Over the past few months, Teresa's MacBook Pro battery has been horribly unreliable. It lasts 45 minutes at best, and will even die within a couple hours while in sleep mode. So she did some research, found the pertinent information by googling and checking Apple.com's support forums, and calling Apple, since we paid for the AppleCare extended warranty.

Big mistake.

Why? Because she did the calling. Even though she knows her way around a computer better than most people, she got to listen to, "OK, do you see the apple in the upper right corner? Click that, and you'll see, 'About this Mac...'," even though she already had the pertinent battery page open in System Profiler. Even after she told them that, they still tried to walk her through every step of the way, making the call last a whole lot longer than necessary.

Well, a day later, we got some more information about the battery, namely that it was less than a year old and still under warranty. This time, I called back. They started treating me with the step-by-step, although more like, "Go to 'About this Mac' in the Apple Menu," (Notice the difference? They assumed she didn't know what a menu is.), but once I told them I already had System Profiler up, they treated me very competently.

Teresa encounters this sort of treatment all the time, and it drives her crazy. When she asks salesmen technical questions in stores like Best Buy, they always "dumb it down" when talking to her. I can approach the same salesman later with the same question and get a much more intelligent answer, and I don't have to be wearing a geeky shirt to get that reaction. They just assume that my Y-chromosome brings a greater knowledge of all things technical.

So tech support and salesmen, when dealing with with anyone, just start out by asking, "What is your level of knowledge? Are you a beginner or a power user?" In this digital age, more people make a point of knowing their way around computers, and while you can't always assume that to be the case, don't be afraid to ask. You'll keep from wasting our time and yours.