During the last couple of years, I’ve had the experience of buying and setting up several gadgets like the HP PSC-2410 All-in-One Multifunction Device (Printer, Scanner, Copier and Fax), Nokia 6230 Mobile Phone, Vodafone 3G USB Modem, Palm T|X PDA, Sky Broadband Wireless Router, Nokia 6230i Mobile Phone, Western Digital Elements 250GB USB External Hard Disk Drive and, most recently, the latest HP Photosmart C6180 Wi-Fi All-in-One Multifunction Device.
My experience with the documentation and setup process has been rather mixed. I’d rate my experience with the Sky Wireless Router as probably the BEST and the one with the HP Photosmart C6180 as the WORST. With the Vodafone 3G USB Modem, installing it on my Windows XP PC was very easy, but the damn thing just wouldn’t install on a Toshiba Notebook PC running Vista. I’m still struggling to get the WD Elements 250GB drive to work properly on my PC even though it works like a breeze on many other PCs, including a couple of identical models!
Given the number of gadgets I’ve been buying over the past few years, I might fit the stereotype of a gadget maniac. But, with all the struggle I’ve been going through in setting them up and getting them to work, I think I’m headed towards “gadget phobia”
On some other day, I’ll write about my views on what I think is really happening in the gadget world, why setting up gadgets seems to be getting more and more complicated, despite which why many of us still rush to buy the very next gadget coming out in the market, but also how some early-adopter gadget-freaks have now started giving up and ditching their gadgets. I’ll share some tips from my personal experiences. For starters, I’ll leave you with this step-by-step guide I put together from my recent experience of setting up the Wi-Fi feature of the HP Photosmart MFD.
Pingback: No PC, No Google « Talk of Many Things