Wednesday, October 20, 2010

The Hulk took up a bulk of my time

As you know (or should, if you've been paying attention), I bought a big ole hulking (ergo "Hulk") desktop PC this past weekend.

I bought it online and was soooooooooooper excited for it to arrive via my free Amazon Prime 2 Day Shipping, yesterday. I had visions of plugging this lightening-fast beast into the monitor, switching it on, installing my software at a rate so fast I would barely have the opportunity to blink, and then be able to get back to editing all those photos I took and that are just sitting dormant right now. (Sorry friends who are waiting!)

Um, yeah, right. NOT!

The Hulk arrived on time (yay for Amazon - never lets me down) and switched on but.... wouldn't connect to my monitor."No Signal" greeted me all evening which basically meant I could do nothing. Of all the steps I expected to send my evening sideways, this was not it.

Checked the computer specs; yup, VGA monitors work with supplied adapter. Started, re-started, unplugged, re-plugged... then moved onto the dreaded customer "support" via online chat.

60 minutes later and Anil from India had offered the mind-bogglingly technical advice of:
  • Switch on and off both computer and monitor
  • Try a different cable
  • Ship a different adapter
Yes, it took a whole hour to get through that. (Please don't ask me why/how, I might just cry.)

In the meantime (as in, while I was waiting for hapless Anil to scroll through his on-screen script), I Googled the different kinds of video connectors and educated myself on HDMI vs. DVI (I-D-A) vs. VGA. (Remember: I've used a laptop exclusively for 7-10 years. Monitors are a mystery to me.)

BTW, poor customer service is exactly why my mind is awash in random information I have self-researched and why I am a jack of all trades and master of none. 

So, in short, I have a DVI graphics card, a HDMI or DVI-I connector on the back of my CPU and a VGA monitor. The DVI to VGA adapter SHOULD make the connection but it's not. It could be the adapter, it could be the VGA cable (wihich is an after-market product.) Hence, I need to buy either a VGA-HDMI or VGA-DVI cable today. And if all that fails, I'm going to throw my hands up in the air and fork out the $250 or so to buy a monitor with a DVI and/or HDMI port.

By the way, I have NOTHING against Indians. Some of my best friends were and are Indians. It really had no bearing on the end result that Anil was Indian, per se. What bothers me is that American companies ship their customer service out to India for cheap labor, provide minimal training, and essentially turn those poor folk into robots who can do nothing more than trouble-shoot via a computerized decision-tree. If Anil was Indian, understood computers, was well trained, and was using his own expertise to solve my problem, I would have liked him just fine.

More later... after I've purchased cables.

1 comment:

e said...

Grrr! Hope it gets sorted out soon.

Related Posts with Thumbnails