Perpetual Ruminations

Tuesday

It's later than I intended tonight; I was planning on getting this entry written up this afternoon, but ended up spending most of the day messing with my new netbook. It's not my first netbook, but it's my new one and I had a lot of setting up to do.

See, this is how it all took place. I received an early Christmas present from Rhonda back in November, a netbook. The first one was purchased at Walmart on lay-a-way, and when we picked it up in November I was pretty excited and eager to try it out. I brought it home, unpacked it and followed the directions, and when it powered on, nothing. It started, it loaded, but there was no image. I called support and they tried to walk me through a few things, but nothing would work. It was clear that Windows had loaded, but the image did not show. In the end, they determined it was the graphics card. They being the companies technical support.

They informed me that I could send it in for repairs, covered under the warranty. Only, it was brand new, not even a day old. So, we decided to return it to Walmart. We called and they said that we could bring it back in for an exchange. We did, but they did not have anymore in stock and it would be a week or two before they got more in. I asked if they would contact us when they came in, but I already knew they would not, and if the new shipment sold out before I got there, I would have to wait even longer. Mark one up for past experience. We were unsure, but decided to check with Target to see if they had anything similar, and they did. We rushed over, since it was getting to be closing time, and went right back to electronics and picked out the same netbook. Only they had one a little more fancy on display right next to it, for just a little more money. Same brand, same everything, only a little bigger hard drive and it had a touch screen.

We ended up with the fancier one, and again we headed for home. This one required charging before I could use it, so it was set up, plugged in, and charging that night. I had to work the next morning, so we went to bed and left it for later. I worked the shift and then came home to try it out. It had the new windows 8 on it, and I had to set up everything as well as learn how to use it. It took a while but soon enough I was enjoying my early gift. But, I noticed some things just did not work right.

For one thing, the screen would not dim. Also, a program I had installed would not work, even though it seemed to be working. It seemed like something in the display was not operating right. Then, I seen I could do an upgrade to Windows 8.1 for free, and the Windows store recommended it, so I did. It worked fine, and I liked the changes in the Windows. Also, my brightness started to work. Only, there still seemed to be a little glitch from time to time. Then, I downloaded Google Chrome and logged in to my Google account. In the process, some toolbar thing from Zynga got on my new netbook. It was on my laptop, I suppose from playing Farmville. I had to install an anti-spyware program to get it off, and again things seemed fine with my laptop. But I didn't have the program on my netbook to remove the spyware.

I didn't have a lot on it at all, so I decided to just re-install everything to factory specs and start over. I did, and I thought everything was fine, only now I was not getting the link to upgrade back to Windows 8.1. I looked on the Windows site and found it, upgraded, and found some of the old glitches had returned. Then, I didn't use it for a few days, and when I did turn it on, it took forever to load Windows. There was nothing, just a gray screen. I shut down and restarted and this time it loaded fine. After, I shut it down, and the other day turned it on to find it would not load Windows at all. I tried everything to get into Safe Mode, to get into my BIOS, but nothing would work. It just showed a gray screen. So, I was going to box it up and send it in under the warranty, but in the process of boxing it up, I dropped the thing.

Yep, the impact busted the touch screen. Luckily we had purchased extended protection on it, and it covered damage and spills. Even better, now I did not have to send it in, I could return it to Target. I had Rhonda run it over there while I worked last night and she exchanged it for a brand new netbook. It's the same thing, just new, and this one does not have any of the glitches. It's nice to see everything is working the way it's suppose to, right out of the box.

Only, I had to put my programs back on, load my apps, and set everything up again. I also had to disable my old machine from some of the applications like OneDrive, and MS Office 365. I also had to set up my security program and my password program, download programs, and get things all set up, again. I also took some time to play and try out some of the applications that I have, that I didn't get a chance to try out with my old machine. Those glitches I mentioned seemed to inhibit some of the applications from working right, too.

So, all in all, I had a great day, I enjoyed myself, and I have my new netbook set up and ready to use. In fact, I have it set up better than the old one, things work right, and I'm looking forward to using it for a lot of items I didn't use the old one for.