Drop the mouse and step away from the PC

The first few moments in any crisis response are critical, and mistakes can be costly. So it is with misbehaving computers.

Yet the first step for many users after a computer crash is to hit or yell at their machine, according to a new survey. The helpless feeling of data slipping away into a black hole seems to be more than many computer users can bear. According to the survey, more people commit some act of computer violence than call for help when faced with a crisis, according to a survey conducted by New York-based Ontrack Data Recovery.

Fortunately, violence isn't the only response.  About 13 percent of survey participants said they attempt to sweet-talk their computers into coughing up any lost data, said Todd Johnson, vice president data recovery at Ontrack.  Another non-violent response is the most popular, he said -- about one-third of respondents said they immediately just resign themselves to loss of the data.

But 7 percent said their first reaction is the hit the computer, Johnson said, a step that's rarely productive. Another 13 percent yell at the computer first.

"It's hard when people lose data," he said.  "People do begin to panic."

The Ontrack study results parallel a study conducted recently by the University of Maryland's Laboratory for Automation Psychology and Decision Processes. A full 10 percent of respondents to that poll indicated that had committed violence against the computers in frustration, said Dr. Kent L. Norman.

"There was one restaurant manager who was so upset with his laptop that he threw it into a deep fryer," Norman said.  "That destroyed the laptop ... and deep fryer, too."

That might sound extreme, but few computer users haven't considered tossing a misbehaving PC out an office window at one time or another. One respondent in Norman's study did just that, but left out an important step.

"His mistake was he forgot to open the window," Norman said. 

Besides the obvious physical damage, such overreactions can have an even higher cost, Johnson said — often, lost data can be saved by experts, but not if a computer has already been deep-fried. 

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