Teaching Service Takes Byte Out of Those Baffling Computers

Shopping for a home computer was the easy part for songwriter Bunny Hull. She simply poked around music stores until she discovered the type of software she needed to compose music. Then she looked for the best price for the kind of computer that accepted such a program.

The hard part came later, when Hull toted her $1,400 purchase out of the store, plugged it in at her Hollywood home and popped open its instruction manual.

“Computers don’t compute in my brain easily,” Hull said. “It’s something I don’t really grasp. I’m one of those people who hates manuals and the store I bought it from really didn’t offer assistance or an education program. All of a sudden, I had all this equipment and no idea how to use it.”

Hull ended up at a Woodland Hills computer rental company that has wired its Apples and IBMs into a growing segment of the computer-related market: dissatisfied owners of personal computers who need personalized help in operating their new machines.

Software Biggest Problem

“Despite what computer salesmen tell you, personal computers are confusing to first-time users,” said Robert Yadlovker, co-owner of ComputerMat Microcomputer Workcenter, where Hull purchased an hour’s worth of instruction last Friday for $40. “Software is the biggest problem. If you don’t know how to use it, you can’t do anything.”

Lower microcomputer prices, aggressive marketing efforts by hardware manufacturers and computer stores and an expanded variety of specialized software programs are luring plenty of eager, first-time buyers. But those same factors have limited the amount of hands-on operating instruction available from retailers, according to people in the industry.

Despite retailers’ promises to provide training after the sale, they say, narrow profit margins keep computer salesmen busy courting new customers and leave little time for much individual help in some stores.

Other times, customers who have researched the field enough to know that they want specific equipment and software show a misleading level of sophistication to computer salesmen. Hull, who sought out equipment that would compute music patterns and print out notes, feels she fell into that category.

Assume Too Much

“Salespeople assume you know more than you do. They should assume you know nothing. I found the computer very intimidating,” she said.

Retailers acknowledge that the quality of after-sale service available to computer buyers varies. Instruction can be a few quick questions and answers at the time of the sale or several hours of intense work by the customer and salesman. Some stores offer nighttime classes for customers.

But Tariq Nizami, owner of a ComputerLand outlet in Van Nuys, said only 30% of his 1-year-old store’s customers accept the two free hours of introductory instruction his salesmen offer.

“Most of them say they’ll call if they have a problem,” Nizami said. “We have two people in support for after-sale questions on the phone or in-house.”

Consultation Available

Consultation is available for $35 an hour for customers with complicated computer programming needs, he said.

Many computer buyers turn to friends for help in selecting and setting up personal programs, and others seek out semi-professional computer “wizards,” often self-taught experts who started out as teen-age hackers. But such a computer-help service has largely been unorganized.

That is changing. Consulting firms that train employees of companies that have bought computer systems are now looking at individual computer owners as potential clients.

So are firms that specialize in the sale of computer software, said JoAnn Brissenden, co-owner of the Committee Software Store in Sherman Oaks.

‘Lot of Competition’

“With computer hardware stores, they’re into moving items quickly,” Brissenden, 42, said. “There is a lot of competition in Los Angeles between computer stores. Instead of a 25% to 40% markup, discounters are operating on a 5% to 7% markup. It’s difficult for them to offer much instruction.”

Brissenden said her firm specializes in the sale and installation of accounting programs in personal computers now used in many businesses. But it also has begun offering personalized instruction for $50 an hour at night and $35 during the day.

ComputerMat’s entry into the training field was accidental, according to Yadlovker and partner Susan Kapitanoff. The company was begun last June as a computer rental business.

Kapitanoff, 39, of Woodland Hills, opened the business after a half dozen backers loaned her $100,000 to buy nine personal computers and lease a small Ventura Boulevard storefront. She hired Yadlovker, 38, a Burbank computer salesman who had sold her some of the equipment, to help run the business.

Rental Venture Failed

The rental venture, however, was a flop. Kapitanoff said she expected to attract many computer users from nearby Pierce College and Taft High School, but that they failed to materialize--even though she started out charging a low, $7.50 hourly rate for computer time.

Yadlovker said the idea for a computer training service came after the pair noticed they were spending a surprising amount of time teaching rental customers how to set up programs and operate the computers.

“People were telling us they’d bought a computer and it had sat for six months gathering dust before they used it,” Kapitanoff said. “A lot of salesmen are not too knowledgeable with the new technology and software. A year ago, an enormous amount was coming out virtually every day. Salespeople just couldn’t keep up with it.”

Neither could they keep up with the instruction manuals that accompanied some new home computers and many of the new software packages entering the market, she said.

Some Manuals Have Errors

“There are manuals that have downright errors. In one software manual for an Apple, a key command sentence was left out. The salesmen tell people to just put it in and go. But he’s selling a thousand different programs and he isn’t going to know everything,” she said.

Yadlovker said he helped one computer owner struggle through a software manual “that had an index that was off four pages. There’s no way anybody could have used it.”

He said software manufacturers have begun joining computer makers in providing more easily understood instructions. But the use of such things as punctuation marks as computer commands can confuse novice users.

Skip Usen, who owns a small publishing company in Canoga Park, agrees.

Usen purchased a $7,500 computer system more than a year ago to handle mailing lists for an astrology newspaper he produces. Bitterly, he jokes about how the computer has become a “footrest” that sits beneath an office table.

Manual ‘a Joke’

“The instruction manual that came with it was just a joke,” he said. “You’d have to be Einstein to read it. Even he might not have understood it.”

Swayed by advertising that promised the Apple Macintosh computer was user-friendly, Usen bought one to handle the mailing list work. He ended up hiring someone to show him how to use it.

“People in business don’t have time to read all the manuals that come with these things,” Usen said. “They don’t implant a computer chip in your head when you buy that computer.”