Here’s an update on my PDA. I got sick of the HP iPAQ and it’s propensity to not work properly, so I returned it. Here’s what would happen: After being idle for a minute, the PDA would go on “standby” or “off” mode. This is fine. My Palm Zire does the same thing. But when I want to use my Zire again, all I have to do is turn it back on. With the HP, I actually had to do a soft reset every time, to get it back on. Grrr. So I took it back. I looked online the other day and saw a Dell that is supposed to be better than the iPAQ was.

Also, I have bad news for those of you Microsoft detractors out there…

I loaded up my Microsoft Office on my new computer last week, and was having a problem with Outlook (it wouldn’t recognize the right folder or something). I called HP (The manufacturer of the computer system) and the wonderful Indian lady there told me that something is corrupted, and that I would need to wipe the hard drive and do a “system recovery” to restore the computer to it’s original state . I said, “That’s ridiculous. You are taking the easy way out. I paid extra for the guys at the store to take off a lot of the advertising crap that you guys put on the computer, so I’m not going to recover it all if I can help it. Nevermind, I’ll call Microsoft.”

So I went to the Microsoft website to try and figure out if I could fix it myself (by searching for my problem in their database). No joy. I decided to pony up the $35 for live tech support. I called, gave my credit card number, and then got to speak with an Indian gentleman named (no joke) “Iru.” I had him spell it. He took about 30 seconds to listen to my problem, diagnose it, and then an additional 60 seconds to tell me how to fix it. He hung around on the phone to make sure I got it fixed (I sent myself a test e-mail from my hotmail account). Then he said if the problem isn’t fixed, feel free to call back with the same case number and they would help me. I asked, “for free? Or would I have to pay again?” He said, “You paid for this? It was only a few minutes. I am going to refund your fee.” So I got Microsoft to do something for me for free! I am pretty happy with them right now. Some would point out that if their program hadn’t broken to begin with, I never would have needed to call, but I say, pshaw!

So I am currently waiting for my new PDA, which is supposed to arrive today via Fedex. We’ll see.