12 Comments
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Michael Barnes's avatar

Not a specific answer to the question 'how long should I spend fixing a technical issue' because individual milage may vary due to experience, knowledge time available, patience and whether or not you feel like your life is racing to the grave. But the inimitable XKCD did post about a similar conundrum https://xkcd.com/1319/

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Dave W's avatar

20 minutes is long enough to work out whether I know, or can work out, how to fix something or know that it's way past my level of competence.

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insomniac's avatar

I am at that stage too. ms insomniac needs an eSim for when she goes to the US next week and I can't be arsed finding out how to help install it. I mean I listen to the YouTube but, well...I'm going to enlist the help of the young peeps instead.

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Aunty Lou's avatar

Come now! Even an old duffer like me has managed it. Using an esim as we speak...from chilly Paris. So much easier than finding that little poking thing to swap physical sims.

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Potato Shaped Man's avatar

It basically comes as a message to the phone. Easy peasy. ;)

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Potato Shaped Man's avatar

Stop using Microsoft products on a hostile OS.

A pass key is just something like your face, your fingerprint, voice recognition, that sort of thing. Any alternative to a password basically. The idea is to remove usernames and passwords to make accessing devices more secure, so even if Joe Bloggs the Corporate Espionage agent gets into your building, he can't sign into anything because he's not recognised. Combined with multi-factor auth, it is the future.

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Anita's avatar

Depends on my mood. If I’m feeling stubborn I’ll spend days fixing it until it is *really* broken. Other times I’ll chuck it out the window immediately. Then I go to a shop and call all the teenagers working there ‘darling’ and hope for the best.

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Steve York's avatar

You need to make sure if you’re telling a long meandering story, you have to make sure it goes nowhere. Otherwise you’re making the rest of us look bad.

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Mike Funnell's avatar

How long I spend on a technical problem depends, a lot, on the answers to two questions: (i) am I being paid to diagnose or fix the problem? (ii) is it a problem in a system I’m responsible for (to others)?

If either answer is ‘yes’ - especially to (ii) - then I’ll spend as much time as it takes.

If either answer is ‘no’ - again especially for (ii) - then I probably won’t spend more than an hour on it unless I’ve made some promising progress or the problem is important to me personally and there’s nobody else who can fix it for me.

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w from brisbane's avatar

Won’t the people at the Apple Store just tell you to put your data on iCloud?

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John Birmingham's avatar

My data is on iCloud

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William Ferguson's avatar

Is proportional to the likelihood of getting someone else to solve it for you.

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