If a person - or a business -- could buy computers, software and the peripherals, hook 'em up and plug 'em into the wall outlets and go to work, a lot of computer folks wouldn't have jobs.
Gary Tonniges may be one.
Even though it's his livelihood, he's amazed at the misconceptions.
"They think they are buying a bowling ball: You take it out of the bag and use it," he says.
Even as computer use spreads and becomes a fixture at home and work, a thriving industry continues to help ensure that individuals and companies have the technical wherewithal to use the machinery.
Tonniges, armed with an accounting degree from Texas A&M University, went to work automating accounting systems for clients struggling to get their technology to work for them. Seeing the need to simplify IT, or information technology services, he quit his job to form TriQuest Technologies in 1997.
His approach has been to quantify a company's needs -- inventory what information it needs in what form, what data it needs to make informed decisions -- and then search for the applications and software the company needs to get it. Also important is determining how many computers and how wide a network the company needs to ensure that the people that collect the information -- or need the information -- have access to the system. All this should be done before buying the hardware: the computers, monitors, servers, modems, scanners and other equipment.
Even after that part of the work is completed, Tonniges points out, the company must still be willing to staff a team that can maintain and update a system that often includes dozens -- or hundreds -- of computers.
"There are two sides in technology: the front side in setting it up, and then there is the back side of maintaining the system," he says. The problem most companies make is seeing only the front side, a project with a beginning and an end, he said. "Technology is not a bowling ball. It needs to be maintained," he said.
Much of his efforts are to educate companies about maintaining the technology, he says. Small and medium-size businesses have difficulty affording a full-time specialist to maintain the network. That's where Tonniges makes his living. It often pays for a company to outsource IT work to ensure that everything stays up and operating.
"You still have certain nuts-and-bolts sort of things that need to be done to your machines," he says. "Preventive maintenance, refreshing and updating the new software and security checks." Additionally, computers have to be constantly upgraded to fight threats from viruses, so TriQuest is constantly monitoring for software "fixes" and helping clients stop viruses. And because computers are as much of a necessity as electricity in today's business world, as computers get older, they require more attention, Tonniges says.
That goes for home machines as well. Computer Mom was founded in Austin in 1994 by Georgia Jones to help families understand how to take advantage of their first computer. Today, most families no longer need to know how to operate one computer but rather how to link three to four machines together to create small networks. In January, Computer Mom changed its name to CM IT Solutions.
Started in Texas as a part-time business and as a way to make some additional income, CM IT Solutions has grown to more than 120 franchises in 30 states serving families' and small-businesses' needs, whether they have one or as many as 25 computers. Shirley Peterson became a Computer Mom working from home in 1999 and was one of the first to buy a CM IT Solutions franchise in April 2001. Now with two full-time employees and six part-timers, she is still home-based and has 400 clients in Tarrant County with monthly contracts.
A lot of times it is the office manager, or the nurse in the doctor's office, who is in charge of taking care of the equipment, Peterson says. "The office manager doesn't know technology and doesn't want to know technology," she says.
As long as everything is working, many owners put off checking the network, but it hurts when the computer goes down and business comes to a halt, says Tonniges, who with eight employees makes daily calls to larger clients and conducts quarterly reviews of a network's status in order to prevent crashes, update programs and forecast expenses.
"The pain of inaction is greater than the pain of action," says Tonniges, who works on motivating his clients to start "proactive maintenance."
"What we do isn't glamorous," Tonniges says. "It's like changing the oil for a fleet of company cars."