JonBart.com ™

Actual phone conversation:

“Hi Jon, this is XXXXX. I’m having trouble with my computer again. I can connect to the Internet, but I can’t browse. I called the dial-up people, and they said my anti-virus or the.. uh… anti-uh..PC Medic thingy could be blocking my Internet Explorer, so they tried to walk me through disabling it, but I gave up. And then, I was going to install People PC’s safe thing, but I couldn’t get online to get it, so, uh… gave up. And then a friend told me it was because I hadn’t run the defragmenter, and so I ran it, and it found all these contagious files, but I couldn’t figure out how to, uh, get them out of there. And my friend says I shouldn’t have Internet Explorer anyways, but instead I should have Netscape’s thing because it has less adjectives.”

“No problem, XXXX. Just bring the computer in to me, I’ll clean it up and return it to you.”

“Ok. Thanks”

Contagious fragments? Adjectives? I swear that’s what he said. I have NO CLUE what he meant.

Welcome to the World of Bart. Your worst moment is my every moment.

Update: A reader reminded me… Defrag uses a term “contiguous” to describe files that aren’t fragmented, which makes sense that someone would misread that as “contagious”. Big difference, folks. By the way, his computer was loaded with more anti-spyware, registry cleaning tools, free screensavers, protection tools…. as the things he was apparently trying to guard against. Less is more. Not all programs help you. If you run two anti-virus programs at the same time, it will have a worse performance rating than most actual virus-infected computers. It’s a fact.