Technology blues

I try to upgrade my computer and related technology occasionally; never sooner than until I’m at least two operating systems behind but never longer than the time period between Democratic administrations.

I just updated last week – got a new Dell notebook with a beautiful 17” HD display, a Bluetooth mouse and plenty of memory. I have much less enthusiasm for everything else about this upgrade.

Much of my frustration is with Microsoft, which insists on changing everything about the user’s experience on every bit of their software as often as possible. My beef is mainly with Windows and Word. The easier it was to find and use some feature in the previous versions, the more likely they are to have changed or moved it in the new version. There is a huge learning curve every time you update which is a real disincentive to do so.

I knew this was coming so I paid and extra $100 for the Dell “Premiere” support package, but no documentation of that came with the computer; it took over an hour to figure out how to access it. Whenever I called (and I tried from three different phones) I got a crystal clear greeting and phone menu, then some whirls, clicks and whistles as the call was switched to and answered in Bangalore. At this point the quality of the connection degraded by about 60% and became very poor.

When I finally got a person on the line it got worse. Let me digress first and say that I barely speak one language well, and I have great admiration for anyone who masters more than one. But mastering a language and speaking clearly aren’t the same things, and between the bad connection and the Indian accents I wasn’t getting anywhere transferring my iTunes library from one PC to the other. I guess it was a blessing in disguise because I eventually gave up and figured it out myself, so now I have a few more tech chops than I had before.

And I swore I was going to finally get a handle on backing up data with this machine, so I bought Dell’s online back-up service, but again they sent no documentation. After another hour or so I got that working and up pops a little box telling me it will take 12 hours to back everything up and the PC and internet have to be on the whole time. OK, but unfortunately after about 10 hours the internet farted, interrupting the back-up and forcing me to start over. Second time worked like a charm until 11 hours and 30 minutes when another box informed me I had too much data for the plan I bought and that I should “click here to upgrade and start over.” I declined. I’m going back to random backing up by hand; if I lose something because I didn't back it up, it must not have been that important.

I looked for a way to get refunds for the two services I’m not using, but Dell makes it very hard to find that information. I lobbed a couple emails into two different places that looked like they might be the right spots; one elicited an auto reply telling me to take a deep breath as we “look forward to serving you as soon as possible. As of now we are experiencing unexpected high email volume due to festive season, this may delay the response to your request for assistance.” The other one got no reply.

I’m keeping this machine and software until another Bush takes office, but next time I’m not buying during "festive season."