Tuesday, March 24, 2015

March 24 – “Frustrations in a technological journey”

I tried to buy a new laptop last night.  The one Chris has been using still uses an operating system that no longer exists as far as the folks at Windows are concerned.  It’s at least three generations old.  We bought it right after Hurricane Ike, so that would make it about seven years old … a veritable dinosaur of the technology realm.  The one I use is not quite that old, and since most of our photos are stored on it (as well as on an external hard drive), she will take over use of this one and we’ll get a new one for me to use for work stuff.  Well, at least that was the plan.

I went onto the HP website.  That’s how we got the one I’m using.  It was simple enough last time.  Choose the one you want.  Personalize it with whatever extra oomph you want to put in, like more memory or storage or specific software you want preloaded.  They put it all together for you right there and ship it to you.  They usually have online offers to take advantage of, and they even offer six months to pay with no interest.  Hard to beat if you’re going to buy something anyway.  Just a few clicks of the mouse and you’re done, right?  Well …

The first part of the process went really well.  I waded through the options and finally came up with one that we would be happy with.  It even came with Windows 7 instead of Windows 8, a plus from what intelligence I have been able to gather.  6 gigs of RAM and 750 gigs of storage.  Office 2013 preloaded (I would still need to get Publisher separate, or transfer my weddings and funerals into a different format).  Intel processor.  DVD writer.  All in all, a pretty good, basic unit.  I pushed the button to move on to the shipping screen.  Another plus.  Free standard shipping.  Can’t beat that price.  I clicked to move forward to the payment screen.  Since we have ordered from them before, all our info was still there, so that was easy enough.  Finally I pushed the button to go to the last section … payment.  There the options were: pay with credit card, pay later (the option we used last time – six months, no interest), or pay pal.  I selected the second choice and pushed the “continue” button.  And nothing happened.  The screen wasn’t locked up.  I could still go to other places within the website.  It simply would not take me any farther.  In other words, it would not make the sale, seal the deal.  I even got one of those online specialists who talk to you on the screen in real time.  She had a difficult time with English as her second language.  I could tell by her sentence structure and grammar in general.  Seemed very nice.  Not very helpful, but nice.  While we were talking a message suddenly popped up on my screen, asking me to try again later.  Said they were having trouble with the order.  I typed in that I would indeed try later.  That’s when she went into her sales pitch for some kind of insurance packet I needed to buy along with the computer.  If I would just tell her which computer I was interested in, she would get me the right packet.  Not happening.  My first inclination was to reply that I would just head over to the Apple website and see if they had something I could work with.  I almost did it, too, but Chris was with me.  She often stifles these urges I have.  Great to be married to a conscience, you know?  Ah well.  No new computer yet.

Proverbs 20:28 says, “Love and faithfulness keep a king safe; through love his throne is made secure.”


Father, help us through yet another journey into the world of technology.  It can get daunting.  Amen.

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