Hi. My name is Don. I am a gadget addict.
I love my MotoRazr2. I love the new Panasonic HD DVD recorder. I adore the Nikon F80 digital SLR. I even know it's called the N80 in America. I can't take a trip on a plane without my iPod Touch.
And in yesterday's post I was a little loose with my language. I didn't actually install speakers. I put in the "Yahama Digital Sound Projector". In so doing, I relegated to the storage bin a functioning Bose Lifestyle system that was, in the mid-90's, one of the coolest things you could get.
I hope it doesn't sound like I am bragging about having these things. Hey, anyone who wants to run up their credit cards can get them. I am writing this because I am quite surprised that I have such a passion for all these new electronic marvels and don't know how it started. I am pretty sure I wasn't this materialistic in my younger days, although I vaguely recall that I was just about the first on our block to own a VCR player.
There is a downside to this, of course. The mini-CD player and recorder sits quietly upstairs, still waiting to actually play and/or record a mini-CD. Which would have been good to do, I suppose, since the mini-CD portable player is also waiting to play something.
In 2007 I saw the coolest little PC and bought an Acer ultralight notebook. When the keyboard stopped working in June (OK, when I spilled coffee on it in June), I couldn't wait to get to the Apple store to buy a Macbook Air.
And that's where a very big downside occurred. Linda and I were in the middle of a fantastic trip that included my 60th birthday party in Rutland, a week with Lily (oh yes, and lots of other family members) in Disneyland and a cruise to Alaska. Pictures were more important than ever, and we took tons, loading them onto the Macbook Air and deleting from the camera to make room for more.
The downside of gadget addiction hit when the Macbook Air wouldn't start after two weeks. No worries, as we like to say here, it was under warranty and Apple would fix it. Well, yes, they said, we can fix it but the way we do that is usually to put in a new hard drive and we cannot return yours to you. But can't I just buy the old one from you? Nope, they said.
But I need the pictures on this hard drive, was more or less my argument. Tell it to someone who cares, was more or less theirs. And in the way that only companies with attitude (and poor workmanship) can be, they tried to make it seem as if it was my fault for being so stupid as not to have backed their machine up given the (strong) possibility that it would stop working properly.
Long story short -- I had to pay almost $400 to get a disk recovery specialist to get the pictures off the hard drive before I could let Apple fix their product that had only worked about two weeks. Of course, once they repaired it, it turned out a cable was loose (shoddy manufacturing) and they did return my original hard disk with all pictures intact. I don't think the disk recovery guy is going to return my money, though, and I am sure Apple isn't going to chip in.
It turns out that I am not alone. Today I read a post at the TechCrunch blog about how they are starting to come to the conclusion that Apple quality is slipping, even as it gets a reputation for building cool products. You can read Michael Arrington's post and the readers' comments here.
I would like to think that this lesson may help me cure my gadget addiction. Only I know it won't. In June, for just a second, my heart beat a bit faster when Linda showed me a catalogue full of products that help older people do things like put their socks on without bending over or get rid of that searing pain in their heels when they first wake up. As Linda pointed out, about half of the products in that book woud be of benefit to me now and who knows how many down the road?
No, the doors to the world of gadgets is just getting wider, and I am not about to let a few bad experiences keep me from it.
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