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I'm beginning to hate technology...
Spore Cloud
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
When it comes to anything with electronics it just doesnt seem to work right for me lately.
Bought a new router that wouldnt work correctly untill I used 3rd party firmware.
Bought an Xbox 360 that worked right for a month then just started freezing within 20 minutes of gameplay, I RMA'd it and in 2 weeks I got it back.. They didnt fix a damn thing so I RMA'd it back and I got a replacement, seems fine now.
Bought a Ipod mini battery replacement kit. I figured that was best since it costs like 50 dollars to have Apple do it and I can buy one new on eBay for about 60. The directions were shitty and I ended up busting the cable connecting the motherboard to the clickwheel.
Bought a new Sansa e280 to replace the Ipod, seemed a good choice since replacing the battery on this thing was made to be easy. But I have spent 4 hours trying to get it to import a playlist, every attempt takes about 8 minutes because it has to "rebuild database" then it said it was full, then I formatted it and when I FINALLY figure out how to get it to take a damned playlist from Winamp it started to transfer files really slow and just now it took about 20 minutes for Winamp to recognize a "portable" was connected to it.
Why cant things be simple? Why cant things just work correctly without having to fuck with them at every angle untill something works? /rant
EDIT: Oh, and now that the Sansa is finally recognized in Winamp its taking 10 minutes to transfer a playlist that is 211 megs big... <pulls hair out>
Bought a new router that wouldnt work correctly untill I used 3rd party firmware.
Bought an Xbox 360 that worked right for a month then just started freezing within 20 minutes of gameplay, I RMA'd it and in 2 weeks I got it back.. They didnt fix a damn thing so I RMA'd it back and I got a replacement, seems fine now.
Bought a Ipod mini battery replacement kit. I figured that was best since it costs like 50 dollars to have Apple do it and I can buy one new on eBay for about 60. The directions were shitty and I ended up busting the cable connecting the motherboard to the clickwheel.
Bought a new Sansa e280 to replace the Ipod, seemed a good choice since replacing the battery on this thing was made to be easy. But I have spent 4 hours trying to get it to import a playlist, every attempt takes about 8 minutes because it has to "rebuild database" then it said it was full, then I formatted it and when I FINALLY figure out how to get it to take a damned playlist from Winamp it started to transfer files really slow and just now it took about 20 minutes for Winamp to recognize a "portable" was connected to it.
Why cant things be simple? Why cant things just work correctly without having to fuck with them at every angle untill something works? /rant
EDIT: Oh, and now that the Sansa is finally recognized in Winamp its taking 10 minutes to transfer a playlist that is 211 megs big... <pulls hair out>
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Funny how you mentioned the extended memory thing, I think that may have been the first thing I had to fuck with to make something else work tech wise. It was for Duke Nukem 3D when I was like 13.
Get a Mac?
My pc power supply failed.
My iPod (4th gen) went pertinently on error
The iPod mini i bought to replace it didnt work out of box
The iPod mini i exchanged for the other one DIDNT WORK OUT OF BOX
All usb ports on my PC have stopped working, or cause my entire computer to freeze if i plug in anything other than my mouse/keyboard. I would just switch to firewire (that works) and an Ipod..... but, see above.
And to top it all off the power supply insert for my phone somehow got jammed further inside of my phone, so i cannot recharge it. I would just get a new phone and enter in all of my phone numbers but my warranty expired ages ago.
Its also finals week, so i cant take care of any of this until sometime next week.
In short, anyone know how to fix usb ports that freeze when you so much as touch them?
Yeah... those "just work"
except when they just don't ... and then you're pretty much fucked because you're gonna have to learn your way around a UNIX prompt to get anything done.
God I hate the mac at work. Thank god I already had UNIX experience before I had to deal with OS X.
limed for truth.
Get Linux, then. By the time you've learned enough to use it on a regular basis, nothing will stop you.
Oh, irony...
Nothing's forgotten, nothing is ever forgotten
Weirdly, my computing experience has been a lot more pleasant since I switched to Ubuntu full-time. Maybe I just had lower expectations of it than I thought, and it's ben a pleasant surprise.
PSN - CardboardNine
But yeah, they should be able to fix you up. They're not in the business of punishing people who have to wipe their system and reinstall for one reason or another.
I know about the deactivate/reactivate thing, I've had to do it before. I've used the same retail copy of Windows for years and had to reactivate fairly frequently because of hardware juggling or reformats. I could probably sort it out, but at that point I'd spent about 45 minutes on the phone talking to various people and it just pissed me off.
Given Windows doesn't have any features I need that I can't get elsewhere, I'd prefer just to switch OSes. Less hassle in the long run.
Any who...
I've pretty much lost interest in keeping up with any of the new technologies--main reason for that is I got pretty damn tired of having to drop buckets of cash to upgrade my PC every year or two just to run the latest games. I don't know shit about the latest PCs. I don't own a cell phone. That being said, I totally agree with the O.P. Dealing with most of this stuff these days can turn into an exercise in frustration.
It's all a matter of what you're getting out of it. Honestly, none of us really needs any of this shit.
Vinyl works fine as do AM/FM radios--you don't really need an MP3 player.
Libraries are actually cool places to visit and books are actually pretty neat--you could probably get away with not owning a PC and not using the Intarnets if you're willing to make some adjustments to your life (typewriter... spooky!).
Nobody really needs cable TV.
