Shark Tank: Oh, THAT print!

User calls help desk pilot fish to complain that she can't print. "In fact, she left five messages within an hour," says fish. "I called her back and suggested she go to File/Print in her word processor program and describe any error messages she received. She said she couldn't find Print."

OK, says fish, let's try a remote-control session. Turns out the remote-control software isn't installed on user's PC, so fish carefully talks user through setting up a remote desktop session.

"I looked around, saw her printers were there and even sent test pages successfully," fish says. "I logged out and talked her through logging back in, and she informed me that she still couldn't print."

Fish can't just go to user's desk, because it's in the plant production area, and fish is wearing a fuzzy sweater. Fish has user walk 200 yards from her office to bring a lab coat so they can walk back to user's office.

Finally, fish sits down at the PC and in seconds sends a print job to the default printer and watches it print successfully.

Sit down, fish invites user. Try it yourself. User clicks on the File menu, clicks on Open, and announces, "See? It's not there!"

What's not there? fish asks.

"Print!"

Groans fish, "I finally figured out that she was attempting to print by looking for a file called Print.

"This user has been working with computers for years but had apparently never successfully printed anything in all that time."

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Copyright © 2005 IDG Communications, Inc.

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