This week, I spent several sessions on the telephone helping an old friend iron out a software problem, oddly enough with that usual paragon of rock-solid dependability, Eudora.

My friend, Doug, has a 1998 vintage UMAX C-500 Mac clone, which has served him pretty much without a hiccup for the past four years. He is running Mac OS 8.1, which came installed on the C-500, and he has never done a System reinstall. His computing needs are modest -- email, word-processing, and a bit of Web surfing. The C-500 has been an ideal machine for him, and he remains perfectly satisfied with it from performance standpoint. I expect that there are many Mac-users like him, which is one reason why personal computer sales are in a slump. I don't expect that Doug will ever feel the need to buy another computer as long as the UMAX keeps on working.

However, last weekend Doug's copy of Eudora Pro 4.2 stopped working, and began crashing every time he tried to open his mailbox, whether on or offline. If I had been physically present, I would probably have tried reinstalling the program, but Doug didn't know where the installer was (someone else had installed the program for him back in '98), and I figured that he might as well make a virtue of necessity and upgrade to Eudora 5.1 while we were troubleshooting.

First I had him run Norton Disk Doctor, which turned up and repaired some major disk directory damage that may have been the culprit in is crashing problems. Then off to the Eudora Web site to download Eudora 5.1. That went smoothly enough, but when Doug ran the installer and tried to start the program, it informed him that he needed a later version of QuickTime to support the little ads. I suggested he try switching to "Light" mode, since he only has one e-mail account, and doesn't care about stuff like the built-in spell checker or other advanced bells and whistles. Unfortunately, Eudora 5.1 kept crashing on startup.

OK, it seemed to be time to upgrade QuickTime as well. I told Doug to go to Apple's Web site and download QuickTime 5, and rang off. He phoned me back to say he was having problems in initiating the download. The form fields on the QuickTime download Web page kept rejecting his attempts to type in his e-mail address.

"What are you using for a browser?"

"Netscape."

"What version?"

Doug checked and replied that it was Netscape three-point-something, which was pretty obsolete even back in 1998 when it was bundled with his system software. I told him that this was probably the problem, and asked if he had been experiencing difficulty on other Web sites. He affirmed that he indeed had been he. Time for a browser upgrade too.

In such situations I usually prefer to keep things as simple as possible, and my inclination was to advise Doug to download the latest Netscape Communicator 4.78. However, that's a hefty chunk of a download through a 56 K modem dialup, and as time was somewhat of the essence, I suggested iCab, which he was able to bring down in about five minutes.

ICab installed without much difficulty, and we proceeded to www.apple.com again, to download the QuickTime installer, (the text fields worked fine in iCab) and commenced the QuickTime 5 upgrade, which the installation manager said would take about half an hour. I rang off again.

Doug phoned back when the QuickTime upgrade was completed. I suggested that a clean install of Eudora 5.1 might be a good idea, and to drag his old Eudora Folder out of his System Folder and drop it on the Desktop. He then ran the installer, and this time, with QuickTime 5 support, the Eudora installation and startup ran smoothly. However, Doug didn't know the particulars of his e-mail account to enter in the Eudora Settings.

Eudora is pretty flexible, and I decided at this point there was little to be lost by dragging the Settings file from his old Eudora Pro 4.2 folder into the new Eudora Folder and trying that. While he was at it, I told him to also drag in the Mail Folder and Nickname files for his Address Book.

Upon restarting the program, Eudora 5.1 assimilated the old Settings, and all of Doug's e-mail archives showed up in the Mailbox menu. Mission accomplished.

However, in an ideal world, it shouldn't have taken a cumulative hour and a half of (in this case free) telephone tech support for Doug to get his e-mail working again. At least if the objective is to make computing a satisfactory experience for technophobe folks like my friend Doug, who is no dullard -- he has three university degrees. He's just not interested in technical issues. He wants his computer to do some relatively low-powered tasks dependably and with no hassle, and the old UMAX has served him pretty well in that regard, but he found this software hassle very frustrating.

One thing that Doug, and many other non-tech-oriented Mac users find especially challenging is cognating a coherent mental picture of where stuff is on their hard drives. The concept of two Eudora Folders -- the old one on the Desktop and a new one in the System Folder, neither of which contained the actual Eudora application (it lives in the Eudora Application Folder elsewhere on the drive ) was confusing to him. I eventually told him to rename the old one "Old Eudora Folder" to help distinguish which was which. That helped. Little issues like this, which I deal with on auto-pilot, are daunting to non-tech-oriented or interested people. Perhaps OS X will be better in that context for them, although not necessarily for me.

I reflexively thought of telling Doug he should upgrade his operating system, but bit my tongue. OS 8.1 is an ideal system for a 200 MHz 603e with 16 MB of RAM. Eventually, third-party software issues may oblige him to upgrade both his memory and OS version, but for now, OS 8.1, Eudora, and iCab should work just fine.

After 17 years of Macintosh computing development, arguably we're a lot worse off user-friendliness wise than we were back in the '80s. My old Mac Plus running System 6.0.1 was a rock of stability and reliability compared with current Macs. It never crashed, or suffered file corruption (at least that I knew about), and it "just worked," which was good from a personal perspective, because I knew nothing about computers when I bought it.

I have learned a lot over the years, and my computer expertise has increased by many magnitudes as computer complexity increased, so I am usually capable of dealing with any curve balls thrown my way by my Macs, and indeed of advising others having problems with their Macs. However, where does that leave folks who are as ignorant as I was nine years ago? Essentially dependent on tech support of some sort.

In a column earlier this month I wrote:

"[I] wonder whether a revivified System 6 with its networking capabilities upgraded wouldn't make sense for a no-frills "appliance" Mac for folks who just want to do email, a bit of word processing, and casual Web surfing. The (legitimate) knock against today's computers is that they are too complex, too hard to use and troubleshoot, and too prone to glitches. I often wonder how tech-illiterate folks (that's most folks) use computers at all. System 6 was easy to use, and gave little trouble."

Now, obviously we can't all go back to the simplicity of System 6. While the old Mac Plus was trouble-free and user-friendly, it didn't do a whole lot. However, for people like my friend Doug, who don't really care if their computer can do a whole lot, and for whom even his four-year-old UMAX C-500 is extreme overkill capability-wise for what he wants to do with it, an updated Mac Plus style machine running an Internet-savvy updated System 6 type minimalist OS, would pretty much cover all the bases, and could conceivably do so with an ease-of-use factor no worse than a typical VCR.

Perhaps OS X could be the key to this. UNIX is an admirably scalable OS, I'm told, and just this week, Hewlett-Packard Co. announced it will use stripped down versions of the Linux OS in small consumer devices from cell phones to stereos. A stripped-down version of OS X for a simple, consumer word processing, email, Web-surfing, and MP3 box with preloaded software would seem to be eminently doable.

I wouldn't want a computer like that, but I think it would suit an awful lot of users just fine.

Charles W. Moore