Technology Blues

Before leaving on the trip I invested in a new laptop, mainly because Mary said there was no way I was going to get to use hers. I did some due diligence and researched laptops and finally settled on a Dell XPS. It was even promoted very favorably in Wired. One thing I did ignore was the buyer's comments on CNET, mainly because the responses were either "Dude, this laptop totally rocks!" or "Dude, this laptop totally sucks" There didn't seem to be much in the way of a middle ground.

So I bought it around a week before we left, which is my bad, I admit. I started it up and loaded some software I needed. I was a little unhappy with the fact that it came with Windows Vista, because there were some Vista issues with Mary's laptop but thought - hey, it's been long enough since the release for them to have worked out most of the bugs. Apparently I was wrong. Or maybe not. We never did figure out what the actual problem with the laptop was. Possibly it just hated me. There's literature to support this, really!

For shortly after I started using the computer it would lock up for no apparent reason. So locked up that I couldn't soft boot, I had to shut it down manually and then restart. Around 50% of the time it wouldn't restart. The other 50% of the time it would start but then lock up again eventually. I finally decided that the problem was that I was trying to actually start the computer and use it - evidently the laptop considered this an unreasonable request. Yes, I'm anthropomorphizing my laptop, it's an engineer trait...trust me.

I got on the phone with Dell and tried for a short time to go through the issues with the support people who were pretty nice, even though I had to have them repeat everything two or three times because I couldn't understand their accents (Indian). Around the one hour mark I had a little epiphany - I was in the airport, on the phone spending my time trying to get my laptop working. What's wrong with this picture? I should have received a product that worked right out of the box. Period.

I told the customer techs thanks for their help but I wanted to return the laptop. This produced a little consternation but they finally agreed although they said that the money wouldn't be refunded for 30 days, an issue that didn't much matter to me. When we arrived in Kauai we ran to the Costco here and I got an HP Pavilion that so far has worked flawlessly.

In addition to the laptop, the performance of Mary's new phone has been less than sterling. She got a Moto Q9h Global something so that she could check e-mails and the internet while we were traveling. The old Blackberry didn't have 3G which means it was somewhat sluggish accessing the internet. The new phone has manifold issues with e-mails, either deleting them without asking or as of this date, over two weeks since we got the phone, Mary has not been able to send an actual e-mail - they just pile up in her outbox without going anywhere.

So we've already replaced one laptop and now Mary is waiting for her old Blackberry which our house sitter has Fedex'ed to meet up with us before we depart Hawaii.

I don't expect a whole lot from tech - I'm an engineer and I know that just when you need the tech the most it'll leave you in the lurch. That's one reason I don't have a cell phone - when I need it there never seems to be any service. But I do expect at a minimum that the products I purchase to work first time out of the box - especially for basic functions like receiving e-mail on an e-mail enabled phone. Or to not actually lock up anytime I start an application on a computer. And along with that I no longer have the patience to spend seemingly limitless amounts of time on a phone with computer techs from India, no matter how helpful, getting something to work that should have worked right in the first place. So that's my technology manifesto. If it doesn't work flawlessly first time, and every time, it goes back to the manufacturer. Period.