OT: Unbelievable On-Line Help Stupidity

[Daniel Emory]

I was helping a friend who’d just acquired her first
computer, an E-Machine with Windows XP.

I was demonstrating how to get help, and showed how
she could type in a search phrase and get a list of
all the help topics containing that phrase. So, to
demonstrate how to properly shut down the computer, I
entered the search phrase “Turn Off.” Sure enough, all
the help topics containing that phrase appeared, and I
selected the“Turn Off The Computer” topic. Here are
the instructions which appeared under that topic:

“Click Start, click Shut Down, and then in the
drop-down list click Shut Down”

The only part of that instruction which is correct is
“Click Start.”

o There is no Shut Down option under Start. It’s
called “Turn Off Computer.”

o There is no drop-down list under the “Turn Off
Computer” dialog. Instead, there are 3 buttons.

o There is no button option under “Turn Off Computer”
called “Shut Down” Instead there are three button
options: “Stand By”, “Turn Off”, and “Restart.”



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