Consumer Loyalty

Today's picture is from 2003. It is a photo of 'house fluff.' That combo of small plastic things, ticket stubs, odd coins, useless keys and little parts of the natural (shell?) and unnatural (fuse?) worlds. A lot of our possessions are this mostly useless fluff, I sometimes think. What do you do with this stuff? That's one of the dilemmas of downsizing.

But today's title is 'consumer loyalty?' I cranked up Blogger today to do a piece on my woes with computer stuff and loyalty to companies that make it. I'm still cleaning out pictures and I just decided to add this one. But a lot of house fluff is made up of old gadgets and plastic parts from them.

When I fired up Blogger to talk about consumer loyalty? That's when my loyalty to Blogger was tested! I uploaded the picture and then hit upload picture again to check to date on the picture. I got several errors from Blogger when I tried that and then I tried to 'save as draft' and got an error. So...I started the post over. When I did that and tried to upload the picture again...it locked up my computer. Permanently apparently. I waited while I made a big commuter cup of coffee on my Capresso Jura Impressa E8. In spite of weird problems over the years with my CA2000 from them and the fact that this one has a weird quirk or two and the cleaning supplies and filters are expensive, I love this machine. And I'm loyal to this company. This new one communicates, too. "Change Filter" it says. Or "Press Rinse." Or "Empty Grounds." Or "Drawer Missing." Or "Add Coffee." Or "Add Water." Or "Clean Machine." It speaks to me. (OK, it's an LED.) In English. (In spite of being a Swiss product, no German or French or Italian.) Anyway, back from the coffee machine and my Sony computer was still locked up. (Their TVs used to be great, didn't they? I have one in the kitchen that we bought twenty-nine years ago. Seriously. It has never even been repaired.)

But I digress. After cycling power on my Sony, Blogger was behaving. Which it mostly does. It is a good way to be online, I think. I'm loyal to Blogger (now Google). And the price is right. Free.

I really popped open to post to talk about my three new pieces of computer gear...and some older computer things that have been giving me pleasure...or making me upset.

I bought a new laptop. My old one was a refurbished Dell I bought at Mr. Notebook three-and-a-half years ago. It had developed a habit of refusing to switch on. When it did everything was fine except for a one or two pixel drop out in the video and the fact that I used a card for wireless that didn't seem to stay seated well in the PCMCIA slot. I really only need a laptop for (1) backup when my Sony desktop is misbehaving; or (2) trips. Although I'd always thought it would be nice to use it wirelessly in the bedroom. But that never worked well with an old wireless access point (and that flakey wireless card) I tried at one time. So I ordered a new HP laptop, custom-configured through costco.com.

I bought a new router with a wireless antenna. I bought this some weeks ago. At Costco so it was shielded in impenetrable plastic. I hate that by the way. But I digress. The reason I bought the new router was that the Linksys router I was using kept giving me trouble. When I couldn't get it to work, I dug around in my drawer and found an old router with only one LAN port. I found a hub, too, and used the two to hook up to my Sony and another hub for the rest of the house. It worked a while and I didn't mess with it. But I thought "maybe I should buy another router, with wireless built in and maybe I could go that route again." So I bought one that was packaged with a USB antenna. Which I thought I could use on the laptop. I never installed this stuff. Then, of course, the laptop failed. The one I bought has a wireless antenna built-in, of course. This new router is Netgear. I'd been pretty loyal to Linksys, but what the heck. My current kludge with the ancient Linksys gear started failing Wednesday although it worked after a boot to the head.

I bought a Western Digital 160MG Passport Drive. This was after getting these first two pieces of equipment working very well. I didn't do it myself. No. Wednesday, the last day of our confinement to avoid ice, FedEx delivered the computer. (We didn't get any actual mail that day. Post Office Loyalty? Right?) Anyway, my computer guru came over, braving ice and snow (not really, streets clear between our locations) and he got the laptop going and he hooked up the router and made it work with everyone wired and the laptop wireless. (The old laptop, by the way, decided to briefly switch on due to the competition from the new, shiny HP.) Where was I? Oh, yes, everything working and, in fact, FFP claiming his Internet access was faster in spite of two hubs between him and the router (well, it was three before so maybe).

And then I bought the Passport Drive. The limited installation instructions (though in many languages) said plug it in and it will install itself. It seemed to do this. It downloaded some new software and some software asked me to set up how I wanted to use a Sync program. I really kind of wanted to just use it as a USB drive. I've had a 120MG, AC-powered, USB drive I've used happily for a long time. (SimpleTech is the brand). Then I ejected the Passport and brought it up again. Nothing seemed to work. The instructions said to launch an .exe. There were actually two on the drive (one it just downloaded). Both failed to launch. You couldn't copy things to it. It said it couldn't find the sector. I tried it on the Sony. Same weird behavior. And on both machines, when I tried to 'safely eject it' it refused for a long time. Now, these portable drives and external drives are something you need to trust. I think I'm returning this. After looking at Western Digital's WEB site I think I may reconsider buying their MyBook product. Costco has this, too. And there are complaints about it losing data. Well, I think I'm returning this one.

Two out of three in getting new computer stuff to work? That's not bad. Too bad I didn't have the Passport here when the computer guru was here. At least he would have commiserated with me. Which is one reason I hire him.

We all so want to buy (or use for free!) products we love and trust. My feelings for Sony are mixed...this computer hasn't been the best I've had, but a TV that lasts almost three decades? Geez. My feelings for Western Digital are at a low at the moment. I'm appreciating that SimpleTech drive that works so well. HP? Well, I've recently purchased a small laser printer, an all-in-one inkjet and this laptop. Pretty happy with those, so far. Linksys? Netgear? Jury's out but both kind of work. Netgear WEB interface sucked, though, my guru and I agreed.

Dell? Well, that old refurbed notebook worked for a while. And it never burned up or anything. We have two Dell computers running in the house at the moment. One has never really failed and survived a memory upgrade and upgrade to XP. It's old and slow but it was purchased in 2000, I think, so there you go. The other one is of 2001 vintage. The hard drive failed. The guru put in a new, giant one and we recovered all the data from backups and reinstalled everything and that was a pain. And the monitor we bought with it failed. FFP is happily using this machine, though, with a 19inch flat panel. Don't know the manufacturer but it works fine. Truthfully, I won't be buying Dell anymore. My bookkeeper who died last year bought a laptop and had to eventually buy another laptop from a local store because it never worked. You can't just return their crap apparently. She changed the logo on the machine she used here with a post-it...changing the 'D' to 'H'. She owed money on the laptop that never worked when she died. I understand they forgave the debt. Nice of them? Well it was a couple of hundred dollars. In itself too much to pay for nothing. And she'd paid a bunch on it, I guess. I was moved to buy the HP online from Costco because they said they would take it back at the store. And the interface to customize was easy to use. I've not been happy with Dell in this regard. No, I won't be buying from Dell. But you should. Because they are a big part of the local Austin economy and I have some stock.

Why, you might ask (if you are the type of reader still around after a boring recitation of comptuer joys and woes), would I buy a computer now when XP comes installed instead of the new Vista? Well, friends I don't want Vista. Not for at least six months. Maybe a lot longer. Not that I love XP. But I know enough not to love something new from Microsoft. Although for all you Mac users who claim nothing ever goes wrong...I read blogs from people who have Mac failures. So, yeah, nothing's perfect. My new HP has 'Windows Vista Capable' sticker. And some kind of limited offer for an upgrade. But, no, I won't do it. I hope to use XP on it until it dies. Unless it lives a very long time.

Now, of course, from the downsizing point of view, there is the question of what to do with the old laptop that boots sometimes.