I know of a manager who chewed out an employee because this little embedded computer he was using was on the fritz. The employee didn't feel he should be blamed so quickly, but the manager disagreed, yelling, "New computers do not just break down! If you're alone in a room with a vase and the vase breaks, you either accept responsibility for it or you prove that an earthquake occurred!"

I was reminded of this last week, when I read a PC Magazine article about the rampant customer dissatisfaction with HP and Compaq. A lot of consumers were complaining about the failure rate of their desktop computers, and while not all of them were so unfortunate, a large number were. Heck, my own HP Pavilion laptop broke down four times -- twice during the first year, and all before 15 months were up.

In fact, last summer, I did some research for my then-employer on PCB testing, speaking to both circuit board manufacturers and a professional testing firm. They all confirmed what I knew all along--namely, that boards and components are fairly reliable, but that there are any number of ways in which they can fail. In fact, there are a lot of ways in which they can slip by the testing procedures, since there's simply no way to test them completely.

The idea that the user of a new computer should be blamed for its failure--guilty until proven innocent--is simply misguided. A visceral reaction, rather than a rational one.