Mining for gold yields new rule

Remember Moore’s Law? The Intel founder’s prediction that transistor density on microprocessors should double every two years is routinely applied to discussions about computing speed.

Gordon Moore is invoked whenever a manufacturer like Advanced Micro Devices leapfrogs its PC processors to the 1.1 Gigahertz mark, for example. Or when Intel matches the AMD challenge – as it recently did – with its own 1-GHz Pentium III.

But there’s a darker side to Moore’s forecast. As the processors become more complex, so do the programs that run on them. In fact, to coin a new rule – Elliott’s Law? – the software that runs on these speeded-up microprocessors quadruples every two years.

I’m only half kidding.

But you know there’s something to my little theory. You know it from experience. You’ve heard the stats about how only a fraction of the features on programs like Microsoft Word are actually used regularly. You know how cumbersome the new programs are when they load up on your hard drive.

Take GoldMine Software’s latest version of its flagship product, GoldMine 5.0. For those of us who need something that’s a little more industrial-strength than Eudora or Outlook, GoldMine is a real find. Not only does it track appointments, collect and sort e-mail, and synchronize with your personal digital assistant, but it also helps forecast and report on sales. It does everything you’d want – and then some.

And therein lies the problem. GoldMine is so exhaustive, so epic, that it also consumes a lot of space – a minimum of 65 megabytes on your hard drive for starters. Its other system requirements are noteworthy: a minimum 486 IBM-compatible PC, Windows 95 or better, and 16 megabytes of RAM. (Yeah, I’d like to see someone try GoldMine with just 16 megabytes.)

The real telltale sign that this could be my Elliott’s Law case study is the paperwork that accompanies GoldMine. There’s a hefty 200-some page manual, plus various brochures and reference sheets. And let’s not overlook this gem: a 57-page brochure listing all of the GoldMine-certified trainers and instructors, from whom you can presumably take classes on how to use the application.

Don’t misunderstand me. There’s nothing wrong with GoldMine’s functionality. I’ve used the program, on-again and off-again, for about four years. Although I invariably revert back to Outlook, I think that if I were in sales, I’d probably sleep with my copy of GoldMine. It’s just that there are times, like when I recently installed a new copy of 5.0 on my desktop, that I found myself yearning for simplicity.

Maybe you’ve experienced it too – that frustrating half-hour when you fumble around with the registration and then try to get the program started up properly. You look around for a tech support number to call, only to discover that it’s either not a toll-free number or it’s not a free call. GoldMine, for example, socks you with a $35 fee after the first three tech support calls, with a sliding scale going all the way up to $95 for extra-technical questions about its synchronization and reports features.

The alternative is to sit through a GoldMine class. That’s something I’m wary of, if for no other reason than that I think computer software that stores your addresses, appointments and tracks sales, ought to be simple enough to figure out for yourself.

I think my complaints are partially mitigated by GoldMine’s returns. Once trained to use the software, the promise of becoming a more efficient employee, consultant or manager probably makes the initial pain of being trained seem irrelevant. Still, my point isn’t entirely lost on this example. For all of its benefits, GoldMine remains a big, lumbering, all-inclusive program that can probably do better by doing less.

I can’t entirely blame GoldMine or Microsoft or Intuit for creating these vast, incomprehensible software institutions. We’re at fault, too.

We users, with our insatiable and irrational appetite for new features, are driving these so-called “improvements.” We’re telling the software developers in focus groups that we want more features, more routines, more tricks – but at the same time, we complain when version 6.0 won’t fit on our laptop PC. We’re also voting with our wallets, because hey, bigger is better, right? Take a look at Microsoft’s stock for more on that.

This is a particularly troubling trend for travelers. While we want the latest and greatest, we’re also unbelievably inconvenienced when the 2001 edition of the application in question comes with an instruction manual the size of a Bible. Equally unnerving is when a solution isn’t intuitively apparent and tech help is but a toll call and $95 away. That’s especially true when we’re stuck in an airport on a six-hour layover.

Isn’t it time we made things simpler? Let the transistor density on microprocessors double every two months, but for goodness sakes, leave the software out of it. If anything, make the software twice as easy to use when the processors accelerate. Other than telling your software developer in no uncertain terms how ticked off you are at its latest release, I wouldn’t know how to accomplish that. However, I can tell you that if this trend continues, we’ll all be taking classes on how to use our computers, and wouldn’t that be a sad and counterintuitive world?

Christopher Elliott is the author of Scammed: How to Save Your Money and Find Better Service in a World of Schemes, Swindles, and Shady Deals. Critics have called it “eye-opening” and “inspiring” — it’ll “grab your attention and won’t let go.” Order your copy now on Amazon, Barnes & Noble or iTunes.

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