A survey by British PC maker Novatech, intended to take a lighthearted look at techno-glitches, instead revealed the darker side of computing. One in every four computers has been physically assaulted by its owner, according to the 4,200 respondents. Does this sound amazing to you? It does not surprise me in the least. More and more people are telling us that they are exasperated and frustrated with technology that continues to malfunction, does not work as easily as promised or crashes with regularity.

I am sure that you have experienced some or all of these problems. Let me tell you about a few of mine. I had been gliding merrily along with my technology (two PC desktops, two Mac desktops and a laptop of each, a fax machine, three printers, a scanner, and a Xerox machine) when failures started to hit our family with regularity.

First, one of the Macs went dead. Granted that it was our oldest one, but we still kept some invaluable material on it and needed it to be running. Turned out it was only a power supply, which we had replaced by the one Mac repair shop within our general area (20 miles away).

Then, our children's computer was no longer able to print. We have two computers hooked up to each of our printers, so there is a switcher box that allows the kids to print from their computer on our printer. That one is still not fixed. We simply tell them to put their work on a disk and print it from our computer. Next, their modem stopped working. After spending hours under the desk checking out all the connections, I took the machine into the repair shop and had to replace the modem.

Next, the CD-ROM drive on our computer stopped working. One day it worked, the next it did not. Luckily, we have a CD-Writer that burns CDs and can also double as a CD-ROM drive. So, we haven't replaced that one yet. Suspiciously, though, that computer is acting bizarre most of the time. When you boot it up, it sometimes gives you error messages saying that one or more programs cannot be found. I have no clue about what these programs do, but Windows 98 keeps telling me that it can't find them. The computer seems to work fine, but the errors worry me. When will that computer, our main PC, crash? What will we do to regain access to years of files and work stored there?

The crowning glory was when our main Macintosh computer, where we store most of our writing, told me that it did not recognize the hard drive and did I want to initialize it? NO, I shouted! Initializing the hard drive entails wiping it clean. This time, I had to call the traveling Mac repairman who came to my home. A simple problem, he said. Someone had inadvertently created a RAM disk and that was not allowing the computer to boot up (I have my suspicions). Oh, and by the way, he saw that although I had several RAM guzzling programs like Adobe Photoshop and Adobe PageMaker, I did not have enough RAM to support them. Did I want more RAM installed? Well, I had been having periodic problems with that computer telling me it was out of RAM, so I opted to add some RAM. Two hundred dollars later, I bade him goodbye.

The very next week, as I went to scan some photos into the Mac, the scanner would not work. A motor problem, it said, and sure enough, the motor was not allowing the scanner to glide across the screen and take its photographs of my pictures. As yet, I have not fixed that one, but it will make more sense for me to buy a new scanner than to get mine fixed since the new ones are now way less than $100.

It has been a TechnoStress nightmare for our family, only compounded when my wife (a Clinical Psychologist) found out that her voice-mail system had been down for two days without her knowing it. When she called, the company said that they had installed an upgrade to the software and it had crashed the entire system. She lost all the voice-mail messages saved in her voice box plus no new messages could come into the system for the two days. As most of you do, my wife gets calls on her voice mail for client problems, new clients, doctor referrals and more every day. For about 6 hours she was on the phone to the company to get them to hook her service back up. Finally, at 4 PM on Friday, as she was leaving town, the system was restored.

Why am I telling you all of my TechnoStress Nightmares? Do I want your sympathy? Not really. I want you to realize that the same type of problems can happen to you. Systems can (and will) crash. Technology can (and will) break down. What will you do?

I encourage you to take stock of each and every piece of technology and create an Emergency Techno-Crash Plan. List the technologies, and next to each one decide in advance what you will do if it crashes. If you plan to buy a new one, write down the names and phone numbers of stores so that you won't have to look up phone numbers in the midst of your TechnoStress. If you plan to get it repaired, list the phone numbers of repair shops in your area. Plan for your impending disasters and they will not seem as stressful. Don't forget that your technology includes your phone system, your voice-mail system or answering service, and your software programs. Be prepared. It will happen to you, but it doesn't have to cause you so much stress.

Copyright, 2001, The National Psychologist. Reprinted with permission. The National Psychologist is a privately-owned bimonthly newspaper which may be purchased for $30 a year. Write or call: TNP, 6100 Channingway Blvd., Suite 303, Columbus, OH 43232; telephone: 614.861.1999 or fax with Visa or MC to 614.861.1996.