'Futzing' may be biggest cost to businesses as PC advance

By Peter Kent

A year or two ago I was reading the letters page in one of the major computer magazines. Someone had been complaining that the magazine seemed to continually push expensive software upgrades and hardware purchases.

It seemed, this reader complained, that every time some fancy new toy came out, or a new processor was released, the magazine advised that everyone should buy it, all in the name of "efficiency." In the real world, the reader continued, businesses work on limited budgets, and can't buy everything and upgrade continuously. Sometimes you have to make do with what you have.

The magazine's editor responded in what I felt was an incredibly arrogant and rude manner. Buying the best computer equipment increases efficiency, he said, and he seemed to imply that computer equipment actually pays for itself. He concluded with an incredibly smarmy comment about how if the reader "can't see how good equipment makes you more efficient," maybe he shouldn't be in business.

What really irritated me about this comment was that it was coming from someone who probably knew almost nothing about running a business or managing a budget. He was a salaried editor, not an entrepreneur!

I was reminded of this exchange yesterday when I read an article in Scientific American. "Taking Computer's to Task" (Sci. Am., July 1997) examines the effect of computers and other types of high technology on industrial productivity; in other words, the way in which computers seem to have, in general, cost industry far more than the benefits they've provided. The conclusion seems clear; with the exception of a few areas in which computers have clearly brought a dramatic benefit, in most areas computers do not boost employee productivity. And in many cases they provide a huge productivity drain.

For example, the Gartner Group researched the cost of owning a PC, and came up with a figure of $13,000 a year. That included the cost of buying the machine -- relatively little, just $1,000 a year. It included the cost of the network to which the computer would be connected, technical support and system administration. But they found that the largest cost, $5,590, was "futzing." You've seen people "futz" with their computers, I'm sure; futzing means time spent fooling around with computers unproductively.

A few years ago I worked on a technical-writing team with a man who was obsessive about keeping his computer running efficiently. Every day he'd defragment his computer's hard drive, for instance ... and sit and watch the screen as it defragmented. He spent an hour or two a day "tuning up" his computer one way or another. In fact, he spent far more time making his computer work quickly than he could ever save by having a computer that worked quickly. This man was futzing.

I also recall another team of technical writers working for a telecommunications company. This was in the early days of Framemaker, a well-respected desktop-publishing program. I haven't used this program in a few years, and I hear that it's now very good, but in the early days it had some basic design flaws. For instance, it made laying text out in columns a little tricky, a major problem for a program that's designed to, well, lay text out in columns.

It always amused me to walk through the documentation department and see where people were (this group had about 35 writers). Few were at their own desks. Most were huddled around someone else's computer in little groups, making comments such as "no, click that button," or "I know, you need to open this dialog box and change the widget setting!" This entire department spent hours each day futzing.

Other researchers have found significant futzing costs, too.

SBT Accounting Systems surveyed 6,000 office workers and found that the average worker futzed for 5.1 hours a week. In other words, 13 percent of the worker's time was spent in unproductive fooling around with equipment that's supposed to increase productivity. That's somewhere around 250 hours a year. People are spending time waiting for programs to run, waiting for help to arrive, double-checking computer printouts for accuracy, rearranging file systems (hey, there's my obsessive disk-defragmenter), and playing games. To fight such problems some companies now are removing the games from Windows, and even banning managers from using slide-presentation programs.

The Internet-software companies are about to hit industry with major new futzing opportunities. As if the Web didn't provide enough opportunity to waste time, Netscape has just released NetCaster, a "push" system that displays information on the computer desktop automatically. ("Push" is a misnomer, these are actually "scheduled pull" programs; the user tells the program what information he wants to see and how often, and the program automatically retrieves the information periodically.)

The next version of Microsoft's Internet Explorer will have a similar system, called Active Desktop. Millions of workers now will save time by not reading the morning paper, but will instead read the news on their "desktops" during the workday.

There is, however, good news. The good news is that it took 40 years for electric motors to boost industrial productivity in the United States, and that something similar may be happening with computers, that we may see a huge increase in productivity thanks to computer technology ... just not right now, and probably not particularly soon.

In the meantime, I have a simple word of advice (and remember, this comes from someone working in the computer press): Don't believe everything the computer magazines tell you. These people are geeks, who love this fancy new technology, who get a kick out of playing with new toys, and who know next-to-nothing about running a business.

Peter Kent is the author of The Official Netscape JavaScript 1.2 Book (Ventana), which provides substantial futzing opportunities. You can reach him at geek@topfloor.com