Friday, April 14, 2006
Computers and support
I'm fairly tech savvy, although I'm rarely exposed to tech stuff. My wife purchased a laptop to be able to do work at home and also for school work that she'll have when she goes back to school. I just installed a wireless network in my house, which is nice to have if you want to work, say, in bed, like my wife is prone to do (pun not intended).
When we purchased said laptop, we got it without a wireless card, since we had one for her old laptop and we figured we'd just use that one. Of course, the new one did not have a port for this card. We would have to purchase an internal card. This made my wife nervous. She just got this machine and already I'm going to have to open it up.
Unfortunately, mini PCI cards are not nearly as plentiful as the regular, plug-in kind. I had to do some advanced searching before I finally just got one from Dell, which made the laptop. The card arrived 2 days after we ordered (solid) and I went to work installing it last night. The actual installation of the card was butter, but I ran into a wall when I tried installing the drivers. The machine wouldn't recognize the drivers. So, then I had to do something I absolutely hate doing: contacting tech support.
Luckily, we had another computer that is connected to the net, so I decided I'd have a shorter wait if I tried the online chat version of Dell's tech support. I waited a total of 17 minutes, which is way better than I expected. I drew a guy named Jashandeep and was immediately glad I chose on-line support rather than calling. To his credit, his written english was impeccable. Anyway, long story short. 'Deep was able to provide me with the correct drivers, which I downloaded to my desktop computer, copied to disc and transferred to the laptop with no catches.
So, for now, life in the K household is the Sea of Tranquility.
When we purchased said laptop, we got it without a wireless card, since we had one for her old laptop and we figured we'd just use that one. Of course, the new one did not have a port for this card. We would have to purchase an internal card. This made my wife nervous. She just got this machine and already I'm going to have to open it up.
Unfortunately, mini PCI cards are not nearly as plentiful as the regular, plug-in kind. I had to do some advanced searching before I finally just got one from Dell, which made the laptop. The card arrived 2 days after we ordered (solid) and I went to work installing it last night. The actual installation of the card was butter, but I ran into a wall when I tried installing the drivers. The machine wouldn't recognize the drivers. So, then I had to do something I absolutely hate doing: contacting tech support.
Luckily, we had another computer that is connected to the net, so I decided I'd have a shorter wait if I tried the online chat version of Dell's tech support. I waited a total of 17 minutes, which is way better than I expected. I drew a guy named Jashandeep and was immediately glad I chose on-line support rather than calling. To his credit, his written english was impeccable. Anyway, long story short. 'Deep was able to provide me with the correct drivers, which I downloaded to my desktop computer, copied to disc and transferred to the laptop with no catches.
So, for now, life in the K household is the Sea of Tranquility.
