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Computers - doncha love 'em

Published by: Harry on 10th May 2010 | View all blogs by Harry

We come into the office this morning. When we turn on our surge-protected desktop, it makes a thin, temporary whine and shows a thin orange light instead of a nice blue turning-on one. Tommy has the side off the machine and is poking around in the motherboard - socks off, to protect against static electricity. (Don't ask - I don't understand.)

We've got two office laptops as well. One has the hinge broken, so the screen needs to be propped up against the wall. My laptop is fine, except that it can't pick up the wireless signal after a period of rest, except by being turned off and on again.

And all these damn machines are fairly new, reasonably high spec devices. Is it really too much to ask them, duh, to work. My car outside has 145,000 miles on the clock. It starts every time, and the engine is still sweet as a nut and sound as a pound.

I suspect that we'll be buying a new desktop imminently and a new laptop for Tommy at the same time. I don't really mind that - it's only money - but then there's the time required to load up software, to find that stuff that worked fine on one machine hates the new version of Windows, to discover that the things you knew how to do before are no longer valid, &c &c.

And I know. We should probably be Apple not PC, or Linux not Windows. Or something. But these are huge corporations we're buying stuff off, and all I ask is that their damn things work.

Comments

23 Comments

by ColinTW 2 years ago

Sounds grim Harry. If you are updating why don't you switch to Macs? More expensive but you get what you pay for. I find them consistently reliable - for me since 1997 - and if you do get a problem there is a large support network on the net who can help you solve it. To start with the different layout can be strange but pretty soon you can't imagine why you ever used PC's with their clunky, annoying, counter intuitive software. (Just my opinion of course).

I've come to the conclusion that PC's are made by IT geeks who love computers for their own sake. They don't understand ordinary human beings and they want the computer to be easy for *them* to operate. Mac's are made by creative people who love *using* computers and they want them to be easy for everyone to understand and operate.
by Jak 2 years ago

I got an old pc you can have in the meanwhile if you need it? but you gotta come to newcastle to get it :)
by AlanP 2 years ago

The thing about macs is that you can only buy a good one, because only the people from mac are allowed to make them and they do it rather well. Now anyone can make a PC (in fact I am considering doing that, just for the fun of it). Here's the point I have six pcs around the house/office the oldest is ten years, the youngest is two. They all work every time and they they were all made by dell (apart from one HP) and they were all pretty expensive, just like a mac. The software is cheaper and you can generally fix the exotic faults with enough Googling. Fixing a motherboard is a challenge.

My point is that, just as with the mac, you get what you pay for. In the meantime, good luck. Try Novatech for quick supplies.
by EmmaD 2 years ago

Grrrrr on your behalf, Harry. I'd have Macs if I hadn't been on the wrong end of so many things where Mac-users end up throwing up their hands in despair... or I do. At the very least fonts get chewed up, at the worst you (or they) can't open the damn thing at all/run the program/access the specially-written softward. (And don't get me started on Linux. Any operating system which means you can't buy a broadband dongle from a high street store and plug it in and get on with it, is not one worth having...). But I'd tend to back up what AlanP says: my local computer guru/genius, who's been in business keeping the computers of SE London going for twenty years, always tells you to buy a Dell because he finds they're the only ones which almost never go wrong, and the ones I've bought under his tutelage, as it were, have proved him right... and done him out of quite a lot of work, as a result!
by Harry 2 years ago

We've just spent £450 on getting a new Dell desktop. And £25 for a didgerydoo that sucks data off hard drives and issues it forth via a USB connection. And we'll be getting a new laptop imminently too.

Points taken about Apple - but in part, it's because we have experienced problems occasionally in compatability with other people's Apples, and we can't have that problem in reverse. We just handle too many files to risk compatability issues.
by Harry 2 years ago

Oh, and the thing which fried was a two year old Dell.
by Spangles 2 years ago

How deeply irritating for you, Harry. My brother used to say that 'PC' stands for 'piece of crap'. I'm an Apple fan through and through, but take your point about possible incompatibility.
by ColinTW 2 years ago

Ah well, I will have to agree to disagree with most of those points. No one said macs are perfect - it would be surprising if they were given that Apple is the company pushing the boundaries and MS are always just playing catch up - but there is a broad consensus among mac users that we are well served.

On the compatibility issues Harry, I've not had any problems for years. Macs give you lots of easy options to send windows friendly attachments and whenever I get anything in from a PC user my Mac just sorts it out for me. The only slight problem I had recently was with the latest version of office because I had an old version of office running and dear old Bill Gates wouldn't let me use it to open anything from the latest version. But I just downloaded the free Open Office package and it deals with everything, so now I don't have to use Bill's pricey WP package any more.
by AlanP 2 years ago

One thing about Dell is that their warranty is often generously long. Have you checked if your two year old machine is out of warranty. You can do it on their web site, you just have to enter the service tag number off the back. Apologies if this is a bit SBO, but you never know.
by Spangles 2 years ago

Colin, I'm interested to read what you say about the latest version of Office. I keep being sent .docx documents that I can't open (I've got Word 2004) and was reluctant to download the free Open Office package in case it created havoc on my Mac. So it's reassuring that you've found it to be Apple-friendly.
by ColinTW 2 years ago

