Can I Just Have My Mac Back?

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...