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Barry,

You must be having a bad hair day. You're picking on the most helpful, most prolific user who gives freely of his experise.

The sarcasm you allude to is entirely in the eye of the beholder (you).

Computers are complicated. Users are entirely too prone to expecting their minds to be read when they speak of problems.

Aandi has done an incredible job of helping people here for years.

You have simply decided to be a pain. Have at it, but don't expect any sympathy from the regulars here.

Dave

Thanks for your response. I'll try to get my point with a few examples.

THIS ANSWER DID NOT EVEN ACKNOWLEDGE OR ADDRESS THE ORIGINAL QUESTION BY A HIGH SCHOOL STUDENT WHO WAS LOOKING FOR HELP. IT WAS ANSWERED AS A SUBTOPIC TO THE QUESTION and rather jumped on another respondent who was trying to help.
I mean..everybody else knew what he was talking about when the responder said Acrobat Writer.

"I feel I should correct the last message, which has several errors.

1. There is no product called Acrobat Writer.
2. The product probably meant is just called "Acrobat" (rather
unhelpfully) which is sold on CDROM and can be ordered (not
downloaded) from http://www.adobe.com/ for $249
3. There is no legal source of Acrobat for download. If you should
come across anything claiming to be the full Acrobat (not Acrobat
Reader), please report it to piracy@adobe.com.
4. download.com appears to have made a mistake. It is offering for
download "PDFWriter 3.03 for Windows NT 4.0 - freeware". In fact, it
is not freeware, but an update for existing users of Acrobat 3.0
(something made clear on a later page). It is also NOT the software
referred to above.

Aandi Inston
---------------------------------------
In the following message, even Andy acknowleges he may be taken as sarcastic. It is hard to show sarcasm out of context....but this issue has been present since 5.05 came out....almost same complaint over and over.......

>I am having the same download problem as everyone else.

I hope you don't view this as sarcastic: there are many different
problems, caused by all sorts of different things. So it's no good
just saying you have the same problems as anyone else, because we
don't understand enough to help you.

>I go to the FTP site and have no idea what to do next.

What operating system do you have? (Sample answers: Windows 98, MacOS
9.2)

What browser do you have (Sample answer: Internet Explorer)

What exactly do you mean by "go to the FTP site"? What do you see on
screen?

Aandi Inston
==================================

This next message is grossly sarcastic in my view " 'EXACT'" This complaint has been made over and over and this persons specific details probably is relatively not significant in this case, although maybe technically correct. Same as I said about the doctor who can be rude but claims it is OK since the patient got well. Asking specifics with this specific complaint, when he personally is not trying to find the cure for, to me is akin to asking a patient who complains of sneezing how old ;they are, what there phone number is and what was the date they had Rubella vaccine.

Charles, what are the EXACT symptoms being reported by people? It's
not really possible to give general advice when problems can be caused
by such a wide variety of problems - bugs in Acrobat Reader, damaged
PDF, unreliable web site, poor video drivers, old incompatible
versions of Acrobat, user doesn't understand how to download, user
hasn't installed Acrobat... you get the picture, symptoms really
matter.

Aandi Inston
-----------------------------------

Jeannie, I appreciate your response and obvious real concern or you wouldn't have gone down to the forum to look. Sarcasm comes thru as different things to different people. Some of this stuff above comes thru as defending Adobe and the program..without ackowledging there is a problem. To me that is just as bad. Jeannnie, did you ever go to the emergency room with severe pain, or bleeding and they give you 25 forms to fill out first.......or better yet, did you ever have the need to call 911 and the operator seems to be asking indirect questions which don't get to the meat of the immediate life and death problem. That is the sense in these answeres, especially the last two. Thanks for engaging in this conversation.

I will repeat one thing from a previous message. If this man does not work for Adobe, then he has every right to say what he wants. But if he is working for Adobe, then my concern was for Adobe and their good products and the damage I think this type of response can create. I did not mean to single him out, other than if he is what seemed to me as an employee in view of his indirect defense of this program with obvious problem.s

Thanks for your response. I'll try to get my point with a few examples.

THIS ANSWER DID NOT EVEN ACKNOWLEDGE OR ADDRESS THE ORIGINAL QUESTION BY A HIGH SCHOOL STUDENT WHO WAS LOOKING FOR HELP. IT WAS ANSWERED AS A SUBTOPIC TO THE QUESTION and rather jumped on another respondent who was trying to help.
I mean..everybody else knew what he was talking about when the responder said Acrobat Writer.

"I feel I should correct the last message, which has several errors.

1. There is no product called Acrobat Writer.
2. The product probably meant is just called "Acrobat" (rather
unhelpfully) which is sold on CDROM and can be ordered (not
downloaded) from http://www.adobe.com/ for $249
3. There is no legal source of Acrobat for download. If you should
come across anything claiming to be the full Acrobat (not Acrobat
Reader), please report it to piracy@adobe.com.
4. download.com appears to have made a mistake. It is offering for
download "PDFWriter 3.03 for Windows NT 4.0 - freeware". In fact, it
is not freeware, but an update for existing users of Acrobat 3.0
(something made clear on a later page). It is also NOT the software
referred to above.

