Wodin's Adventures at Wal-Mart
Quote:
Originally Posted by wodin
I have an Acer Aspire One AOD 250 that I got at Wal-Mart for $312. The first thing I did was loaded Windows 7 on it, and I’d like to report that it runs beautifully.
This morning I began restoring the factory configuration in preparation for returning it to Wal-Mart. It’s not that I don’t like it, I do but there are a couple of problems.
- The battery life of the 3 cell battery is MUCH shorter than I had been led to believe (2 Hrs)
- The box said it had Bluetooth, not so!
- The box and the sticker on the computer said it was WWAN ready but the PCI Express slot was not powered, and the switch to power it is not there.
- It will only support 1.5 GB RAM upgrade, and that’s not documented, I had to find it in a blog.
As soon as I confirm that my credit card has been credited, I’ll be ordering an Asus EEE PC 1000HE on line. They are somewhat more expensive but they support 2 GB RAM, have an advertised 9.5 hr battery life (real world more like 7), and have Bluetooth. |
Well, I got home tonight and finished up the restore, packed up the Acer and headed for Wal-Mart. When I got to the customer service desk the lady was computer illiterate, and quite correctly called for assistance from Electronics.
Twenty minutes and three calls later this pimply faced kid shows up and asks me “What’s wrong with it?”
I tell him “The box says it’s got BlueTooth and 3G, and it doesn’t have either!”
So he looks on five sides of the box, and can't see where it says that, so I have to point him to the side he didn't look at, the front!
He says “It does too have BlueTooth, we’ve sold a lot of those and they all have BlueTooth.”
I say “It doesn’t have BlueTooth!”
So he starts it up, and finds that it has a virgin OS load ‘cause I just restored it to factory default. So he asks me if I’d started it. I tell him “Yes, I just restored it to factory default.”
So he goes through the startup procedure making it no longer factory default, and brings up the wireless manager. He says “See! See! It’s got WiFi!”
At this point I’m getting really P.O.ed! First he called me a liar, now he’s calling me stupid. But I kept my cool and just said "It's got WiFi but no BlueTooth."
I said “Look, the girl who sold it to me said I could bring it back, no questions asked for fifteen days. Just credit my card.”
“Well, don’t you want to exchange it?”
“No, you don’t have anything that I need!” I didn’t say that I wouldn’t buy anything from him if he had the last store in town, but I wanted to!
I’m beginning to understand that this little punk is not only pimply faced, but he’s also snotty nosed, and under no circumstances should he be allowed to interface with living people.
Oh well, I got my card credited, and my Asus EEE PC 1000HE is on order from Amazon with a 2GB memory stick. Now it’s wait, like I should have done in the first place.