Friday, April 24, 2009

Computers -- aaarrrggghhhh!!!!!!

I've been busy today cleaning out the old laptop so I can take it to the shop for assessment (do we replace the keyboard and reformat the drive at minimal expense and have a relatively good, working laptop for who-knows what purpose?) We haven't yet decided what to do with the old laptop; I could have simply had it repaired but buying a new one is so much more fun!
When I brought the new laptop home on Wednesday, I was too tired to do much with it at the time so the task of installing all the appropriate software on it was moved to the next day. I am very mouse-dependent -- I truly dislike using the mouse pads on laptops -- so I bought a bluetooth mouse with this new toy. Trouble is, the boys at the shop apparently found the only mouse in the store that didn't want to talk to my laptop and they sold it to me. Every time the computer went into hibernation or was turned off, it had to be told yet again that I was using a bluetooth mouse. And guess what I had to use to communicate that? Yup -- the mouse pad! I am truly spastic when using a mouse pad. I really don't understand why I have such a problem with it.
A significant amount of time was spent on the telephone with the techie at the computer shop trying to resolve the issue. There is no way I should have had to keep telling the system that I was using a mouse. So it was decided that I must have been given a defective mouse and it would be replaced with a different brand when next I am in Ottawa. I thought I could get by using the mouse pad in the interim. Hah! No can do.
As a last-ditch effort, I decided I would try installing the actual software that shipped with the mouse to see if that resolved the issue. Voila! The mouse and the laptop are now talking to each other -- all the time! And when the laptop wakes from hibernation, or is rebooted, it sees the mouse. Imagine that! The shop didn't sell me a defective mouse at all -- they just assumed that Bill Gates' operating system would talk to a non-Bill Gates' mouse. Silly them!

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