Living-Deliberately.com

I am totally taking a break from this computer CARP to rant on my experience. If you are uncomfortable hearing an angry redheaded woman, I kindly suggest you skip this post.

Now! Onto the reason for my total inflammation!

As back-to-the-land as I want to be, we don’t live in that world. We live in an increasingly technological age, one where it’s not quite possible to keep up, but where following behind at a fair distance (think wandering 4 year old behind mom as she shops here) is attainable. Or at least advisable. I like blogging and I like my forums and for cryin’ out loud we’re trying to set up two internet based businesses. So while we don’t have BlackBerries or palm pilots, phones that take pictures, or nano-pods inserted into our clothing, we do try to have a running, reliable computer.

For years, as long as we didn’t require much of them, hand me downs have been adequate. But this year it became evident that we needed to pay a little more attention to speed. To reliablity. To capability. So after months of homework and receiving our tax return, we made this purchase.

Homework told us to get a MAC. Friends told us to get a MAC. Other business owners told us to get a MAC. Our bank account and family told us to stick to Windows. “Everything comes loaded”. It fit into the budget, which is something in these Dave Ramsey days, that I pay close attention to. So off to Dell.com I went, to buy a name brand new beast with warranties and support and bells and whistles. I upgraded. I bought accessories to go wireless. I did cable and DSL homework. I even dared to imagine myself working over a cup of coffee out in the wi-fi world.

Well not so fast granny. You already know that the thing sat in the box for a few weeks while I convinced myself to go through the torturous excersize of change over. Once that began, you heard about my sore fundament from sitting so long, of the obstacles and brick walls I hit trying to transfer seemingly simple things such as identical versions of Thunderbird, Juno, and Firefox, of the neglected babies and unvacuumed floors. What you haven’t heard of is the tons of minutes spent on a hot cell phone with my patient brother in law, helping me for HOURS and trying to maintain his own day at the same time. Of all the “hmmmm…that is really bizarre” puzzles we’ve run into. And like truly naive hopefulls, we dared to pin our sights on the charter guy coming today, as an answer to some of the problems.

Sike!! To use a word from by-gone days. Try this on for size: two modems, the first one that I had to buy especially for this, didn’t work. Two cables didn’t work. The ethernet port doesn’t recognize that it’s plugged in (no light). The computer wireless card (yes, the one I paid to upgrade) doesn’t work. The hard wire doesn’t work. He thinks the whole lap top needs to be returned.

Well, no way does Dell just rush out to do that. Super kind Charter Man left me with a laptop with an ethernet cable hanging from it (we couldn’t get it out) and a modem and router fully functioning, should I ever get a computer to recognize that I’m paying for this nice service. Onto Dell.com, since they no longer offer phone service.

But they have live chat right?! Well kind of. Maybe it’s my old computer, maybe it’s dial up, maybe it’s alot of things. But it was s-l-o-w. And while Dell reps might have differing levels of patience, they all seem quite arrogant.

Service rep number one: Heard my discription of the problem, told me to plug it in with the hardwire and tell him what color light came on. Well… I CANT plug it in because it’s ALREADY plugged in and there is NO light. ( I did not use caps with him). He disconnected me, “Because, Tia, you are already using broadband wireless”. I’m no computer whiz, but I know when I’m using dial up or not. I know when my laptop says, “server not found” and “media disconnected” that no, Dell-jerkface, I most certainly am not USING wireless!

Enter service rep number two: much more patient. Actually waited to perform a ping test (yes, now I know what that is!) to get confirmation that there is no IP connection before concluding that my wireless driver needs to be reinstalled. Just download it and it will fix the problem. But wait!! I’m not ON that computer. I have to download it onto this old computer (which takes forever) and then transfer it to my external hard drive, then transfer it onto the laptop, and then how to install it? Well I haven’t found out yet because Dell-jerkface number two said I was too slow to respond and disconnected me. WELL I’M SO SORRY! SPEED IS AN ISSUE FOR US AS WELL, WHICH IS WHY WE BOUGHT YOUR STUPID COMPUTER AND ORDERED HIGH SPEED SERVICE! Oh wait..sorry. Before leaving she said the whole problem just might be that Windows XP is corrupted and will have to be reinstalled. Oh…the whole operating system in the first three days out of the box. I’m so delighted.

So who to believe? Charter man who says the hardware is screwed up? Dell Doofusses who don’t really listen? My gut, who increasingly wants to box it up, return it, and go get a MAC I can’t really afford? Dear Brother in law, who is going to be wonderfully sympathetic but lives so many miles away?

While waiting on downloads, there was one good thing that happened. I had plenty of time to fantasize about a computer company for WOMEN. Girl techs who speak in normal language that even housewives can understand. Products that are guaranteed and a support staff that really listens instead of giving the idea of a bunch of pale faced gamers in cubicals joking around about “this idiot I got here who doesn’t know if her computer is online or not! Dude!”

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