A Tale of Too many Electronic stores

    We have an electronics crisis in our house! Not only has my phone refused to play nice with the lovely 32G SD card I bought for it, but my daughter's tablet decided to stop recognizing her 32G SD memory card (hmmmm, sounds like a trend). Now my smarter than I am phone is maxed out in storage and my daughter has no music on her tablet, and no space to add any. Worse, our laptop could not recognize the tablet when we plugged it in the computer. Could this electronic vortex get any worse, you may ask.

YEP!

   Our laptop spiraled into depression and aired the black screen of death! Noooo, not the laptop! Not the technology on which I do everything like pay the bills, balance the finances, write stories and blogs, book vacation trips, check my email and Facebook accounts. Not the laptop that I upload photos from, download music to, and create occasional photo albums from. Not the laptop that my daughter occasionally uses to do her homework when the sites the school uses for reference are not tablet friendly. Not the laptop that lets my husband and I watch TV shows that we missed a couple of weeks ago.

YEP. THAT ONE.

    But how can this be? The laptop isn't that old. It has Vista on it after all, and that is what, only two operating systems ago, right? Okay, so maybe they are not offering updates for Vista any longer. Heck, I think it was the updates that did it in. That is what the laptop was doing just before the black screen of death made it's appearance for the third time. Yes, I have fixed the laptop again, and it will probably stay running for awhile, as long as no one turns it off or does any updates. Ever. Oh sure, we could use the "old" desktop computer, but by the time the XP pulls up a webpage, my daughter could have grandchildren. 

    Now you may have come to the conclusion that we are Techno Amish here. We are not. Mostly. Did you read that I lost data files or photos or the like? Nope, that is because none of that is stored on the computers we use. We store pretty much everything on a cloud. I really like Google with all its facets. It is pretty neat, as we can access anything from anywhere - as long as we have our passwords and internet access (or 3G/4G cell service).  Just give me access to the equipment and I can get down to business, even on my phone! That being said and done, we do like to have some things on our devices so that we can use them for the times when we are out of range of wi-fi or cell service.  Like music. And Stuff.  I digress. We are simply slow to step up to the latest and greatest. 

    Hey, who could blame us? It is expensive, quickly outdated, and hard to shop for! After coming to the sad conclusion that we would have to fork out money and move up in the electronic world, we started the research on a replacement for our workhorse laptop. Did we want a traditional laptop? One with a touch screen? One that converts into a tablet? A notebook? An Ultrabook? One with a floating monitor? Back lit keyboard? I wondered if this would be easier if we had fewer choices. Then we got to the hard part of the research, figuring out what all the new terminology meant. Computers now have i5 and i7 CPU descriptions and vary a lot in how much hard drive they have. Even if you don't store all your photos and music there, I have found out that those apps and programs sure are space hogs, and you just can't keep those all on a cloud (or at least I have not figured out how yet). I can't believe they are offering computers with 8GB hardrives. My phone has that and I already have a problem just trying to update apps. I certainly was not impressed with 128G hard drives either. Screen resolution from crappy to better than looking out your front window (mine needs cleaning just now) and battery lives that range from worse than I have now to zillions of hours. How many ports do we need? Is there HDMI? (not that we have a TV that has this kinda hook up) To optical drive or not to optical drive?

    Our heads swimming with information overload, we thought it might be helpful to go to a store or two and actually handle the product. See what the difference between a 5lb laptop and 3lb ultra book really was when we lifted it. Type on the different keyboards to see if they had the right feel. Look at screens with different resolutions to see if we could tell the difference for our use. Open and close the products to see if they would take the strain of our everyday handling. Ask questions of store employees and pray that they spoke English. Or simple Spanish. Or anything other than tech-speak. Maybe help us make a choice that we were not going to regret in a week or two.

Electronics stores, pay attention, this is the part that gets really interesting. 

     Our first store was my favorite, but the salesperson who accosted us was condescending and did not want to talk to me, just my husband. Hey, I am the primary user on the computer and most likely the one who will make the final computer purchase decision! Though they had a lot of product, they did not have the specific computers we were looking for. I might have looked at what they offered, if not for their sales person giving me the creeps. We left. I was bummed. This was my go-to place. Maybe on a different day we would fare better.

    So out we headed to the other stores that noted on-line that they carried the equipment we were interested in. First two stores did not have any of the products in store that they advertise on line. They did have similar computers by manufactures that we had crossed off our list. They also boasted unhelpful employees who said they could order what we were looking for on-line. Well HELLO, I was on-line, that is how I know what products you have. Heck, there was even an option for me to order equipment and all its peripherals at the click of a button. I came to the store to see if the physical product met up with my expectations that were generated from viewing on-line. Unfortunately the "associate" could only tell me what specs were listed on-line and had little or no product knowledge. Stores that don't carry any of their on-line products in store (especially when they advertise sales both in store and on-line) ought to just close their doors now. Employee training goes a long way too. Talking to someone who did not know what they were selling and obviously did not care was not really much of a selling point. You might ask, just what did I need to ask a sales person? You would be surprised by what on-line sites don't tell you about products, like can you change out the battery? Can you upgrade the memory on the computer? Little details tend to be important. 

