Hello all.
Been a while, hasn't it?
Got a good excuse this time.
Immediately after my last posting a teeny-tiny message box popped up at the very bottom of my computer screen warning of incipient memory overload, only a few measly KBs keeping the old Dell from going into disc overwrite death rattle.
Next (hot hot hot) morning I hit the local (well, closest to me) Staples, on 95th street in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, to pick up whatever external drive was on sale. What I thought would be a quick $40 or $50 fix turned into a credit-card busting expenditure when it turned out that no external memory currently on the market is compatible with the version of windows (Vista) the old Dell was running (poor laptop, only 41/2 years old and already condemned to the recycling dustheap of history) so had no choice but shell out for something new.
A few weeks previous the touchpad's left click button quit on me (a $15 wireless mouse took care of that) so I knew the end was coming soon. But when it came it was still something of a shock. Not as big as the one I received when three-quarters of my music got lost in space somewhere when transferring ITunes over to the new Toshiba. Fortunately I was able to retrieve most of the music that had been purchased through ITunes but just about all CD uploads (we're talking approximately half a thousand songs here) simply ceased to be.
No big deal, I told myself, just root through some jumbled together CD stacks and re-upload. But nothing is ever that simple in this here new fangled computer age. Since my new laptop didn't come with a CD player (which I'd thought a plus in terms of cost and weight) I had to start up the old Dell and upload on that, but proving that the search for simplicity is a sucker's game, for some reason the file transfer process had made a hash of ITunes files and wouldn't let me upload directly to it. So I had to upload to Windows Media Player, then download everything to flash drive (after a failure notice due to lack of available flash memory necessitated yet another 2 bus transfer trip to Staples) then upload to WMP in the Toshiba, then copy everything over to ITunes one file, sometimes one song, at a time.
All this after a fruitless weekend trying to do basic set-up stuff, making me wish I'd shelled out the extra C-note and a half for their Home Setup Service. Finally at wits' and scalded eyeballs' end I packed everything up and on another broiling hot morning took another 2 bus trip to Ye Olde Neighborhood Staples.
I have to say the staff couldn't have been nicer.
Jerry spent almost an hour setting everything up, straightening everything out and rescuing the Toshiba from the graveyard of lost passwords. This on top of the original sales/tech guy having installed the security package the night of purchase. An expected 30 minute job, it ended up taking three times as long due to the difficulty involved in extracting the pre-installed Norton Security 30 day trial software, which, virus like in tenacity, is still telling me to activate it before I'm seriously compromised. (Which brings to mind one of those 50s-60s British noir type movies where Dirk Bogard or somebody is being blackmailed over some unnamed act of moral turpitude.)
Also, they took care of another problem, one purely of my own making and one I doubt anybody else could be anywhere near idiotic enough to create.
You know that strip on the back of that library-type card that comes with the Microsoft Office download package? The one you're supposed to gently scratch away at until your personal, one of a kind, 25 digit Key Code is revealed, the one you need to enter to download Office's operating software to your computer, the one which, without, you might as well have tossed your hundred and nineteen dollars and ninety-nine cents down the nearest sewer grating?
Yeah, that one.
It wasn't revealin' nuttin'.
I tried scratching at other areas on the back of the card.
Nuttin'.
Went back to the damn strip, determined.
Overly determined, it turned out.
The strip came off in twisted, sticking to itself shreds, only a portion of the numbers visible. Sheepishly, I handed the mess over to Jerry after all his hard work setting up, feebly trying to explain, fully expecting a dismissive throwing up of hands and directions to the nearest exit.
No problem, it turned out.
He handed the mess over to the store manager who got Microsoft on the phone and after they first insisted the problem could only be resolved at an Official Microsoft Store, not just a store that sold Microsoft products, she calmly but firmly asked if they were aware just how much of their product was moved through just this branch of Staples. After that, it was just a quick refund and buy-back and I was good to go.
My surprise at Staples' super efficient and super customer friendly policies and the staff's technological expertise is born of past, not so pleasantly resolved difficulties at that self-same Staples branch: endless battles over rebates and refunds for product failure, delivery date and times about as firm as a snowman on the 4th of July, clueless staff and endless, molasses slow checkout lines.
Never thought I'd say it, but here's to Staples.
(available for paid endorsement. can be contacted through this blog.)
