DIGITAL MAMA

This is a mini-router

Today I've spent nearly two hours talking to various support people at my broadband company - Telenor. It's cost me a fortune, because they have a very high minute price for doing support over the phone. And it was completely USELESS!

We may have done a stupid thing at home - we've cancelled our home WiFi and changed to mobile broadband, which we had anyway. We had both. Today I called the support team to help me connect the wireless printer to the new mobile broadband, and that's what cost so much because I spent nearly half an hour on the phone with the support guy!! Do they speak slowly on purpose? He changed the network name and password because he thought that would help, but no. He told me it would be a piece of cake to change the network name back again, but no. So that's what I spent the rest of the afternoon doing, aided by several new support guys who promised they wouldn't charge me again! I won't believe it until I see it..... One of the guys just happened to mention that wireless printers don't connect to mobile networks - why didn't the first guy tell me that in the first place instead of trying out a hundred different options during thirty minutes on the phone?!

This is a computer twin

I discovered later that the computer twin, which worked perfectly yesterday, had also become a victim of the intermittent network name change, so I spent the evening on the phone with yet another support guy. Most of this time I pulled out plugs and wires and cables and turned things on and off - while he was cheering me on - which of course I could have guessed myself was the way to do it. It always is!

All I've achieved is that everything is back to status quo. The way it was this morning. The only thing I got wiser about was this: Now I need to connect my laptop to my printer with a cable.

I think our digital world is characterised by one overshadowing problem - innovations are launched before they're fully developed. Overly eager to get any new stuff out to hungry consumers, the manufacturers don't have time to test their products thoroughly. The digital revolution is still only in its infancy. And so are the support teams.

I was so fed up today that I simply had to drop by an outlet sale where I bought these lovely scarves from Danish designer BeckSøndergaard for a giveaway price! Because I don't have enough scarves!

(I almost told those support guys today my age. "Hey guys, you're talking with a really old Big Mama who's presenting you with some pretty complicated problems that you have trouble solving! Do you want to swap jobs?" Hah!)