And just thought that, in a way, the title of your blog post sort of sums it up for me - I only ever feel glum like that when I'm forced to use a PC. The thing is, I do love my Mac and I wouldn't swap it for a free PC, let alone one I had to pay for. I absolutely mean that. I find working with a mac a fun, easy, creative experience. I get the feeling that not many PC users can say the same - although I do think Alan's point about paying for the best hardware is fair. Trouble is you still have to use the same clunky operating system.
by ColinTW 2 years ago

Yes Spangles - absolutely no problems with it all and I am now using it for my writing. There are a few things that are different to MS Word and it doesn't have the same functionality (I believe) but it does just about everything you want it to. And because it's open source it's being improved all the time. I recommend it. But there are also a couple of places where you can download free software that should translate .docx for you to run on any version of Word.
by AlanP 2 years ago

Spangles, You can get at no charge (or it used to be) a set of filters so that you can open docx and the like with older versions of office. Just download from www.ms.com.
by AlanP 2 years ago

Oh Colin. The thing about windows is that it isn't really an operating system. There is one lurking in there somewhere but in reality it's a humongous application; which is why it goes wrong such a lot. Too damn big and unwieldy.
by ColinTW 2 years ago

I'm happy to accept that as an explanation Alan ;) I can actually remember back to my pre-mac days when I would have to delve into ms-dos to do something unmentionable (no idea what it was now). Is ms-dos still at the heart of windows? They must have some sort of OS surely?
by ColinTW 2 years ago

Ah ha. I've just googled and found out about 'Powershell'. That all sounds a little too deep techie for me. I'm just playing at it.
by Steve 2 years ago

And I had an image of the WW/WC office being a serene place tucked away in the corner of a beautiful tudor mansion in a room surrounded by shelves of musty old books and the smell of ancient library. Huge roaring firepace and red-leather wing-back chairs. Faithful labrador resting by the fire with chin on paws. Handel's Water Music drifting quietly on the air. Antique grandfather clock clunking the seconds away in the corner...
by EmmaD 2 years ago

Yes, you can download a compatibility thing so that you can read .docx files. Since the Mac-fiends are coming out of the woodwork, can anyone tell me if I could run a Mac using the monitor I'm using on my PC? As far as I know, no-one makes one like this any more.
by John Taylor 2 years ago

Emma – yes, I am looking at this on a very cheap monitor connected to my wife's Mac Mini. The adaptors that come with the Macs are a bit wobbly, so I splashed out on a cable with the right adaptors on each end (£10 if I remember rightly).

BUT - the reliability thing with Macs is not what it was. I've never had a problem with my Macs and Mac books since the 1990s, but this household computer has had a new hard drive and a new logic board, and it's only a year old. My daughter had a battery problem with her Macbook last year. All the repairs were free, but a major nuisance.
by ColinTW 2 years ago

I think John is right that the mac mini works with just about anything. I gave my my mum my old mini a couple of months ago and hooked it up to the ancient monitor she was using and had no problem, and that was with the mac connector provided. But it is worth double checking as I am not so sure about the newer models. A friend bought a Mac Pro (the big office tower mac) and discovered he couldn't use his old monitor for some reason... Or maybe he now needed an adaptor. I'll check for you.

Although this would be a good test of the mac support network. Try googling 'old monitor mac compatible problem' and see what comes up. I'll bet there's a forum thread somewhere that has gone into this in detail and provides a simple explanation.
by EmmaD 2 years ago

Thanks, Colin, that would be great. Half the time the problem's not the hardware, it's the drivers, in my experience. My monitor is something like 8 years old and I love it to bits (it swivels to show a full A4 page at full size, so it's perfect for working with hard copy, which I do a lot) but having got a new PC running Vista (boo, hiss!) the proper drivers don't work properly, though it's functional.
by Bobby 2 years ago

... and in complete contrast, my image of Writers' Workshop Towers was that of a 1970s youth club on Friday night - Discoteque night - with scratched 7 inch singles blaring out from a record player, a makeshift bar selling little bottles of Lemmo with a paper straw which went all soggy before you were halfway through, Salt n' shake crisps (it was so dark you always ended up eating the blue bag coz you could never find it until it was too late), Marathons (pre-Snickers days), teens staring up at the coloured lights on the ceiling - older teens staring at the blonde on the dancefloor rocking away to the latest hit by Mud, and even older teens, 16 at least, staggering about the place in a threatening manner having consumed a can of Skol lager, half a bottle of Woodpecker Cider, and if they were really daring - a bottle of Granny's Mackeson while she wasn't looking!
Okay then, Harry, Tommy, whose description is the closest, mine or Steve's?
Or is it an amalgam of the two?
by Wrathnar the Unreasonable 2 years ago

Have you tried being nice to your computer? Humans shout at computers a lot, which is hardly fair since we invented them, so if they don't work the way we want them to, is that really their fault? Me and Compy (my computer) have an understanding: he helps me with my writing, but sometimes he gets confused, which is usually my fault, so I don't get cross with him. He does his best! Don't be nasty to your computer; computers are people too!