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See I find this an example of a user being lazy, and I experience this frequently. They are not even bothering to read what the computer is saying, just giving up and knowing/assuming that you will figure it out. They don't value your time, and cannot be bothered to expend the slightest effort to solve their own problem.

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It is easy for those who are comfortable with computers to read an error message then determine whether we can solve the problem on our own or request support.

For people who are not comfortable with computers, they just see an error message and expect it to be something that they cannot handle.

Which is dumb. 80% of error messages are likely something they are perfectly equiped to handle.

Perhaps, but it is that 20% of error messages that leave people believing that they are unable to handle the other 80%.

Part of the problem is how error messages are presented. A lot of software uses tools like modal dialog boxes to present everything from "a file with that name already exists" to "the file cannot be written". The former can easily be handled. The latter may involve a call to technical support (and part of the reason for that is the ambiguity of the error message).

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