A trying affair

How can life be so hard sometimes? Why does it have to be more complicated than one can possibly swallow? Isn't there a way to forever keep it in bite-sized bits so that one can take and digest it easily? For the past few weeks, I have had to deal with colossal complications in this small corner of my room, and now it appears that my poor stomach is starting to revolt. At this very moment, I feel the urge to vomit due to all the unjustified stress that this technical problem of mine has wreaked upon my system.

So before I continue, let me just vomit first: Puuuuuutangggg inaaaaaa!!! I hope I have made it sound really crisp, and palpable.

The culprit of this ranting espisode that I have set out to do now is this very machine that I am using to write this blog. This laptop got infected by a virus one month ago, and by some strange twist of fate, in the process of reformatting the hard drive and installing all the program files again, the overused DVD drive expired in the end. Although I'd been lucky enough to finish saving Windows XP and some vital drivers, before the DVD drive finally said goodbye, it now meant that I would no longer be able to play music, video, burn discs, or install new software again.

From here, I was faced with two options: first, I could contact the manufacturer and take advantage of the machine's one-year warranty, but knowing how time-consuming this action could be, I chose the second option and purchased a new external DVD drive. This decision led to major disappointment #1: after dishing out 85 euros for the cheapest model there was, I found out that it's not possible to boot from this external device. Fine, I could now play music and videos and burn discs, but if this fucking source of my present misery was ever struck again by a virus, it wouldn't be possible to boot from the external drive!

My laptop, by the way, was hardly eleven months old.

Tired, exasperated, hopeless, smelly and in urgent need of a bath, I picked up my mobile to call Dell. On the phone, in order to establish that the drive was truly malfunctional, I was instructed to perform a series of tests which my laptop passed with ace marks frankly speaking. After one hour of mechanical surgery, as I was reinserting the last couple of screws into this poor machine's body, the technical support agent slapped me with major disappointment #2: the laptop's warranty would only be honored in Japan where the item had been bought. In Spain, they would simply not recognize my warranty!

If I were rich, I swear I would happily fling this failure of a computer right smack on the wall and let the garbage collectors dispose of it. I must clarify that these events did not happen on a single day, rather over several weeks, so it is a kind of recurring and prolonged suffering that I am talking about.

I kew I was clearly far from rich, and I couldn't afford to buy a new laptop that easily, so I decided to call Dell again, having in mind the intention of buying an internationally valid warranty good for one year. At this point, I had already wasted some 50 euros calling Dell's hotline, and been suffering too from occasional hallucinations and some mild feet pain attacks. But then came major disappointment #3 like my sanity hadn't suffered enough blows: I was told that even if I bought an international warranty, it wouldn't cover retroactively the damaged DVD drive. It would only be valid for future breakdowns!

I think I will end up buying a new DVD drive from Dell, if my last-ditch attempt at saving money by contacting their technical team in Japan and using my existing warranty fails. So what have I learned from all this? One shouldn't spend too much on technology. It is foolish to think that buying an expensive and branded technology will ensure its long life. Whether it's a computer, CDman, digital camera, printer, palm organizer with prestigious trademarks like Dell, Sony, Nikon, Toshiba, HP, etc., it is their predestiny to break down in the end. I hope that many consumers have realized this life truth by now, so that when their little gadget's passage to the afterlife finally comes, they won't harbor false hopes that it will reincarnate or something.