Videogame consoles? Vast time sinks and that's about all that can really be said here.
About the only piece of hardware I can see serving any useful purpose is a cell phone, and only in emergencies where you're stranded somewhere, hospitals need to get in touch with a doctor, etc.
So it comes down to if you're actually getting anything out of all of this stuff. You don't really need any of it, but a lot of it is pretty nice/fun to have when it does work right. Thankfully, I have had zero problems with my Xbox 360 since purchase, so I'm not quite ready to drop off the grid like I've been threatening to do whenever a major piece of hardware goes on the fritz.
Let's face it. These are all toss-away products that will be sitting in a landfull a few years from now. Yeah, they're fun to have around and by Friday morning I look forward to spending as much weekend time as possible on my 360. But, I'd wager most of us, once we went through a bit of an adjustment phase, wouldn't miss these items if St. Peter, aliens, or the Flying Spaghetti Monster decided to suddenly zap them all out of existence.
Long story short: I wouldn't worry about dumping a bunch of your electronic toys if you'd had your fill of them or if they've become more trouble than they're worth. A PC is probably a good tool to have in the house, but other than that, you'd get along just fine without them.
Ng Security Industries, Inc.
PRERELEASE VERSION-NOT FOR FIELD USE - DO NOT TEST IN A POPULATED AREA
-ULTIMA RATIO REGUM-
But ya, I've been luck as of late. my 4th gen iPod is dying, but it's been on the downhill for about 3 months. a few months the fan on my server's CPU heatsync died, this caused the good old lady(A64 3000+) to overheat and shut down. Took me like, a week to figure it out because I coulnd't hear that the fan wasn't working because of the 2 other fans. plus I only use it as a file server, so it would be off for a day and I wouldn't really notice.
And the iPod itself is no better. Less than two months ago, it would start freezing up completely. Not only would the music stop, but it wouldn't respond to any button presses, the lock/unlock button, or even a button-based reset! The only way to get it to respond at all was by waiting for the battery to drain and then recharge from there. And now it's happening again in exactly the same way!
Am I doing something wrong here? Was it just poorly fixed when it got shipped to Apple? And the battery is starting to go, too; I think it only lasts 3 hours or so on a full charge, though as I explained above that's sort of hard to determine. If I do get it fixed again, how can I make sure they get that repaired as well? The last time I mentioned it, they only "fixed" the freezing issue.
My wireless mouse is a bit flaky, but it's about a year old now so I think, "hey, you've served me well, maybe it's time you got replaced" And I'll replace it with one that's very similar, knowing how nice my old one was.
Give your machines a bit of love and care and they'll return the favour.
I swear, setting up IRQs and writing unique autoexec.bat files for every game will be this generations "...had to walk through the snow, two feet deep for ten miles, uphill both ways..."
I've never had to use the terminal except for developer related stuff when I wanted to use the command line tool. What normal applicatoin have you had to use the command line for?
I'm not discounting your post or anything here I just had to comment that reading this bit gave me the image of a guy with a record player strapped to his arm all joggin' down the street to some statler brothers. That shit is hilarious, and made my day.
My last Powerbook had a bad screen. When I finally got it replaced, the new screen had dirt under it and the electrical system was hosed, so one of the USB ports died, and now the video is hosed.
My Macbook pro had a fucked-up function key from day one. Within two weeks one of the USB ports had died. It crashes constantly when being put to sleep or awakened.
My digital cable receiver is a hunk of shit, it barely works right.
The new plasma screen starts dropping frames now and then. Slowdown when I'm just watching TV SUCKS.
The only electronics manufacturer I can count on, and can afford products from, is Nintendo. Too bad the product range is sort of limited.
This is one big huge down side to globalization. Everything is made by Chinese factory workers who are just peasants happy to have any indoor job they can find, so the quality of labor, well, sucks. It doesn't matter to them if they make crap, because they never have to deal with the results anyway. LAME.
I had to use the command prompt in order to simply unmount my goddamn external hard drive. I then had to use it again in order to format the thing :P. I know this wasn't supposed to be a Mac Hate Thread, but motherfuck is it frustrating to try to make applications work properly in OS X, particularly the high end stuff like Pro Tools, which I have to use for my music editing class at the university.
Edit- This was an accidental double-post, sorry.
Nintendo tends to be pretty good about replacing those quickly, though. The R button on my DS stopped working a couple weeks ago (or rather, it only worked intermittently, as it would have brief moments where there were no problems), so I called them and they sent me a shipping label and I sent it in. I got it back today with a note that said that they couldn't reproduce my problem, but they replaced it anyway.
Is this a common problem? Anything I can do to fix this?
I've had my gamecube since launch and I've put that thing through hell... only time it ever froze was the first time I played it... oddly enough. Never again, though.
My Wii, however, has frozen up a couple times (never during a game mind you).
I have a Linksys and it is probably one of the worst pieces of electronics I've ever bought. But to answer your question you should probably try DD-WRT [http://www.dd-wrt.com/dd-wrtv2/index.php]. Its third party firmware for routers and has alot more options you can adjust than what Linksys gives you. Since I've switched I haven't had any problems with my router.
note: after installing dd-wrt I followed this tweak guide [http://roachfiend.com/archives/2006/01/02/if-you-happen-to-have-a-linksys-wrt54g-wireless-router/]
Hope that helps.
Tofu wrote: Here be Littleboots, destroyer of threads and master of drunkposting.