I’ve written various blog postings on the subject of “Good enough” (see, for example, this recent post about the “good enough” nature of Twitter, and this somewhat older one of a more general nature), but it occurred to me that I should acknowledge the opposite end of the spectrum: bad enough.

When a software product (or, more generally, any product) is “bad enough,” we decide not to buy it (or use it) in the first place; or if we’re already using it, then we decide to abandon it in favor of some alternative that is, in our personal opinion, “good enough.” Expressing it in those terms makes an interesting point: some product is judged to be “bad enough” (to avoid or replace) only in comparison to some other product. Unfortunately, we’re sometimes stuck with products we hate, and which drive us crazy on a daily basis, but which we’re forced to continue using because there’s no reasonable alternative. Regardless of which computing platform you use, and which email/Web-browser/word-processor you use, I’m sure you can think of appropriate examples in your own little world.

I think the best example, for most of us, of a “bad enough” software product that we choose to ignore altogether, in favor of the manual, or “non-automated” alternative, is the latest-and-greatest “personal information manager,” or PIM. Anyone who is sufficiently computer-literate to be reading this blog probably has some computerized form of a calendar, address list, and to-do list; but many of the products we use are pretty primitive and frustrating. Indeed, they barely — just barely — qualify as “good enough”; the problem is that the latest products from some tiny startup company, or any one of the large behemoth software giants, turn out to be even worse. Why should I spend 10 minutes typing in all of the details about a new appointment, or a new to-do item, if the chances of my ever needing that information is one in a million? A Luddite might prefer to continue using his/her Filofax or paper-calendar system; and most of us semi-automated folks will continue to use whatever semi-automated tool we first started using five or ten years ago.

This raises another interesting point: sometimes the new software product (e.g., a PIM that promises to organize our day-to-day lives in an “effortless” fashion) is not really bad at all; but it’s not so much better than its benefits compensate for the inertia associated with our old product. For example: I’ve been using a calendar/address product called “Now Up To Date” and “Now Contact” since 1993, and I’m really getting sick of it. But it only crashes five times a day, and it contains every detail of my personal schedule since 1993, and it’s networked with my wife’s calendar, and it allows me to schedule time in 5-minute increments. Any of the newer products — e.g., Apple’s iCal, Google’s Calendar, or the forthcoming Entourage product in Office 2008 — suffers either from the fact that it’s only incrementally/marginally better than what I’ve got, or the enormous headache of converting 15 years of legacy data. Thus far, it’s just not worth it.

But I think there are several software companies — Microsoft being the most egregious example, but Apple being only marginally better — that assume that just because they could get away with “bad enough”products (because it was so painful to switch) up until now, they can continue do so for the foreseeable future. Most veteran computer users won’t abandon a “bad enough” product casually just to get a 5% improvement (in cost, productivity, ease of use, etc.); but technology changes rapidly enough that it’s only a matter of time before a new startup comes along with a product that may be (a) buggy, (b) expensive, (c) poorly documented, but (d) 10 times better than the crap we’re currently using. And while corporate IT departments may feel some kind of political loyalty to IBM or Microsoft or whatever vendor they’ve been using, I suspect most consumer-oriented computer users have much less loyalty.

I’ve got a long list of “bad enough”software that I’d love to get rid of. I won’t bother enumerating the products on that list, simply because your list may be different. But I think it’s a worthwhile exercise to create such a list; and it’s worth reviewing that list at least once every six months…