Text vs GUI (was RE: Antiquated Software)

[Tips]

Once again, its the design that at fault, not the products...

Stanley




-----Original Message-----
From: filepro-list-bounces at lists.celestial.com
[mailto:filepro-list-bounces at lists.celestial.com] On Behalf Of Bill Campbell
Sent: Thursday, January 19, 2006 12:55 PM
To: filepro-list at seaslug.org
Subject: Re: Text vs GUI (was RE: Antiquated Software)

On Thu, Jan 19, 2006, Kenneth Brody wrote:
...
>The tellers at my bank have shiny flat-panel Windows 2000 workstations
>with pretty GUI screens for doing deposits/withdrawals.  But, if you
>need to have them do something else, like look up your account number
>via SSN, or check your account history for some mysterious charge that
>appeared on your statement, guess what?  They switch to another window
>for a character-based telnet/ssh session.

One of the most ridiculous things I've ever seen in this vein was at
Washington Mutual when I opened a SEP IRA account.  Instead of entering the
pertinent information into a database screen, then automatically printing
the necessary forms for me to sign, they created a new M$-Word document for
each form, then manually entered the same data repeatedly.  An operation
that should have taken five minutes took at least a half-hour.

Given that I already had two checking accounts at that bank, it should have
taken less time if they could have just entered a checking account number,
and gotten my information from that.

Bill
--
INTERNET:   bill at Celestial.COM  Bill Campbell; Celestial Software LLC
URL: http://www.celestial.com/  PO Box 820; 6641 E. Mercer Way
FAX:            (206) 232-9186  Mercer Island, WA 98040-0820; (206) 236-1676

One man's brain plus one other will produce one half as many ideas as one
man would have produced alone.  These two plus two more will produce half
again as many ideas.  These four plus four more begin to represent a
creative meeting, and the ratio changes to one quarter as many ...
		-- Anthony Chevins
_______________________________________________
Filepro-list mailing list
Filepro-list at lists.celestial.com
http://mailman.celestial.com/mailman/listinfo/filepro-list