I have been in the High Tech business since the Navy sent me to Electronics school in 1961. All aspects from design, bench tests installs, field rep and the last 20 years programming. One thing I learned was that the customer was the boss. Period, end of conversation. If I dreamt up a new program or a new twist for an eiting program I went to the users and discussed it with them. If they didn't like it it didn't get started. then they were involved with all aspects from concept to design to ddevelopment nd testing and to implementation. At roll out they had an ownership part in the project. Now the "Wunderkinds" get an idea and run with it and then shove it down our throats. Take the recnt debacle with Yahoo. It stinks I have neither seen nor hear much good out of it. It looks pretty and has cute sayings (Oh aren't you neat ther is nothing in your trash folder) or something like that. In order to see your personal folders you now have to click on the folders tab and then your inbox goes away.

I have been lookinig at off-line storage. Of the top ten I haven't found one that doesn't hide part of the truth. "Oh yes we back up external drives". Then you start the trial period of 15 days and you are told that your extrnal HD will only be backed up if you fork over cash. Carbonite puts a 60% penalty for an external HD. Others prorate depending on size. If it is 500GB or less it is cheap. Over that it is bank loan time. Why in the name of all good sense would I put a 500GB external drive on a system that has 1.5TB internally?

If I had the money to start an off line storage site I could put all of the others out of business. Customer service would be US Based. West Virginia is a good place and I have used then before and they all speak American English. No more trying to undestand Sajeed Punarabadatee explain that you made a mistake.

Funny thing when the company I worked for decided to outsource customer service they did listen to their customers. They found that by moving to a little place called Sofia WV it cost them less in phone charges and salaries were lower than in NC. All in all it was a wash with moving to India. It was also easier for me to tavel to Sofia to implement a fix and change that suited our customer reps. (3 hour drive Vs 14 hours on a plane).

To any of you who are currently coding. Listen to your customers and users. Make suggestions and listen to feedback. Yes you are going to get some hairbrained responses but, you will also get a flavor of what is going on. Don't use other wunderkinds for your beta sites. Use normal people. Those of us that are retired have the time to try and break things ann to really look and see if your idea is worth the effort. We also aren't afraid of losing a job iff we piss you off.

One thing I never mastered was being able to touch type. So please excuse typos.