Technological Breakdown

Technology has been failing me over the last few months.  For the stereotypical woman that is a sort of a simpering statement as those sort of toys are definitely for boys.  Not for me, I love technology, love computers and gadgets and am the proud owner of an Iphone 4, a Nexus 7 and a Lenovo Ideapad laptop.  Those of you switched onto technology will note that none of these items is ’top of the range’, that is perhaps were the girl in me comes in. 

I’m perfectly well aware that obsolescence  is built into everyday technology, that the market wouldn’t survive if we were all able to buy the latest things every time they were perfected.  Well yes, my brain has just set up a commentator to that statement, thinking about testing versions of things, and processes, and the fact that it isn’t until you thoroughly use something to you test all the bugs, so to some extent you can’t launch a perfect piece of kit, because the combinations of commands that can be set up couldn’t possibly be set up in testing.  Companies would like to tell you a thing has been thoroughly tested – the words ‘beta test’ scroll across the back of my mind, but I’m not sure they are entirely accurate- but the reality is we know things are updated as we own them.  These days my tablet can be rendered useless for mere minutes whilst the updates are downloaded; yet restarts to my work laptop have made teaching very difficult at times this week.  I was warned such things might happen, and it’s nobody’s fault, just life as it’s lived in 2013.

So as a technology friendly person, you’d think I’d been fine with the failures.  But it would depend how friendly you are with the stuff, how much of the language of technology you speak.  We all know a visit to Currys (other emporiums are available) is a bewildering business.  The posters declaiming RAM and the core speed, let alone the graphics and gigabytes make me want to don a pair of ditsy little shoes, and equally sweet handbag, pile on the lipstick and murmur breathlessly ‘but I’m just a girl how should I know?’, whilst the feminist synapses in my brain scream in rage. But I know about computers, I can tell you what a motherboard is, I sort of know how to explain RAM, I can wiggle a wire to get the connection back, and I can set the hard disc recorder for Strictly and Last Tango in Halifax.  I’m not the most technologically able of my girlfriends, but not the least either.  I can program in python a bit, ok quite a bit, and I run my diary entirely electronically these days, between 4 different devices which, thanks to the people at Google, all update in synchrony.

So the different problems are frustrating.  Take this laptop.  Fortunately, unlike the last one, I had backed up the hard disk onto an external drive when the hard disk failure happened.  I decided to take it to a local little shop that looked like it was a clinic for computers.  I’d seen it advertise in the local paper and thought rather than the corner of Currys where the idiot go to be told where the ‘On’ button is, I’d support a local business.  Three, young earnest men who clearly don’t see enough daylight, with three screens in front of them, thinking on another plane and lots of drawers with tiny screws.  Yes, they could look at my computer, once I paid my deposit and left my contact number.  So I leave my precious lifeline with them and wait.  The return phone call revealed that I had indeed had a hard disk failure which could be corrected but there was a problem.  They needed my discs for reloading the operating systems and Office, all bought perfectly legitimately.  I didn’t have them, Currys didn’t supply them and made the rookey error of not having got any made up.  No problem, just give them my product key and that could be sorted.  As my computer was a Lenovo the product key was on the base of the laptop and had worn off.  So I’d need to buy new software.  Now I don’t know if they were telling me the truth, I was told it was something that had happened and Lenovo had now corrected it, but I fell into the category of people who bought their laptops in Currys and got caught.  At this point my brain closes down, all I want a laptop for is to write and potter round the internet:  I don’t want to be bothered with fighting Currys, who will no doubt have a solution to the problem and it may, or may not, cost money.  So I bought the operating system, but not Office, it was SO expensive and, being a teacher, I thought I should be entitled to discounts somewhere.  Which is what happened, my network manager said I was entitled to use a school disc, so I duly loaded up Office and all the product keys.  But now I’m told at regular intervals I don’t have an authentic version of Office, which I do, and the wireless adapter spends most of its time disabled and I have to be wired to the box in the sitting room if I want to go on the internet, so I don’t.  I don’t write, I can’t think, I, like my wireless adapter, have been disabled.

The trouble is, I know I have made poor decisions, I know there are people, even the few people who read this blog, who are capable of sorting this out without spending lots of money, I know I’ve been lazy because when it comes to it, for me technology does a job, and the business of technology is to facilitate my life, not run it. I also have no-one to ask, or no-one I would ask, and even writing this down I feel strangely vulnerable, the voice in my head tells me I should be able to do this.

So then we come to my Iphone.  I love an Iphone, it’s so intuitive.  But not good when dropped so I have mine in a case as I do have a habit of dropping things.  Sadly the concrete floor in the ladies toilet at work is extremely unforgiving.  The phone fell out of my jacket pocket onto the floor during one visit there, and the screen cracked in multiple places, and went dark.  I have phone insurance with my bank account, and upon phoning them was told that Iphone excess was more than the other types of phone, so it looked doubtful it would be worth me sending it off for weeks to be sorted.  Another bad decision.  So I went to the local shop to have the phone mended, they said Iphone screens were easy to do.  It wasn’t.  The microphone never worked again.  I went back and forwards and back and forwards, and they totally failed to solve the problem.  At the same time I was leaving the network I was with to join a cheaper and more effective company, so I got a new Iphone, still a 4, I was trying to save money, and all was fine. Until I did exactly the same thing with the new phone, except now the screen is cracked but everything else works. And that’s the way it’s staying.  I know I’m making stupid decisions that more organised people would get round, but life really does overwhelm.  Making sure you’re on the best electricity deal, buying the oil before the price goes stratospheric for the winter, keeping on top of how your pension is doing, paying the window cleaners before you have six months of bills that have built up, making sure the hoover bags are replaced before they run out, are all the minutiae of running a home.  So I need my technology to work and those that have that task to do it quickly and efficiently.  But they don’t and I have got to the head banging stage when I almost don’t care.  My ex-husband was always a luddite when it came to technology and I’m at the stage where I can see his point, a state of mind which indicates to me just how serious this has got.

Do I run away, or look for help?  My experience is help is anything but, people are there to take my money and not see it as important that they do their job for me, because it seems, I am not important.  Yes, that does seem a tad melodramatic, but that truth from my past seems horribly relevant to my present for the moment.

And the Nexus 7?  I had the charger cable in the car, and the plug came away from the wire.  As I only go to work in the dark and get back in the dark, I have yet to find the black plug against the black carpets of the inside of my car. Quite.