Not Worth the Money

I recently (as in, last night) purchased a harlot red little Gateway laptop from one of our local electronic stories (the initials are CC).

The laptop itself so far seems fine, although I haven't had a chance to use it much. I think I got it at a decent price.

I enjoyed my experience at the store. I felt like the salesman was listening and I didn't have to pay the sales tax and they matched an ad for MS Office 2007. The computer was already on sale, $90 off. It seemed like a good deal.

What wasn't a good deal was the $70 I paid to CC for software installation and something called "quickstart".

As explained to me at the point of sale, the tech would remove extraneous advertising that comes on new PCs and make sure everything was updated and properly installed so that when I came home I could boot the system and vrooom .... I could get straight to it.

I have always done this myself for new computer purchases, but my husband said, "Go on, let them take care of it. It's a new operating system (Windows Vista, which I haven't used) and I know that takes you a lot of time."

He has listened to me voice expletives before as I sweated over a new computer set-up. This is my second laptop and I've had a number of desktops (2 HPs, 2 Gateways, 1 made for me, 1 Radio Shack, 1 Tandy, and 1 Commodore 64, 1 Vic 20 ... not counting the Toshiba laptop and now this new Gateway. I think that is all of them but I may be missing one in there somewhere.).

So I agreed and we spent $70 for this service, $29.99 for software installation and $39.99 for this quickstart set up. CC called late last night, about 2 hours after the purchase, and said the laptop was ready.

I had a hair appointment in Roanoke anyway this morning, so I went and picked it up. It is not like the store is next door; it's a 40 minute drive.

Upon my return home, I turned the thing on and after it connected to my wireless connection on my home network, the computer started downloading upgrades for Vista.

I was not happy about this. While it's something that, knowing Microsoft, will continue from now until the end of time, the fact is I shouldn't have turned the thing on and had that occur since I'd paid $39.99 just so that would not happen.

I called CC and was shuffled around and eventually told I got what I'd paid for. Essentially I was patted on the head and told to be a good girl and go away and leave the boys to their toys.

It's only $40, I know. But that is a tank of gas or a week's worth of food for us. I feel like I wasted that money and I will not purchase this kind of service from CC or anyone else ever again.

I would advise anyone who has even a small amount of computer knowledge to keep their money and do the initial set up themselves. If nothing else you'll learn from the process and still be able to buy gas.