Been a while, hasn't it?
Got a good excuse this time.
Immediately after my last posting a teeny-tiny message box popped up at the very bottom of my computer screen warning of incipient memory overload, only a few measly KBs keeping the old Dell from going into disc overwrite death rattle.
Next (hot hot hot) morning I hit the local (well, closest to me) Staples, on 95th street in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, to pick up whatever external drive was on sale. What I thought would be a quick $40 or $50 fix turned into a credit-card busting expenditure when it turned out that no external memory currently on the market is compatible with the version of windows (Vista) the old Dell was running (poor laptop, only 41/2 years old and already condemned to the recycling dustheap of history) so had no choice but shell out for something new.
A few weeks previous the touchpad's left click button quit on me (a $15 wireless mouse took care of that) so I knew the end was coming soon. But when it came it was still something of a shock. Not as big as the one I received when three-quarters of my music got lost in space somewhere when transferring ITunes over to the new Toshiba. Fortunately I was able to retrieve most of the music that had been purchased through ITunes but just about all CD uploads (we're talking approximately half a thousand songs here) simply ceased to be.
No big deal, I told myself, just root through some jumbled together CD stacks and re-upload. But nothing is ever that simple in this here new fangled computer age. Since my new laptop didn't come with a CD player (which I'd thought a plus in terms of cost and weight) I had to start up the old Dell and upload on that, but proving that the search for simplicity is a sucker's game, for some reason the file transfer process had made a hash of ITunes files and wouldn't let me upload directly to it. So I had to upload to Windows Media Player, then download everything to flash drive (after a failure notice due to lack of available flash memory necessitated yet another 2 bus transfer trip to Staples) then upload to WMP in the Toshiba, then copy everything over to ITunes one file, sometimes one song, at a time.
All this after a fruitless weekend trying to do basic set-up stuff, making me wish I'd shelled out the extra C-note and a half for their Home Setup Service. Finally at wits' and scalded eyeballs' end I packed everything up and on another broiling hot morning took another 2 bus trip to Ye Olde Neighborhood Staples.
I have to say the staff couldn't have been nicer.
Jerry spent almost an hour setting everything up, straightening everything out and rescuing the Toshiba from the graveyard of lost passwords. This on top of the original sales/tech guy having installed the security package the night of purchase. An expected 30 minute job, it ended up taking three times as long due to the difficulty involved in extracting the pre-installed Norton Security 30 day trial software, which, virus like in tenacity, is still telling me to activate it before I'm seriously compromised. (Which brings to mind one of those 50s-60s British noir type movies where Dirk Bogard or somebody is being blackmailed over some unnamed act of moral turpitude.)
Also, they took care of another problem, one purely of my own making and one I doubt anybody else could be anywhere near idiotic enough to create.
You know that strip on the back of that library-type card that comes with the Microsoft Office download package? The one you're supposed to gently scratch away at until your personal, one of a kind, 25 digit Key Code is revealed, the one you need to enter to download Office's operating software to your computer, the one which, without, you might as well have tossed your hundred and nineteen dollars and ninety-nine cents down the nearest sewer grating?
Yeah, that one.
It wasn't revealin' nuttin'.
I tried scratching at other areas on the back of the card.
Nuttin'.
Went back to the damn strip, determined.
Overly determined, it turned out.
The strip came off in twisted, sticking to itself shreds, only a portion of the numbers visible. Sheepishly, I handed the mess over to Jerry after all his hard work setting up, feebly trying to explain, fully expecting a dismissive throwing up of hands and directions to the nearest exit.
No problem, it turned out.
He handed the mess over to the store manager who got Microsoft on the phone and after they first insisted the problem could only be resolved at an Official Microsoft Store, not just a store that sold Microsoft products, she calmly but firmly asked if they were aware just how much of their product was moved through just this branch of Staples. After that, it was just a quick refund and buy-back and I was good to go.
My surprise at Staples' super efficient and super customer friendly policies and the staff's technological expertise is born of past, not so pleasantly resolved difficulties at that self-same Staples branch: endless battles over rebates and refunds for product failure, delivery date and times about as firm as a snowman on the 4th of July, clueless staff and endless, molasses slow checkout lines.
Never thought I'd say it, but here's to Staples.
(available for paid endorsement. can be contacted through this blog.)
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