There's a joke that's currently circulating by E-mail about a fictitious Press release from General Motors (GM) regarding Bill Gates comparing the computer industry to the motor car industry.

I repeat parts of the joke, only because it goes to the heart of users' frustration with computers. In the joke Gates is said to have made the comment that "If GM had kept up with the technology like the computer industry has, we would all be driving twenty-five dollar cars that got 1000 miles to the gallon.'' GM is said to have replied that if GM had developed technology like Microsoft we would all be driving cars with the following characteristics.

1. For no reason whatsoever your car would crash twice a day.

2. Every time they repainted the lines on the road you would have to buy a new car.

3. Occasionally your car would die on the freeway for no reason, and you would just accept this, restart and drive on.

4. Occasionally, executing a manoeuvre such as a left turn, would cause your car to shut down and refuse to restart, in which case you would have to reinstall the engine.

10. Occasionally, and for no reason whatsoever, your car would lock you out and refuse to let you in until you simultaneously lifted the door handle, turned the key, and grabbed hold of the radio antenna.

...13. You press the start button to shut off the engine.

You get the point and if you haven't read this before the comments probably give you a small chuckle of recognition. Last week I had a chance to talk with Compaq Computer Corp. corporate consultant Cathy Stockwell who was on the Island to meet management at some of the companies here. Compaq recently bought Digital Equipment Corp. with the strategy of melding its consumer product expertise with Digital's corporate business among other things.

Compaq and Ms Stockwell are in the business of selling computers. Her background is in training rather than in the technical aspects of the business. She sees herself as a translator of the technology, being able to speak about it in plain language, and she readily agrees the ordinary desktop users of personal computers (PCs in the jargon) have been given a shoddy deal.

There are lots of frustrated people.

"I'm probably the biggest critic of desktop problems,'' she said. "I've spent my life working on a laptop, depending on a laptop to communicate with customers. The software that the majority of the users depend on today is certainly not the quality most of us in the industry are accustomed to. In fact there are two worlds. The PC world and the business world. The man on the street who owns the PC and the Microsoft software, which are terrific tools, and great ideas, but does not have the kind of reliability that mainframes have delivered for decades. Those of us who were brought up in the corporate world and sold products in that corporate business space are just as unhappy with the quality and reliability of desktop end user products as anyone.'' Now computer companies are attempting to bring the two worlds together, she said. On one end you have the relatively low cost, high volume personal computer market, and on the other you have the standards and reliability demanded by the corporate customer. Hence the Compaq and Digital deal.

"The new goal for Compaq now is trying to satisfy the requirements of the higher end of the business scale for larger corporations,'' Ms Stockwell said.

"We still want to make it easier for users, but also we have to have the more stringent requirements when it comes to functionality, availability, power, scaling. I think that's a big challenge for Compaq because it's a world that IBM has been in forever.'' Compaq aims to make the transformation of bringing down the cost of the high end systems, and of transporting the quality to the low end systems within two years.

She also readily admits the productivity gains promised by the computer age back in the late '70s and early '80s have been illusory in the office setting.

It's only now, with the advent of Internet technology, and the implementation of Intranets and Extranets that real gains are being made in the area of sharing information.

"The biggest advantage I see is that I don't have stacks of paper on my desk any more,'' she said. "I don't have to go through mail and accumulate documents and read tons of data the way I used to. This means savings for the company. It means we don't have to distribute all that paper. We don't have to print it. We don't have to throw it away. We don't have to ship it from place to place. We change it once it's online. You can find the latest and best pieces of data anywhere. You can do it from anywhere. There are substantially lower costs for companies. Printing and shipping are very expensive for companies. Throwing away everything that gets outdated gets very expensive.

The costs savings are there, but it has taken ten years because the simpler tools we started with really didn't produce the savings. It was still all paper driven. We are still trying to get away from that.'' I received some comments from local hoteliers about last week's column in which I noted the lack of E-mail addresses at Internet sites listing accommodation on the Island. I have checked the sites more closely and found many have E-mail addresses, including the Royal Palms, Surf Side Beach Club, the Reefs, Cambridge Beaches, the St. George's Club, Stonington, Angel's Grotto and Marley Beach Cottages, among others. Other hotels didn't. Mr.

Bryony Harvey at Surf Side receives my thanks for pointing out the mistake. My original search was a cursory aside to my comment about the lack of response to E-mails sent by one potential guest. I'll be doing a fuller article about these sites in the near future to discuss the selling of Bermuda on the Internet and how these appear on the search engines. Any information will be welcome.

Tech Tattle is about technology. Contact Ahmed at 295-5881 ext. 248, or 238-3854, or techtattle ygazette.newsmedia.bm.

WINDOW OF ANGST -- Can Compaq help ease computer users' frustrations?