Users will always ignore *something*!
No matter what the situation, there is always some aspect of it some users are sure to ignore. There will always be the ones who save stuff in the wrong place, the ones that don't take the subtle hints error messages contain, the ones that still fail that point even after you've explained it, and the ones who have to organise their own backups or have none and then lose everything simply because they couldn't be bothered, or wouldn't tell you it wasn't working.
Then come the ones who, at least for a while, do everything *right*, praise you for providing them with such a good machine, then have some kind of disaster that results in an insurance company replacing your well designed and tested machine with a "not quite up to it" one... even after you've corrected all the simple mistakes, it still has a substandard core component that is causing crashes or spontaneous reboots, so you tell your user "You need to get Acme (or whoever) to replace (said part), or you are going to be at severe risk of a major breakdown." - you repeat this advice every time a spontaneous reboot, or a disk error at startup, are reported, for more than a year. Then it happens: the system spontaneously reboots, and, despite being very much "in Windows", reports that the drive it's running from is apparently unformatted (clear poppycock!). You then state "Right, order (part) from one of my approved suppliers, and I'll attend as soon as possible after it arrives. Expect me to be there all day, if not more than one!" Cue debate about whether the need for the part is fact (because all the diagnostics have been clearly pointing to it) or opinion (because your user is too tight to go spending money just on your say so, and refused to go to Acme (or whoever) with what they considered "your opinion") and then say "Well, if you don't order the part, I'm not touching it. See if our friend Fred at (approved friendly local computer shop) can deal." - this normally results in the part being ordered. When it's all sorted, then cue debate about why there are no backups - the answer being "The machine was not reliable enough to back up, due to that faulty part."
I'm pleased to say, in the worst case I dealt with, the computer in question was well kept for the rest of that owner's life.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