    Third store did not appear to have any of the product they sell on-line (though I have to admit, the advertisement did not specifically say they had it in store). Hard to tell as the computers were all under a dark smoked plastic display, tightly locked down to prevent theft. I could not tell the difference between a HP or a Dell. Which is what the tag said was in the display case. Since I could not actually see the computers, I will have to take their word for it that those were the computers under lock and key. They also had no employees, which was no surprise. On the other hand, if I wanted anything for a video game system - well, it looked like sky was the limit!

     Next two stores we visited were not much more impressive. First one had displays with large snowflakes offering special holiday bargains. At the end of February (and past President's Day to boot), just what holidays were they referencing? St. Patrick's Day? Beneath this twenty dollar display sign was at least seven to eight thousand dollars worth of merchandise. Does that mean the merchandise is that old and possibly going obsolete? They only stock what wouldn't sell at Christmas? Cheap, out of date display lowered the value of what they were selling. Second store boasted of nice display of an impressive computer that did not appear to be the one they had sitting on the display. When we asked the associate, he said that they did not actually have the computer in question (you know, the one the fancy display was all about), but that the lesser model (which was the one actually on display) was on sale. Further search in the store yielded two computers with keyboards missing keys and a laptop that was supposed to convert into a tablet, but which was also broken and would not convert into anything, laptop or tablet. Gotta tell you guys, I was willing to spend a little extra cash to get the computer of my dreams, but not if you did not want to spend a little bit on current displays and putting out working items for me to test. That twenty dollar holiday bargain display and inaccurate signage (okay, and broken components) cost you our business. Did you really think folks were going to buy broken equipment?

    So getting frustrated, we went to yet another electronics store in hope that we could find something remotely like what we had seen on the internet, with specs listed out for comparison, in working operation. It is not like we were just picking random stores. We were visiting stores toting themselves as approved vendors for the laptop models we were interested in purchasing. At this point if we found a store associate that would just leave us alone, it would be a plus. So far, we pretty much knew more than the store personnel, a concept that seemed a little scary.

     

    This time we went to a store that I did not particularly like. I referred to this store as the "kid" store, since every time I had been in this retailer, the music was too loud to think and the sales force was pushy. Prices also tended to be a bit higher than their competition from my past experience. So imagine my surprise to find the music level low. I approached the computer section cautiously. This could be a trap after all. For the first time I saw many of the models of the product I had viewed on-line. Encouraged, I began to browse. An associate approached and I was given the standard line "Do you need any help?" I decided to chance it an said yes. I wanted to know if the memory could be upgraded, what the battery life was on the laptop I was looking at, did it come with a better RAM memory, and what was the screen resolution. I had not seen this particular model in my on-line research and wanted to know the particulars to determine if it was even worth considering.

  

      The associate apologized and asked if I would wait just a moment while she got the associate that specialized in the section of computers I was looking at. Specialized? Someone pinch me, I think I left the planet.

 
     SURPRISE - the new associate (who specialized in this section) did have the answers about memory, RAM, and battery life. As we asked more questions, he steered us away from the product we were looking at as it was not going to meet our needs for memory capacity. He showed us another model we had been eyeballing on the internet, of which I also had many questions. He did double check battery life  and gave me specs that were not listed, including screen resolution. I asked him if he used this model before, and he noted that he actually owned a previous generation of the laptop in question. He said his model had the same memory as the one on display and admitted that he was nearly maxed out in storage capacity. Like me he stores most of his stuff on-line on a cloud, but that programs and apps had a way of eating up space. I have to admit, I liked the honest appraisal. And no, he did not know why the screen orientation on one of the tablet/laptop combos was stuck. He called someone to have it removed so it could be checked. After we ran out of questions, he gave us his name and said he would be happy to show us any other computers we were interested in. When I said I didn't think so, he said, "No problem. My name is Derek should you need me." That was it. No high pressure tactics.

     What was the name of this mythical store?  Best Buy, believe it or not. Typically I reserve my praise for MicroCenter as my favorite electronics store. But this time they had an employee who did not meet with my expected standards that I have come to expect of them.

    As we hone in on what it is we will purchase, one of these two stores will be graced with our presence yet again, quite possibly as a point of sale. Mind you, manufacturers don't actually make what we really want in our price range - yet.... But I am sure that we will be able to settle on something in the near future that will work for our household.

    In the meantime, I have quite a bit of work to do on my Vista, as I intend for it to replace the XP as a back-up computer.  After all, the processor is quick, it hooks up easily to my larger monitor and remote keyboard. Maybe if I upgrade the operating system to Windows 7.....

    I will let you know how that goes next time I slip between the minutes. Providing my not so trusty workhorse stays operating and does not need to be flung out the window!