I am lucky enough to have the resources to have two computers. One is the fabulous desktop/mini-tower machine I customized back when my old computer was just dying. It’s part of Gateway’s FX line of gaming computers which I chose not because I do a lot of computer gaming but because at the time I was looking to update my web skills and learn Flash which can require a lot of video processing power. This machine still runs on Windows XP Professional.
My other computer is a laptop, a Lenovo Thinkpad T-500 which replaced an even older laptop. I bought it because I had some strange idea that I was going to try to write more and that getting out of the house to do that might be a good idea. Plus, since all I really need to do my job, what with Skype for voice calls, is an Internet connection, this machine also allows me to make my job portable which enabled me to spend Christmas week visiting family last year without having to either take leave without pay or burn all of my vacation. This machine runs on Windows 7.
Because the version of Norton Internet Security I had for my desktop machine was older and not compatible with this new version of Windows, I had to buy another version to run on this machine. Norton has been bugging me for a week with notices that my subscription is due to expire in less than 30 days. So in my Saturday morning computer chores I went ahead and renewed my subscription for two years but I noticed something before I went ahead and authorized the charge: Norton wanted to sell me virus removal insurance for an additional $6.99.
My first thought was: Wait, so are you admitting that your product doesn’t actually work? Then I read the description which recommended the insurance for people whose anti-virus protection had lapsed or who were installing Norton on a computer with no previously installed anti-virus software.
For $6.99 you get an unlimited number of tech support calls during which a Norton rep will remotely remove viruses, Trojan horses, and other digital nasties from your machine. It’s a good deal if you think your machine is already infected as each of those calls normally costs a hundred bucks. But what I wonder is how many people don’t bother to read the description? How many people just reflexively buy the removal insurance when they don’t really need it?
There are roughly 311,000,000 people resident in the United States. Not all of them have computers, and not all of the people who have computers use Norton.
According to a 2008 marketing study 14% of the personal computers in the U.S. ran the Macintosh operating system. That leaves a potential 86% running either Windows or something other than Windows.
Throw a dart and say 75% of the computers in the U.S. run some flavor of Windows and say 25% of those run Norton you’re still talking about a huge number of machines. According to Dr. Wikipedia, the U.S. had in 2001 taken delivery of 394 million personal computers. In 2008 alone 14 million netbooks were sold in the U.S. market.
If you look at just the netbooks from 2008 multiplying those numbers by $6.99 the amount of money Norton must be taking in because people don’t stop to think about what they need is astounding.
So I guess what I’m really wondering is how many decisions do we make every day that we could be making better just because we’re in a rush, because we don’t stop to assess what our life situation really is and what our needs actually are?
I have long been suspicious of people who pressured me to make decisions, and I think the best thing we can do for ourselves in any situation is employ the old trick they taught us when we were small and just learning to cross the street: Stop, look, and listen. I’d also add think to that ’cause it never hurts.
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