During the Easter holidays, I visited relatives and like many other IT professionals, I had the opportunity to solve a handful of IT challenges, one of which reminded me why the PC manufacturers are at least partially responsible for their own problems with declining cells.
The story beings with a new PC of a well-known brand, with the usual bloatware installed. That includes a trial version of a well-known antivirus software. When the trial expired, a proper license for the antivirus software was purchased, and it was renewed every year thereafter. And so, everything should be good.
Except it wasn’t. My relative was surprised (at first, then annoyed) by the frequent warnings about missing protection popping up when the computer was turned on, given that the license was paid for. However, as I found out, paying the license using the link provided by the trial version is not enough; you also need to replace the trial version of the software with the full version yourself. My relative had not been aware of this, and so had paid for protection for years, without ever being protected. He took it well, better than me.
It may be argued that as a consumer you must pay attention any warning messages that pop up and that it should have been verified that the purchased product was in fact delivered and working as it was supposed to do. On the other hand, this was an opportunity for the manufacturer to care for the customer, by ensuring that the customer got value added by the extra services provided by the manufacturer; as opposed to a false, expensive sense of safety. Both arguments have merits, but one makes it more likely that the customer returns than the other. In good times, returning customers may not have been a priority, but now?
Among the lessons to be learned here is that good times should never be taken for granted. And the manufacturers are themselves not without responsibility for their misery.
A wholly unrelated challenge I got during the visit was retrieval of photos from a Nokia feature phone, from the time before phones could be connected with USB. I was reminded how a blue tooth data connection works and reminded to appreciate current day cloud backup services and standardization of connections.