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No wonder customers lose faith David Dorn, sometimes IT consultant to the gentry, stumbles across a complete dope masquerading as a knowledgeable consultant… There are times when I wonder what the qualifications are for someone to call themselves an IT consultant, or even a support engineer. I’ll tell you why. Last week, I had cause to go to the premises of a long-standing customer of mine in order to see whether it was a good time to change my car – as you do on a boring Saturday. While I was there, a supplier of hardware that said client uses (I don’t sell hardware) was sat at a salesman’s desk busily engrossed in getting an LCD monitor to work. Naturally enough, I wandered over to say hello while She Who Must Be Obeyed and She Who thinks She Must Be Obeyed were perusing the various vehicles (by colour, I think they said!!). I queried what was taking so long, and the reply came “I tried this monitor on that IBM machine in the back office, and it wouldn’t work – kept on coming up with an ‘out of range’ error”. What was more, he couldn’t get the thing to drop into its native resolution of 1024x768 on the machine he was fiddling with, although he had at least managed to get it to show something of a picture. Monday So, Monday morning dawned, and, much as I had expected, I got a phone call from this client, asking me to go in and sort out a few monitor challenges and decisions. It turned out that this supplier-cum-consultant had not been able to get the flat screen to work at all satisfactorily, and the client wanted to know whether this was going to mean replacing all the graphics adapters, as he had suggested, in order to put flat screens all round. Now, I’m not a man to spend money, even other people’s, without a half decent reason, so I opined that the course of action this bloke had outlined was not necessary. I also opined that I’d have the monitor that he couldn’t get to work on the IBM attached and working inside a quarter of an hour. He, being there, said it was impossible. Ten minutes later, the TFT monitor was not only attached to the IBM PC, it was also working perfectly at 1024x768, 75Hz refresh rate, stable as a stable thing, and spot on. So are the other three that I installed today, on other machines. Big head? Now, this isn’t me being big-headed. No, it’s me being completely sure that I know my way around a Windows machine, and that a TFT monitor that works with a normal graphics card will work where another monitor has been attached. It’s also me knowing that drivers are everything, and Plug And Play is often Plug and Pray. Where ‘tother bloke had gone wrong was in assuming that Windows would recognise the panel as a TFT monitor and sort itself out accordingly. He was, of course, somewhat wide of the mark. Windows needed to be told that the monitor was a TFT jobbie (you mark it as a portable LCD monitor at 1024x768, as a matter of interest) before the new monitor was installed. So, now, I’m quite thankful to this supplier-cum-consultant. Everything he tried to sell into the client site will have to be checked with a reliable, knowledgeable consultant who does not sell hardware. That, I’m told, is me. And since the other bloke has a lot to offer this client, I think I’ll be getting rather a lot of work there… It’s an ill wind that blows nobody any good, you know!
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