IT Angst

This may qualify as a rant so I wouldn’t blame you if you bailed out now. And, it’s more grumbling about the world of IT. For years I resisted the siren call of the tablet. The swim team my son coaches chipped in and presented him with an iPad and all he could do was extol its virtues to me. About that time, I was in a computer store and the next generation of those infernal devices had debuted. They were fire saling the older ones and I bit. One usage I saw applied to the many trips I do, mostly kayaking in beautiful places. If I wanted to view the photos and videos at the end of the day, I was relegated to do so on the stamp-sized screen on the back of the compact camera. Through my aging eyes, it appears to be a lab slide of amoebas. Since graphics are highly touted for the iPad, I could simply dump the work product into it each evening and enjoy the show. Or, so I assumed. Since Apple does not play well with others, there was but one port and it was limited to charging the beast and sucking up overpriced Apple software. So, the device was largely used for slingshotting avian projectiles at their porcine adversaries. On a recent trip into darkest Appalachia, the iPad was stolen from our campsite. Human depravity respects no bounds. As miffed as I was about this, there was a silver lining in that I was now free to get something more accommodating. I waited out the computer store for their holiday sale and bought a Windows-based tablet of a popular brand. It had a variety of ports. Although none appeared to be a direct match with the camera components, I was sure the solution must be simple. Back to the computer store. I found a clerk whose eyes appeared to focus in the same plane and asked for a micro USB to micro USB cable with two male ends, reflecting the connection I had to make and showing amazing IT acumen for me. He looked at me as though I were speaking the Vulcan tongue. I repeated my request more deliberately, like a tourist on foreign soil. “No such thing.” Did I detect a sneer? No such thing? If there are two ports like that that require connection, there must be. It’s a law or something, isn’t it? Time for another approach. This had to be a common application and simple, and I may have erred by jumping to my own solution. So, I simply stated what it was I was trying to accomplish. He nodded sagely; a post-adolescent Buddha. “You need an SD card reader.” It would be easier if I could just plug in the card, but the tablet did not accept the full-sized ones. But, I could live with one more device that would be in peril of loss in the morass that is my camera cabinet. “Okay, I’ll go for the card reader. Show me where it is and I’m on my way.” “Not so fast. The reader won’t hook up with the tablet. You’ll also need a converter cable.” Yeah, and some kid to show me how this daisy chain will have to be configured. So now, with the help of some high tech spaghetti, I can link the devices. At the risk of sounding like a geezer, I miss the days when makers of wall outlets and, say, coffee makers knew people would want to hook up and designed the products so a lot of extra crap wasn’t required. Bonus rant. The tablet comes with Windows NT, the evil twin of Windows 8. You can’t find half the common functions without wending your way through multiple cryptic screens. Except, of course, the Windows Store. That tile is front and center in your opening screen. I am generally suspicious of apps, but they did have one I could find useful and I bought it. It appeared to download with no fuss. But, when I opened it, the title screen would show for two seconds and then would disappear. I tried this multiple times with the same results. I restarted the tablet, updated it and did about everything else I could think of. I attempted to contact Microsoft. Phone help advised me that there was a wait that could extend to infinity. The “call me” option glitched when you clicked on “submit.” Probably a double entendre, there. Going to the forum of the users page revealed that I was far from the only one to experience the problem. However, it did include a response from a Microsoft tech who offered five possible solutions. While they appeared to be written in Pig Latin, or assumed you had an advanced degree from MIT, mere hours of web searching helped me decipher the suggestions. It took another couple hours to execute the instructions. And, you guessed it, no joy. I had sent a plaintive plea to the app publisher. The response was fairly prompt, informing me that the app had a glitch and they were working on an update. Really? If you had a defective product that wouldn’t function, would you put it out on the market? If you had a store, would you sell it?