FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Contact:
Michael Putzel
Trysail, Inc.
(202) 429-6550
e-mail: mputzel@trysail.com

Trysail, Inc., a Washington-based technology consulting firm,
today launched "Bugs that Bite," a feature on the World Wide Web
designed to draw public and industry attention to the frustrating
glitches that drive average computer users to distraction.
"We keep hearing about the wonders of technology, but the fact
is these all-powerful machines can be intimidating, capricious and
downright nasty to the innocent user," said Trysail CEO Michael Putzel.
Elsewhere on the site is a section applauding the work of developers who
are making it easy for nontechnical people to use computers.
The company, founded earlier this year by Putzel, an
award-winning journalist and technology specialist, inaugurated the
"Bugs that Bite" section of its corporate Web site to focus on the
shortcomings of modern consumer technology and encourage developers to
pay closer attention to software problems.
The first citation went to "Catch 95," a potentially
debilitating bug reported by Stephen Manes in The New York Times. Manes
disclosed that the emergency recovery disk, which users are told to make
when they install the Microsoft Windows 95 operating system, is unlikely
to work when a system fails and the disk is required. Since its
introduction in August 1995, Windows 95 has been installed on tens of
millions of personal computers around the world and is the standard
operating system on the vast majority of new computers.
"Nothing is more frustrating to the ordinary user than software
'bugs' that make a program misbehave in unpredictable ways, causing lost
time and--worse--lost work," Putzel said. To highlight particularly
annoying glitches, Trysail, Inc. will periodically feature a particular
bug on its Web site at www.trysail.com. The company seeks nominations
from the public for the dubious achievement award. It can be reached by
e-mail at bugs@trysail.com.
The campaign is aimed at encouraging developers to pay closer
attention to reliability and ease of use, which Trysail regards as
critical to customer satisfaction, especially in the home and in small
offices, where computers are increasingly in use but where on-site
technical support is rarely available.
Trysail seeks clients in the development community who are
committed to making personal technology easier and more reliable for
ordinary, nontechnical consumers.
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