Things should be easy

Things should be easy. That’s my new mantra for products I purchase from now on. If I buy a product, especially a computer product, and it’s difficult to setup or I have to download new drivers just to get it to work, I’m taking it back to the store for a refund. I’m tired of products which should just work, not working or being far too difficult to get working correctly.

Why should I have to pull out the manual in order to set the clock on my Kenwood car stereo or my microwave oven? Why does my new wireless phone have one button to turn it on and yet another to turn it off? Why does my Honda Odyssey blink at me every 3500 miles as a reminder to change the oil and then takes several unintuitive steps (had to pull out the manual) to turn it off? Why did Qwest sell me a DSL package that didn’t include true SMTP server access? I called a technical support specialist and I could not believe it when he told me to subscribe to a mail forwarding service. So I need to buy another product in order to get Qwest to work properly? Why do I have to upgrade the firmware on my Sony DVD burner before it will work properly?

I cannot believe so many companies feel they can abuse their customers like this. I’ve been wanting to upgrade my computer for a few weeks now. I went to Frys and priced out a motherboard, CPU and memory last weekend. But then I started thinking about how much time it took to get all the software, from Windows to dozens of application, working properly and decided against the upgrade. This could become a big stumbling block for PC users who may want to upgrade to Windows Vista but who don’t want to go through the hassle of an upgrade. Everyone knows that the only way to really upgrade Windows is to wipe it clean and start with a fresh install.

Ok, back to figuring out this Bluetooth headset.