Some
of you may recall how OYT drowned my beloved mac in milk. The
Engineer then surprised me with a new Windows 8 laptop, lightning
fast, and I was happy because I had a computer.
I
am no longer happy. Today I spent 2:42:17 with Microsoft tech
support. Tricia (in Costa Rica) was delightful, helpful, sweet,
understanding, intelligent, and listened carefully. However, I had
not planned on the call taking over 45 minutes (I had planned
ahead...) so at one point I had to hand the phone to The Engineer
while I drove the carpool to the last day of school. When I
returned, the scan which had taken almost 40 minutes was done, the
corrupted files found, the problem “fixed”, and it was time to
check results.
Nothing
was fixed. I won't bore you (further...) with all that's wrong with
Windows 8, but basically I have to load web pages MULTIPLE times to
get all the functionality, and NONE of my apps work. Windows 8 has
all those tiles you've seen in the commercials. They're all apps.
I've become particularly fond of the EMAIL app. I find email a
rather convenient form of communication, and having my personal, and
the email for the A-Z info@, accessible from one application without
logging in and out of two google identities convenient. It hates me,
though. It also hates Tricia and all her clever attempts to make it
listen to us.
So
there we were, 14 restarts of my machine and hours later, and still
no closer to a solution. So I asked her if SHE was on a Windows 8
machine. “We can solve problems for any of our operating systems.
I can help you with XP, Vista, Windows 7 and Windows 8.” “But
are YOU on a Windows 8 machine?” She repeated that same answer.
Suspicious if you ask me. Later, I did finally get her to admit (we
had plenty of time for chit-chat as my pedaling-as-fast-as-it-could
machine downloaded one update after another) that she was on Windows
8 since that was what my problem was, but it wasn't her usual
machine.
In
the end though, my apps still didn't work, websites still wouldn't
load, AND my personal email account was no longer visible on the mail
app. See, even though I couldn't DO anything with my email on that
app, I could at least READ the back emails I'm desperately trying to
catch up on. Well, until the app just decides I'm done and flips
back to the opening screen. I was making progress in the back-log,
though.
So
after all that time, I'm actually in WORSE shape than when I started,
and I've now been escalated to another department which has “more
tools” to help me solve my problems. Yeah, I really need more
“tools” in my life...sigh.
CAN
I JUST HAVE MY MAC BACK?????????
There
were two gems that came out of the conversation. She repeatedly, and
I'm pretty sure accidentally, referred to the "preferred" browser as
“Internet EXPLODEr”. Since it kept living up to its name, we did our
work with Chrome ;-)
She
also said that I knew the most about Windows 8 of any customer she
had worked with. Truly frightening. If I've managed to learn the most about this crappy POS OS, then how is ANYONE coping? I mean, their
own tech people run Windows 7...

