It's Fryday

Today I let the majority of my existing clients know that I will probably no longer support Windows for new clients. The current clients are okay. This comes as no surprise really. I've always preferred supporting macs and I have always had to support PC's as the bread and butter jobs. But something interesting has happened lately. I have told myself I will only suppor macs and all of a sudden these mac customers have appeared, as if out of thin air asking me for advice and bringing me work.

This is a great thing!

I have also noticed that this week a lot of clients on older computers have been complaining about messages appearing on their PC's and laptops about Windows XP displaying a message stating that memory is running low. I have a big, humungous suspicion that there were some XP updates this week that have all of a sudden made systems more than 3 years old stupidly slow but consuming what little RAM they have as standard.

And naturally, my customers don't listen to me when I tell them it's time to update your computers with bigger specs or a new PC all together.

So, basically I have become a large, exensive brick wall. You would think that I'd consider the customer the brick wall. But think about it. Brick walls are big yet barely noticed. And they don't talk. At least not that we know of because no one has actually sat there and tried to listen to one. So we all assume they don't have anything important to say. Therefore, I am the brick wall... and I charge by the hour to be your brick wall... as long as you own a Mac.

I can always lead by example and have a better machine than every client. But I already do, and that didn't work. I can always just send them a new PC and a nice bill for it. But I think I'll lose them completely, and that can't be good for my bank account.

So, what do you do? I think I have a plan. Be a brick wall again. Let everything bounce off you as they explode in a brilliant performance of anger and frustation because their new PC that's now 4 years old can't run the latest software. Then when they are finished, "I told you so... that'll be $400 dollars please"

I can't wait till next week, when these customers call me in utter, shear despiration to get their PC's working at a reasonable speed so they can actually be productive. Keeping in mind, 1GB of RAM is about the price of a pack of chewing gum these days.

pips