 CONFESSIONS OF AN UNPAID CONSULTANT 

Intense Competition in the microcomputer business has given consumers a
confusing range of products to choose from. Guess who's just been drafted to
sort them out.

By Stephen Manes PC Week July 2986


     You pick up the phone. The frazzled, deferential voice on the other
end claims to be a friend, or a friend of a friend. Within the next 15
seconds, you hear the words "They say you know alot about computers."

     Your cornea clouds. Your cochlea crackles. You enter a trance-like
state. You are participating in a transmorgrafication more mysterious
and frustrating than lycanthropy, and you are powerless to resist. You
are about to become the rarest, most necessary of beings -- the unpaid
consultant.

     Flushed with confusion, the disembodied voice has received a bushel
of contradictory advice from rapacious salesmen, evangelistic cohorts
and enthusiastic relatives. You, LUCKY YOU, have been selected to sort
out fact from fiction, truth from hype.

<FREE CONSUTLATIONS>

     There is no rational way out. You consider "accidently"
disconnecting the phone and hooking up your modem for autoanswer, but
your afraid one blast of carrier tone in the ear might permanently
impair the hearing of your litigation-prone attorney. You resign
yourself to the knowledge that the next hour of your life will be
irretrievably lost in a sea of deja entendu: "Wait, I'm writing this
down. Now what was it you said about this Monotone Spray Cod?"

     In theory, it's wonderful that intense competition in the
microcomputer business has given consumers a truly gargantuan range of
hardware and software options. In practice, not even dBase II can sort
them all out, and the people who need help most desperatly are the least
likely to get any.

     A corporation that's buying 100 PC's to link up with its mainframes
can afford to keep somebody around who knows how to do it or contract
the project out. The poor guy who wants a system to his garage
golf-ball-retreading business or produce the Great American Video can't
spring for expensive hours of a consultant's time. That's where you come
in.

     Alas, things you take for granted are utterly befuddling to the
abject novice. He's wondering if he should buy IBM or the Clamdip-98,
the hotshot new Szechuanese wonder his boss Morty swears by. Or maybe he
should cheap out and go the Commodore-64 route. His Aunt Louise insists
here Commodore-64 can do anything any IBM can "AND" peel potatos.

     "Did Aunt Louise mention that her Commodore won't run the
"TakeAGander" integrated database, which is the program you say you're
interested in?"

     "No kidding! You're sure? All right, forget the C-64. What about
the others?"

     "Well, no matter what you buy, if you've got your heart set on
"TakeAGander",  you'll need a memory upgrade."

     "Wait, I'm writing this down. Memory upgrade."

     You point out that the Clamdip-98 has room for the memory right on
the motherboard, but he IBM will need and add-on memory card. But then
he may as well get a multifunction card for the clock and the serial
port that are built into the Clamdip. Unless he buys an AT.

     "Wait, I'm writing this down, and there are a couple of things I'm
not clear about. I've got lots of clocks around here. What do I need
with another one? And could you explain mutterboard, multifunctional
card, and stereo port? Oh, and AT?"

<THE MOMENT OF TRUTH>

     So you do explain, you do, half wishing your palms would turn hairy
and your only possible response would be a muffled growl. Sometime in
the next few minutes, you runinto the inevitable Moment of Truth. Your
caller suddenly says: "Let me get this straight. If I buy the IBM, I
also have to buy a multifunction card, a display card, a monitor, a
clock, and extra memory? And that's all going to set me back maybe a
thousand dollars above the base price of the machine itself?"

     "Thereabouts."

     "But on the Clamdip-98, I get all that stuff free?"

     "Except for the extra memory, which should set you back a hundred
bucks installed."

     "So why in the world would I possibly want to buy the IBM?"

     Sighing, you agree that the Clamdip looks like a very good deal,
and you recount the growing list of friends who swear by it. But you
explain the problems the Clamdip folks have had keeping up with demand.
You note that many Clamdips have been delivered without the benefit of
manual, DOS software, or microprocessor. You observe that should
something fail in a Clammdip-98, replacement parts may be transported
out on the slow boat from china. You point out that Clamdip Computers
has been in business for 10 long weeks. And you recount the cautionary
tale of your friend who bought a business computer from one of the very
biggest firms in the industry and can't get it fixed now that the
company's making nothing but refrigerator-magnet novelities.

     "Okay, you've convinced me. I'll go IBM. True Blue all the way."

     You could leave it at that, but your conscience won't let you. You
explain that he can't quite go True Blue all the way because IBM doesn't
make a multifunction card. Then you remember that "TakeAGander" runs
slower than a horse cart on anything less than an 8Mhz AT. You start
asking questions and discover that your interrogator really doesn't need
much more than a simple database manager and a decent word processor.
You somehow convince him to go with a couple of good programs you know
of.

<JUST A FEW MORE QUESTIONS>

     "Just a couple more questions. I see here a PC, an XT, or -- oh,
yeah, here it is! -- an AT. And a bunch of models. I have no idea what
the difference is. Tell me which one to buy. Remember, go slow. I'm
writing this down."

     Deep sigh. You cooperate. You whittle down the selction. You come
up with a couple of choices. You even suggest a printer and a dealer.

     "Now, one last question. My kid's got a lot of friends with
Commodores. There's no reason why their programs won't run on this
machine, right?"

     The transformation is complete. Your palms are sprouting luxurious
tufts of silicon. You run outside and howl a 1,200-baud carrier tone at
the telephone wires.

     "Don't stare," you hear a nieghbor tell her little daughter. "It's
just the guy who knows all about computers. Come to think of it, there
are a couple of questions I want to ask him about your TI 99/4."

THE END



