IT Users Frustrated By Gadgets

When giving that new MP3 player or cell phone as a holiday present this season, be sure to include training and support as part of the package -- a new Pew Internet & American Life Project survey found that 48 percent of technology owners need help to set up their new gizmos. The finding could indicate a growing market for solution providers specializing in supporting SOHO (small office/home office) businesses.

The survey, which polled users of computers, cell phones, Blackberries, MP3 players and the Internet, noted that new technologies often become popular before the technology itself is understood by the general public. Therefore, it is not always intuitive for new users to know how to use those technologies -- and when they break, fixing them also presents a problem. Approximately 36 percent of respondents said they had a problem with their tech device in the past year; 15 percent of those experiencing problems said they were unable to fix the problem. Men were more likely (33 percent) than women (22 percent) to fix gadget problems by themselves, while women (18 percent) were more likely than men (12 percent) to consult their friends or family for help.

A home Internet connection is the technology most likely to fail, with 44 percent of users reporting that their connection went down in the past 12 months. Most people (44 percent) opted to contact user support when their Internet connection failed, opposed to 24 percent who tried to fix it themselves. Both methods had equal rates of success, with 6 percent of dial-up users and 7 percent of broadband users unable to fix the problem.

Computers are the second most common device to fail (28 percent), followed by cell phones (21 percent), Blackberries (2 percent) and iPods (3 percent). PDAs and MP3 players are the devices least likely to have failed in the past year, and of owners who had multiple devices fail, very few reported that their Blackberries or iPods had been the device to fail most recently.