I Hate Shopping or the My Computer Died Rant

The search for a laptop on cyber Monday should be easier. I would avoid it normally but my laptop died a few weeks ago and I thought I would make a blessing out of necessity and see if I could make the new purchase a bit less painful, fiscally. Sadly, I think the frustration caused stress is negating any fiscal advantage.

I tried the Dell site, because I had seen an ad for their cyber Monday specials with coupon codes to use in the in-law's paper during family time, but it took me through multiple pages to even find the list of laptop deals and then they did not have the specs I was looking for and I discovered I had left the ad at their house.

Very frustrating to find a site - Lenovo - that seems to have all the specs and prices easily displayed only to find that the listed price is for the minimum build while the listed specs are "up to" the maximum build - which means that I have to click to another page at every single listing to determine if they have what I want for my budget - FAIL - why not have it as a pop up when I click that link? (Or, list the price that goes with the listed specs so that if I click on the listing, I can be delightfully surprised by the opportunity to save a few bucks by deciding to go for fewer GB RAM or HD? Or maybe - here's an idea list the price and specs as a range, so that at least I know that it is a range at a cursory glance.)

Then there was the Toshiba site which is having a technical issue so that 1.) the price field is blank and 2.) when I clicked on a listing - it takes me to a page that says they don't sell that one directly for every single listing! I did do the chat thing to discover that their site was misbehaving (some poor programmer is doomed), but still very frustrating.

Especially as I am on the old desktop for this  challenge, which is distressingly slow and frustrating anyway.

Apple doesn't appear to do cyber Monday at all and even their refurbished models are out of my price range so  to them (Sour grapes I know, because I need to do a lot of photo and video stuff, so I would really like an Apple [at least if one may believe the reviews]- but you can't always get what you want.)

Now I am off to the HP site. Even though I have read that their customer service is not good. Their web-site did not help me with the issues I was having and the help pages were frustrating  as well. (My old lappy was an HP so I have a bit of recent experience with this one.)

Note 1: The HP site has no option to sort the products by price or processor or memory and, in fact, does not list the hard drive storage available at all on the display page, so, again I will have to load a new page to get the specs for every single one of them.

Note 2: Annnd the HP site is another list the highest possible specs with the lowest possible price deal. Lenovo, meet your listing logic partner. I am going to copy and paste this status to all of their facebook pages, because feedback is a gift.

Except Apple, because they don't have one. Too good for the likes of us no doubt.
arghhh

Note 3: And as I pasted this to the various FB pages of these companies, I could not help but to notice that the ones who provide no opportunity for people to post on their pages have frustrated people posting in the comments of their posts to let people know what issues are currently plaguing the service recovery teams of those companies - oh wait, from the comments and some of the replies, it seems that they may not have service recovery teams - oops. Perhaps they might want to get some.

Just for the sake of sounding reasonable, I did find a deal here that I thought would suit my needs, but after reading some of the comments specifically directed to the Satellites, I decided not to make the purchase and have a bit of patience instead. So I ask those who follow my posts on FB to please bear with the dearth of them for a while longer. 

Yes, Feedback is indeed a gift. I feel better already. And I don't think I'll be purchasing a new lappy from any of these no doubt fine companies.  Ebay is looking good.

Just by the way, if any of the companies mentioned in this post happened to have given this a read through, why do you insist upon built in cameras and microphones? Especially now, when it has become painfully apparent that our government does not respect our privacy? How hard would it be, really to include at least a sliding lens cover for those cameras and a "hard" on/off switch for the microphones?

 I am probably one of the most boring people in the world, but I value my privacy. It is abhorrent that I have, in my home a camera and microphone that may be hacked and used to spy on me - whether the stated intentions of said hacker are good or evil. I want a better option than taping black paper over the lens and poking a paperclip into the microphone holes or otherwise physically damaging a piece of equipment for which I just paid hard earned money, to ensure my privacy.  

"Pray for us: for we trust we have a good conscience, in all things willing to live honestly." ~ Heb 13:8