Lukas Rovensky's Weblog: Lukas Rovensky's Weblog

I recently bought a very nice 'all in one' product (scanner, printer, fax, and copy machine) from a well known manufacturer. This product has an Ethernet interface and fits well in my home network, which I am (very slowly) building. I installed the drivers provided with this product and enjoyed network printing but the scanner did not work over the network. So, I went to the support web pages, downloaded newer versions of the drivers, installed them and ... the situation was the same. Then I found a link for a chat with an on-line support engineer. I started the chat, had a productive conversation with the engineer and I ended up with yet another version of the drivers. I reinstalled them again with the same result -- scanner did not work. Then I tried Google search to find out if there are people who hit the same problem (I wanted to use a community wisdom). I found there are actually many people who faced the same problem and they discussed it at a web discussions hosted by manufacturer of the product ;-) ! So, I went through the discussions, read many recommendations and at the end found a solution, which works for me.

When I thought this experience through I realized that it was very interesting:

• A manufacturer creates a nice product but provides a buggy driver.
• The manufacturer employes people who are meant to help you on-line and you even do not have to pay for this support, hey, this is cool ... but the support does not work.
• However, the manufacturer also provides an infrastructure for a community of users.
• This community analyzed the problem and was able to come up with several workarounds even without access to the source code of the drivers.

So, the community proved to be very powerful and one of the reasons was that these people were solving their own urgent problem. They were also able to quickly share their knowledge and provide feedback to each other. There is a an obvious question -- would not be cheaper for the manufacturer just to provide the infrustructure for the community of users and do not bother with any additional 'on-line chat' support (putting aside the fact that the cheapest solution is always to provide a bug-free driver)? Even if this question is rather obvious the answer is not. The most effective solution would actually be if the manufacturer listened to the community and cooperated with it. There are people out there who like the product, want to get it work, are willing to test various solutions, and provide feedback. If the power of the community would be used properly then the problem could be solved by the manufacturer and the on-line support engineer would be able to provide correct advice the next time.