Comment Articles

The Lexmark lesson - make more noise

Rupert Goodwins ZDNet.co.uk

Published: 16 Nov 2004 17:45 GMT

Finally, people forget. They read something, click on OK, and move on. Life is too short to remember that an obscure piece of software attached to your printer will sometimes do something you'll never see. The company may well have made 'full disclosure' of Lexmark Connect during installation, but it patently wasn't full enough to prevent people from interpreting the subsequent behaviour of the software as underhand and unexpected.

Lexmark is also the architect of its own misery in other ways. It has got a rotten reputation for obstreperous behaviour with third parties. An ongoing case in the US has seen it try and use the controversial Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), a badly worded piece of legislation that exists to protect intellectual property, to prevent anyone making alternative ink cartridges. The Lexmark parts have a chip that tells the printer "I'm kosher": anyone wanting to build their own cart has to replicate the actions of that chip. Such replication is against the DMCA, says Lexmark as it unfurls its lawyers. So far, the case isn't going Lexmark's way -- and neither is the publicity. If people suspect that Lexmark is being underhand in collecting data, they'll be predisposed to believe it.

It is not unreasonable for Lexmark to want to know how its printers are being used. There are some good, solid commercial arguments for knowing this, even for using the data to remind the user when supplies are running low. It's possible to run a fully automatic delivery service: once you've signed up, you get new cartridges popping through your letterbox without any further effort on your part. Dell likes the idea of this -- it is using Lexmark technology to just this end -- but it's arguable whether this book club approach will really give users the full benefits of choice and competition. In the end, it's up to the users.

And this is where the Lexmark scheme falls down. By hiding the process of reporting from the user except at one easy to miss point, it disguises itself too well and removes the user from the process. Compare this with Microsoft's error reporting scheme -- when it wants to report home, it pops up windows, asks questions, offers to disclose everything that's being sent and provides links for further investigation. There has to be a balance -- nobody wants to be ticking boxes for every page of A4 -- and doubtless the amount of data passed back will be less, as more people choose to disable the reports either temporarily or permanently.

Proper social engineering is the answer for anyone seeking to avoid Lexmark's woes. The chance to know more about users is too good to pass up, and is just one of the ways that the connected enterprise can make good, effective use of the new opportunities of the Internet. Without a good understanding of how users will perceive the process, remote data collation can backfire: get it right, and everyone benefits.