Friday, October 16, 2009

I'm At My Wit's End!

I hate software installations. They always cause trouble. I know I promised to format my digital camera today, but several attempts have been met with nothing but frustration. Absolutely no printed instructions came with the camera. In fact absolutely nothing in the way of directions at all. The on screen menu is a just a jumble of meaningless hieroglyphics. Completely unintelligible to the uninitiated! So.....I attempted to download the accompanying software. Repeatedly, I inserted the compact disc, and got a window saying to click on the icon, to download the software. Every time I would do this, I could hear the disc drive start, then immediately stop, and then.......nothing! After many attempts, and then clicking on every possible option on my computer, I got a dialog box stating, that the software was incompatible with my computer! I ejected the disc and looked it over. In print so fine, you almost need a magnifying glass to read it, it said Windows XP, Vista. 7, Mac OS X v10.4.6 or later. Then I looked at at my computer's software, and it said Mac OS X v10.4.11 Clearly a later version! So why is my disc not loading?

This is what I hate about digital technology. Analog was so much more intuitive, and therefore easier to deal with, because it was real information. It was easily recognized by any equipment. Digital information is a completely artificial interpretation of the software designer's imagination. No equipment can recognize it, without first being programed with a recognition code, but because of the utter chaos in software design, even that can be a problem. Will there ever be a universal computer language, so that plug and play becomes a genuine reality? Yeah, sure.......when pigs fly!

Fall is proceeding in all of it's colorful splendor, and here I sit with a totally worthless digital camera!

Melissa (beating my head against the wall)

4 comments:

Leslie Ann said...

It required an eleven-year-old boy to get our digital camera software straight with our Vista system. Are any for rent in the area?

Caroline said...

Leslie, think you should re edit that post for possible misinterpretation!

Caroline x

Anonymous said...

Seems to me there should be a menu selection on your camera that will format the disk right there...without a computer. Have you tried to take any pictures with it just as it is?

Melissa said...

@ Suzi

The menu is a jumble of unintelligible hieroglyphics. I'm assuming the Rosetta Stone is on the CD, which I can't get my computer to play. Very frustrating! How hard would it have been for them to include a simple little printed instruction pamphlet? I tried to take some pics with it as is, and it took just one, then said the brand new memory card is full. Now it won't take anymore.

Melissa XX