Technology Is Our Friend

I bought a new laptop. I purchased this marvel during the sales tax free days prior to school starting. I had shopped for the laptop prior to actually purchasing the laptop because I figured that the stores would be madhouses during the tax free days. The store was a madhouse, but they were actually staffed, prepared, and suitably ready. It was the fastest computer purchase I have ever made. Best Buy did an excellent job. Congratulations to the management and the sales help for being prepared.

I could wait for them to do stuff to my computer to get it started right there at Best Buy. I looked at my salesman, a man in his twenties at most, and asked if that was really necessary. He looked at me, an AARP card holder, and hedged some. I told him that I was the person who was setting up whole computer labs in schools and actually had worked as a technician myself. He looked at me with new respect and answered in the negative.

I brought my new computer home and had it up and running in no time at all. But, and isn’t there always a but, I couldn’t get the wireless network to work. I could get a tethered network working, but the whole idea of having this laptop was to move out my office and onto the lanai when the weather was beautiful. Wireless was the way to go.

I struggled. I got upset. I kept being told that it wasn’t working. Then, I actually read the screen about why it wasn’t working. There is some little switch on my new laptop that has to be flipped from LAN to Wireless for the wireless network to actually work. By simply reading the whole screen, I could have fixed my problem in seconds. And I actually did fix my problem in just seconds – after finding the dang switch.

I don’t know if having them “set up” my laptop at Best Buy would have helped or not. I don’t know how much they would have done there. They were not coming to my house and finding my named wireless network and setting that part up for me. I don’t know if I wasted more time here being frustrated when the wireless wouldn’t work than I would have wasted at the store waiting for it to be my turn to get my computer ready.

What I do know is that reading is fundamental. If I had read the entire error message the first time it popped up, I could have saved myself all sorts of aggravation. But that would have been much too “time consuming” because those error messages are just boring and all. I hope I learned something. Like perhaps that I have much yet to learn.