Technology Glitches

So I’ve mentioned before that I’m a reader. We are also the type of people who don’t need to trade up to the next shiny model if the old one is working just fine. That was the case with my Nook until Barnes & Noble decided that they no longer wanted to support older models so they just made it so my version could no longer download new books.

I can sort of understand why from my work days. Having to support legacy products can be a giant pain for a variety of reasons. So I’m not mad about it.

Well I went without for a month since my birthday was coming up and this would then be one of the few years where I could actually give my wife something to buy. Normally, its just gift card city because there really isn’t anything I need.

Got the shiny new thing and went about trying to use it only to get immediately hung up on a screen that said “checking for updates”. Searching help forums suggested this was a relatively common problem but offered no good solutions. Went to online tech support and they walked me through the two things that were mentioned in the online forums but neither worked.

Having exhausted the only options, the tech person sent me somewhere else to get a rapid replacement. Guess when you get a defective device, they put you at the front of the line to get a new one. Had to send the old one back. Probably so they can reboot it and sell it to someone else hoping it works this time. That was kind of a pain but the customer service was actually pretty good and the replacement arrived on Saturday which was still within my birthday week.

I waited for the thing to be fully charged which was something else mentioned in the help forums and then started it up …. only to again be stuck at the “waiting for update” screen. Some of the comments on the forums said that it would sometimes work if you did the initial power on at an actual Barnes & Noble location so you could use their wifi.

So we went there this morning – fortunately, the physical store is fairly close. Took it to the help desk and turned it on, connected to their wifi and the thing worked as expected.

This is one of those tech failures where you want to say to the person “Really, it wasn’t working at home”. The good news is that she must have seen or heard about this before because she made a comment about others needing to do the same thing.

After we got home, I did purchase a book and it downloaded just fine so now the thing is perfectly comfortable with our home Wifi.

There has to be a reason why certain devices need to use the B&N wifi for the initial setup but the lady at the store really had no idea. It is kind of a sign of things. We are so dependent on technology but there are so few people who seem to know how certain things actually work. Its almost like we are back in the dark ages. Well you have to use our wifi to drive out the evil spirits. Then it will accept your wifi.

At least it is working now. Hope I don’t have to go back to the store for every update.