful), having to deal with Webroot has cost me $56.  I cannot reclaim $56 worth of lost time, but I can decrease the risk of having similar waste next year by selecting a different spyware program.

Tech companies will continue to yank us around and display extreme arrogance with their attitude that "the customer is always wrong" if we don't fight back.  We may not see immediate results from our small efforts, but we can chip away.  Even the giants are vulnerable.  Microsoft's new operating system, Vista, has not been much of a market success because too many of us are tired of being forced to upgrade to a new operating system that is not demonstrably better for the average user.  Microsoft has a strategic advantage because virtually every PC make, in cahoots with Microsoft, has installed Vista and only Vista.  We're forced to change when we buy a new PC.  Howeve, an increasingly computer-savvy public is becoming tired of submitting to this no-choice game.  In time, some competitor will find a way to tap into the increasing hostility toward Microsoft's hegemony.  Apple has had limited success – partly, I believe, because the company has focused on successful innovations such as the iPod – but it or someone else could still significantly wound the leviathan.

August 5, 2007.  I realize that grumbling here about tech companies – or anything else, for that matter – is a waste of time.  I doubt if anybody at all reads comments buried in a relatively obscure websites.  Now that gazillions of people have blogs, one needs to have one that gets thousands of hits a day to have any influence.  Even then, as long as a business can turn a reasonable profit, it's not likely to pay much attention to disgruntled customers.  One of the negative sides of having such abundance of choices is that there are usually enough customers to keep even rotten companies in the black.  If the product is halfway decent, companies can give short shrift to service, especially when hardly almost all of its competitors are just as bad.

Speaking of blogs, I can remember when I started my first blog (now dormant).  That was in August of 2002, shortly before I launched this website.  In real time, that isn't very long ago – although in technological time it was eons ago.  When I told people, I had started a blog, they didn't know what I was talking about.  Now, only  years later, anyone who reads knows what a blog is, and the "blogosphere" has become a major part of the Internet.

The reason I shifted from a blog to a more traditional website was that blogs have (or had) serious limitations.  One couldn't have subsections, they were tremendously hard to navigate, and most people read only the most recent entries, as older entries became buried.  If one wanted to do something more elaborate, one needed to have considerable technical knowledge to stretch the boundaries because the providers of blogs offered only limited tools.

I did predict, however, that blogging would take off.  While it initially appealed mostly to people who wanted to publish public "diaries" or periodic rants, I commented then that I expected blogs to become serious business, with major organizations and businesses (including news media) using them as a tool to present up-to-date information and commentary online, without the hassle of updating a major website.  In fact, when my blog was intact and being updated regularly, I realized that I could have the best of both worlds by linking the website to the blog and vice versa.  Now many organizations do the same, making the blog essentially a subsection of a website.  When any web address is only a click away, two distinct locations can appear to be part of the same place.

Back in the old days – i.e., five years ago – I was still locked into a mindset of physical space.  The concept of "hyperlinks" confused me, and I thought that mastering them would require the same grasp of technology that was necessary to transport matter, as in, "Beam me up, Scotty."  I did not realize that memorizing a simple universal code (no more difficult than remembering a few lines of verse) would enable me to take people from my site to virtually anywhere in the Internet.

Now I am considering abandoning this Mudgelog, which provides no opportunity for feedback and conversation, and launching a new, independent blog linked to this site.  

NOTE:  Experimentally, I have launched a New Mudgelog at Blogspot.