People who still get to go to work a.k.a. employed, have no problem getting their PC up & running again sooner, all they have to do is call the IT guy when the PC is down.
Once unemployed, it will be FOY and DIY – find out yourself and do it yourself.
77 full moons ago, I quit my job. It was also the days of awakening. I learned that the hardware hardly talk to the software. And it was a disadvantage being a female as nobody would seriously have a conversation with me when I walked into a computer shop/service centre, etc. They thought only male uses computer and female uses computer as a typewriter.
One day my notebook (on the not-so-respected Vista) decided to pop me an error message that sounded like this: “I don’t like you. And you don’t have a choice. I am going to go into coma soon.” The hard disk was on the verge of failure.
Everything seemed to come to a standstill for many days which felt like years. Picking up the phone for support rarely helped, as you can’t make out what the other person was talking about, with their heavy slang as most such call centre is located somewhere else out there. It’s good to have international warranty, but the ‘special’ localised centre will only provide technical support to locally purchased notebook, you are kicked around and ended up talking to someone who is located somewhere out there.
Then, I recalled news of the infamous HK movie star who sent his pc for repair and soon found his private files being uploaded onto the net. Well, I assured myself, I am not a movie star, and I don’t have any birth suit pictures on my hard disk. Ok, but I still have to get files out & deleted from the hard disk before sending in to the centre, in case somebody decided to steal my pictures and superimpose my head onto an elephant.
So, I had to transfer everything out to a portable external hard disk of 320GB, which I reckon will not be enough in future... I wonder who on earth is still using the yesteryears of 1MB floppy disk.
The only consolation was that my notebook is still under warranty. HP replaced a new hard disk but it was empty, I had to reinstall everything myself, which reinforce the importance of making recovery disks on the very first day.
It was a new experience as an end user, standing on the outside of the building a.k.a. not employed. You are lucky if you have a ‘Buddy Circle’, a circle of either family members or relatives or friends which ideally should include a lawyer, a doctor, and an IT guy, who usually is an unappreciated-abused employee of a company, everybody call this guy when their PCs are down, but some don’t even know his/her last name or worst the first name.
Nowadays, you can’t live without a computer and the net, employed or unemployed.
You should buy your IT guy a cuppa and some nyonya kuih, while still employed.
No comments:
Post a Comment