Legal Research

I should know better by now

By Angela Swan

Like an alcoholic seeking a drink, I thought that I would buy software to automate and save time in making backups of whatever I?m working on and have saved. I made a careful search for well-recommended software and discovered that Novastor Backup 10, Professional, for a single user, was highly recommended.

What a mistake! My attempt at downloading what I had bought failed. I eventually got a very nice young man from Novastor?s tech support to assist me with the installation. He had to download a number of upgrades, patches or whatever, from Microsoft, making it clear to me (and perhaps even to him) that I could never have achieved a successful download by myself.

Having installed the programme, I thought, ?Let?s see if it works!?. Of course, it didn?t; why on earth would I even have dreamed that it would? The manual, some 130+ pages is, at least for me, spectacularly useless. First, it has no index. Maybe techies don?t believe in indexes but they are not just useful but essential if one is going to be able to use a technical book. Second, while I could find a picture of the screen I faced, no indication was given of what one does with it; the following page didn’t refer to anything on the screen. There was no step-by-step-leading-by-the-hand guidance. If the product is only going to be sold to those who don?t need a manual, shouldn?t those of us who do be warned?

In any case, the programme seemed to work (after I had struggled through mysterious menus and, of course, getting no guidance from the manual) but it was case of, ?the lights are on but no one?s at home?, or ?sound and fury, signifying nothing?. The files that I had, I thought, instructed the programme to backup were nowhere to be found and what I had thought was the destination folder was completely empty; as empty as it was before I started. I tried it again but again, nothing.

I shall now do what I had been doing ever since I left DOS 6.0 (where I had a neat backup utility that actually worked) and backup, so to speak, by hand and reflect ruefully on my wasted money and time. Am I living under some kind of software curse? Did my statement that I loathe Microsoft?and I really do and I can give anyone who wants a list of my reasons?land me on some black-list where I am condemned forever to be frustrated by software, especially software that I have bought, that won?t work? Should I perform some penance or am I just a horrible warning?

Full post as published by Slaw.ca on September 23, 2008 (boomark / email).