Aandi Inston
---------------------------------------
In the following message, even Andy acknowleges he may be taken as sarcastic. It is hard to show sarcasm out of context....but this issue has been present since 5.05 came out....almost same complaint over and over.......

>I am having the same download problem as everyone else.

I hope you don't view this as sarcastic: there are many different
problems, caused by all sorts of different things. So it's no good
just saying you have the same problems as anyone else, because we
don't understand enough to help you.

>I go to the FTP site and have no idea what to do next.

What operating system do you have? (Sample answers: Windows 98, MacOS
9.2)

What browser do you have (Sample answer: Internet Explorer)

What exactly do you mean by "go to the FTP site"? What do you see on
screen?

Aandi Inston
==================================

This next message is grossly sarcastic in my view " 'EXACT'" This complaint has been made over and over and this persons specific details probably is relatively not significant in this case, although maybe technically correct. Same as I said about the doctor who can be rude but claims it is OK since the patient got well. Asking specifics with this specific complaint, when he personally is not trying to find the cure for, to me is akin to asking a patient who complains of sneezing how old ;they are, what there phone number is and what was the date they had Rubella vaccine.

Charles, what are the EXACT symptoms being reported by people? It's
not really possible to give general advice when problems can be caused
by such a wide variety of problems - bugs in Acrobat Reader, damaged
PDF, unreliable web site, poor video drivers, old incompatible
versions of Acrobat, user doesn't understand how to download, user
hasn't installed Acrobat... you get the picture, symptoms really
matter.

Aandi Inston
-----------------------------------

Jeannie, I appreciate your response and obvious real concern or you wouldn't have gone down to the forum to look. Sarcasm comes thru as different things to different people. Some of this stuff above comes thru as defending Adobe and the program..without ackowledging there is a problem. To me that is just as bad. Jeannnie, did you ever go to the emergency room with severe pain, or bleeding and they give you 25 forms to fill out first.......or better yet, did you ever have the need to call 911 and the operator seems to be asking indirect questions which don't get to the meat of the immediate life and death problem. That is the sense in these answeres, especially the last two. Thanks for engaging in this conversation.

I will repeat one thing from a previous message. If this man does not work for Adobe, then he has every right to say what he wants. But if he is working for Adobe, then my concern was for Adobe and their good products and the damage I think this type of response can create. I did not mean to single him out, other than if he is what seemed to me as an employee in view of his indirect defense of this program with obvious problem.s

Barry,

I can find any number of examples of unhelpful sarcasm on the forums. Show me some of those from Aandi because I haven't seen any recently. I went to the Reader forum and looked at the last 15 posts from Aandi and didn't find any of them sarcastic. If a patient calls you and says, "I don't feel well," certainly you would ask for details. So, I'm asking for details.

My previous post in response to you might be seen as sarcastic, but I did think it entirely possible that you were simply looking for a fight by singling out Aandi.

Jeanie

He certainly has the right to say almost whatever he wants on the forum. Saying he is helpful reminds me of some of my collegues over the last 40 years who, without any bedside manner, justify their bad communication skills with the comment that they get good results. Having been a physician for 40 years and a Sysop on Compuserve for a DEC group for several years, probably before most of you were born, I do have some feel for the results of poor communiation. When a doctor gets called at 4AM by a parent distraught with a kids 106 temp, Doc #1 says. 'Why are you calling me at this hour...call me in the morning' and Doc 2 says...'I will be right over but in the meantime do this and this and this and call me back in 15 minutes.' Of course all is well in 15 minutes at which point he says "I'll see you in the morning".

A response from you guys "yes, there seems to be a problem...we are working on it...but in the meantime..do this and this" would go a long way. Each person that expresses an opinion is representative of a very large group of people who have the same opinion and frustrations but just don't speak up.

Barry,

Thank you for a funny, funny post. It's good to start the day with a belly laugh.

Jeanie

Interesting. I think Aandi's one of the most helpful guys in here.

I'm pretty sure Aandi's his real name.

I'm pretty sure he doesn't work for Adobe.

Hey, Tom G., if he thinks Aandi's answers are sarcastic, what's he going to think when he reads yours?? :-)

Rick

This morning (1/17/02), I reviewed the last 85 messages placed on the Acrobat Reader Forum. Of those 85, 18-20 of them were written by Aandi Inston (wonder what his real name is) who I suspect works for Adobe....possibly had something to do with the 5.05 upgrade of reader. There appears to be a real problem with 5.05 as many messages in the past 2 weeks have mentioned the same thing. Almost all of Mr. Inston's answers are DEFENSIVE, SARCASTIC, UNHELPFUL, IRRITATING AND FRUSTRATING to your users (just read the forum) and will only serve to drive everybody away from Adobe. I would suggest that if he works for you still, that you move him off the forum and utilize his talents to fix the program. In any case some counselling as to the bad affect of taking a defensive point of view, asking multiple further questions to the user (many of which were already implied or answered) and hardly coming up with a ray of hope that the problem has been identified and will be fixed, as I mentioned, will divert your users to more rewarding activities.

It's virtually flying this morning!

I was told that they are revamping their servers. Yesterday connectivity returned for most of the day but disappeared again last night. I guess it will straighten out when they finish whatever they are doing.