Technology: Isn't it Called "Plug and Play" Rather Than "Plug and PRAY?"

So, Mrs. Denmarkguy finally got a new computer... and she was hoping to enter this decade of the '20s with somewhat up-to-date technology.

In these days of ever-improving technology, one would expect that you take the machine out of a box, plug it in, fire it up, answer a few questions and you're good to go, right? Back when I worked in the IT industry we called it "plug-and-play" because we had entered an era where you no longer needed to be technically inclined in order to get started with a personal computer.

Of course, we should have expected that not all was well when an order placed with Dell for "Black Friday" in November didn't actually end up being shipped till mid-February... the ongoing excuse being a lack of parts from a 3rd party manufacturer causing causing slow deliveries due to Covid.

But it finally showed up, and for one reason or another, she finally got around to getting it set up, a few days ago.

At least... that was how it was supposed to go.

Except, after a 7-hour odyssey of updating frustration later, we were able to determine that the reason this brand new box seemed unable to move any faster than a snail swimming through honey was... that the factory installed operating system was somehow corrupted.

That took many re-starts and several fruitless calls to tech support to determine... during which the techs she spoke to each time had the nerve to try to divert from actually helping solve the problem to instead trying to *sell add-on support services!"

Mrs. Denmarkguy — being a bit of a social media "influencer," took to twitter... and that actually resulted in almost immediate messages from a different — but not much more helpful — tech support team.

In the end, we determined (by ourselves) that the best bet would be to do a completely new "clean install" of Windows 11 — it could fix the problem, but would also erase (overwrite) the previous 48 hours' worth of work installing other applications from her old computer.

As a testament to just how this whole show is a joke, even the clean install — which was a version retrieved directly from Microsoft's own website — still required repeated updates and restarts before it became even moderately stable.

But it didn't solve the issue of the computer — a fairly high end machine — running slower than a snail when it was purchased under the impression that it would be high speed and ideal for Mrs. Denmarkguy's graphics work.

After another entire afternoon and evening messing with "advanced settings" we finally got rid of the ridiculous keyboard lag present with certain browsers, and we fixed the ridiculously slow software issues, and managed to get the "disk usage" to stop running at 70-80% all the time and back down to a more manageable level... where the computer is actually usable.

I'd hate to think what someone less technically inclined would have had to do... perhaps send it back for service, at great expense?

So much for "Plug and Play!"

Thanks for reading, and have a great weekend!

How about YOU? Have you bought a new computer recently? Was it easy to set up, or did it take some work? Do you think we just had bad luck, or is this the "new normal?" Do leave a comment — share your experiences — be part of the conversation!

(All text and images by the author, unless otherwise credited. This is ORIGINAL CONTENT, created expressly for this platform — NOT A CROSSPOST!!!)
Created at 20220319 00:20 PST
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