Ok...so today has been stressful. My mother got me into this situation where I have to help one of her friends switch over to a PC from her Mac, and I also had to purchase it for her. She didn't want to spend over $500.00, and she wanted new - and I think I did pretty well. I ended up with a Compaq Presario and a 17 inch LCD monitor w/built in speakers (she has limited desk space). This woman is absolutely insane. First, I showed her 3 scenarios of computers that she could afford. She chose the Compaq, and I had 3 auctions set up on ebay to purchase one of them. She calls and says that some friend told her that Hewlett Packard was a good brand - which I had already told her. I've had all HP's. But, I had also told her that HP *owns* Compaq now. So, then she changes her mind, after all the auctions have expired, and says that I can use my judgment. I get the computer to her house and hook it up. It takes 2 hrs to get it running, and I show her how to use it. It took an hour on the phone w/Alltel to get her dial-up (yes, dial-up) running. When I left, she can get to the e-mail, connect to the Internet, and type letters and print them out. She starts calling my house around 8 p.m. She claims that everything on the screen "disappeared" and that the computer is a lemon. She further claims that the computer has "crashed." Moreover, she doesn't want the monitor b/c it looks "cheap." I can't return the monitor; I've already sent the rebate in for it. I ignore her calls, because she is acting crazy and I just don't feel like dealing with it. I also took her Mac home, because she claimed it had "crashed" and she wants me to fix it. She's already asking, 2 hours after I took it home, mind you, if I had fixed it. She calls my house the next morning at 6:50 a.m. with the same complaints that the computer is a lemon and has crashed and that the monitor looks "cheap." 6:50 a.m.! I'm lucky if I'm asleep by then. I get over there today and the computer is booting up fine, but she has "restored" the computer thus deleting the software I installed for the printer and the new Internet settings for her dial-up and the settings for her e-mail to work properly. It takes another couple of hours to get everything back to how it was the day before. She also apologizes for her nutty behavior. I had left a slightly rude message the previous afternoon, because at this point even my temper is shot.
She has also bought a 3-in-one printer. After calibrating and cleaning the printer multiple times, it still will not print correctly. I tell her that she will have to return the printer. She tried to blame it on the computer. I tried to explain to her that the fact that the printer was printing blurred images had nothing to do with the computer, and that it was even doing that when I used the "copy" feature. Not to mention she made me get the printer out of her car and put it back into her car when she finally understood that she had to take it back. The first day I came to her house, she wanted me to help her move huge artist canvases to store them in her basement. I do not like people that treat you like you like you're an employee when you are just trying to help that person with something. The phone rang an hour after I got home today; I didn't even want to look just in case something has already happened. By the way, the Mac booted up seamlessly. There is nothing wrong w/it.
I have to go over one more time next week to hook up the dsl for her that I finally talked her into. She wants to send pictures of her artwork to galleries via e-mail; dial-up just would have taken forever to do that. I'm already dreading it.
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