I have a friend; actually he's considered to be the Pro AV industry's training "guru" in videoconferencing, who's got every piece of technological gear imaginable in his office. Scott Sharer, director of education and training at Logical Transitions, Inc., has a half dozen videoconferencing codecs, a REAL wireless 'helmet-cam', projectors, monitors, more than a few laptops and PCs and trains on how to be good at videoconferencing as a trade. However, he doesn't have a cell phone (mobile phone). Why? Well, he once told me something that's stuck with me for years. When I asked him why he didn't have a cell phone he quickly replied that it was because it's the lowest form of technical imperfection he's ever seen and has caused the consumer to expect a lower level of customer service and support.

Well, if you're one of the thousands in our industry who live and die by the access and freedom (or lack of) that the mobile phone has given us, daggonnit, he's right. What other piece of gear do you use that you accept the fact that it's just not going to work all the time and even cut off a conversation on a regular basis? Imagine sitting down to watch TV and being three minutes into the show and having the TV cut itself off automatically. Would you simply get up from the couch and turn it back on without thinking twice? Heck not, you'd spend hours trying to find the culprit. More importantly, the founding fathers of TV wouldn't have let us have a system like that.

How about other things in your house? The alarm clock, the dryer, the dishwasher, the refrigerator, and the car. If these things fail you immediately consider it a problem and set off to get it fixed. But, the cell phone: nope, it's just accepted. We have come to accept a lower quality standard as NORMAL!?! And, it's not the only thing that does this. Right before I started writing this article tonight, I read my e-mail and my laptop locked up (locked up is Windows-code for crashing). Why? Well, I actually have no idea. I went to change between Outlook and Word and I got that familiar blue screen with white text explaining how I had a "fatal" error. Again, it's accepted as a fact of life when using PCs.

A lot of people compare the growth, trends and technologies in our industry to the PC industry and I sure hope that's not an apples-to-apples comparison. Sure, I would love to continue to experience the growth we are having and one day reach that of the PC market, but one things for certain: the PC industry is NOT service oriented. Price has driven that industry into emulating the service department of the Nation's cable companies.