Dave vs. Technology, A Story Of Frustration

A few years back we had to replace our old desktop computer. I don’t remember exactly what died, but I’m thinking the operating system or something just went. And of course it was just before the weekend and my wife had important stuff to do for church on Sunday. So, on a Friday night we found ourselves shopping for a laptop. Bought one, took it home and loaded the programs we needed on Saturday morning. We had so much trouble navigating with just the pad and little bars we ended buying a wireless mouse to use with it.

In the meantime, we started having trouble with our printer. It wouldn’t recognize one of the color toner cartridges. Turns out a little plastic tab had broken off somewhere, and, no there wasn’t really anything they could do to fix it. The repair would cost more than a new printer. And isn’t that the case anymore? So, we bought another printer.

After about three years, the screen on the laptop decided not to come on anymore. We took it in and were told there really wasn’t anything they could do repair it, so off to the store again for yet another laptop. Now, a little more than two years later, just after the warranty expired, the laptop began to freeze while online, and there was a blue caste to everything. When you opened a new document for instance, the page would be light blue instead of white. So we took it in and were told that an overheating solder joint on the video card was causing the problem and it would cost as much to repair as it would to buy a new laptop. So, yeah we bought a new laptop. Bought this one online, though, because everything in stores had Windows 10, and most of the software we use is not yet compatible, so we had to find a machine with Windows 8.1.

I installed the programs that we use, and, of course now you can’t just buy Microsoft Office, you have to pay for it each year. Yeah, it’s a rip but what are supposed to do? I ran into a major problem while installing our printer, though. It would not install! The printer did not come with an installation disc; you plugged it into the laptop and the drivers were downloaded and installed from the manufacturer’s website. No big deal, everything worked just fine, but not this time.

So one morning while I was on vacation, I spent 45 minutes on the phone with the laptop’s tech support people trying with no luck to install it, then called the printer’s tech support people, who after I gave them the serial number of the printer was told “Oh, we don’t support that printer anymore. It’s that old! The only drivers we have for that are universal drivers and sometimes they work and sometimes they don’t.” So guess what? Yeah, had to buy a new printer.

This week, I have finally gotten around to taking both laptops in to have the data from the old laptop transferred to the new, and we’ll be installing the new printer before the weekend. Sure hope everything works the way it’s supposed to work!