Are You 100% Happy with Any of Your Devices?

Yesterday I spent a couple of hours trying to sync my iPhone 5 with iTunes on a Windows-based laptop AND create a local backup copy. Really, a couple of hours is the time I could have used much better! For some unknown reason recently both my iPhone and my iPad have stopped to behave properly and in order to get them synced and backed up I need to connect them, restart the PC, sync in the fresh system (syncs but not backs up), restart again (syncs and backs up). This proves to work quite stably but I really don’t think this is user friendly.

In fact, I have even started to think that this is how Apple is pushing me to pay for iCloud to have my backups safely created and stored but given the trick with Windows reboots this must be an alliance with Microsoft which I really don’t believe in. I have not found any solution in any help resources I have tried so far so once every couple of weeks I try to find some time to get through this hideous procedure.

But the irony is that Apple’s devices are famous for being user friendly – no matter the level of user geekiness. In fact, when my husband was an Android guy (a proud owner of Google’s Nexus One), he used to joke that Apple is for girls. Blond girls included. Well, that was before I have managed to convert him and he bought his first iPhone as well. And even if I am definitely a blond girl, I still consider myself to be geek enough to cope with everything. Mind you, I have even managed to use a Windows phone for a couple of days under very complicated circumstances!

And this yesterday’s story made me realize one thing: there are tons of various gadgets and new ones are launched on daily basis so that we could upgrade our current devices to something even more advanced and feature-rich and then upgrade again after a few more months. Most people don’t make compulsory purchases when it comes to technology: given the number of reviews available online from journalists, bloggers and early adopters one has all the tools to know that one is buying exactly the piece of technology one will be happy with.

Yet the result? We are still not 100% happy. I don’t know, maybe it’s just me and I will have a ton of comments here on how you are happy with your electronics but it looks like there is still nothing perfect in this technology world. If you ask me, for example:

iPhone is a great phone and a work/pleasure device but syncing with iTunes poses tons of problems and doing something as simple as copying an audio book in a format other than officially supported by Apple on the device turns to be a nightmare.

I am 100% happy with my 1^st generation iPad. Really, I mean it, it is just perfect for all the tasks that I have for it so I have never felt the need to buy a newer model just for the sake of having a newer one. But while I am 100% happy with my iPad, I am not 100% happy with Apple for not supporting my device and keeping me on an ancient iOS version where some apps simply stopped working.

I am very glad I have made a decision to buy an ASUS Zenbook. After probably hundreds of reviews (and numerous disappointments with previous laptops despite of hundreds of reviews read before buying) I have settled on the top model because I use it as my one and only machine that is powerful enough to handle all my tasks and also lightweight enough to carry around the house with one hand for whenever and wherever I get a chance to get some work done (which might happen just about anywhere and at any moment of day with a 14-months child ruling the house). The only feature about it that got many people disappointed was the keyboard that you really need to get accustomed to to be able to avoid typos. Basically you just need to push the keys pretty hard and I have easily managed to do just that thanks to my piano lessons as a child though it did take some time. So after a year of using it I could say I was 100% happy but can anyone explain why I am limited to 4Gb of memory only? It’s not that it is not sufficient now but what if I could want to have it expanded in the future?

There’s a very interesting issue with our Sony NEX-3 camera. Husband bought it when we were planning a trip to Jordan as he thought Petra was too marvelous to shoot with our previous pretty simple camera. I believe husband is really 100% happy with the camera. In fact, I have heard quite a number of compliments on his photos after the trip so I think it was worth it. But the problem is that the camera is really too complicated for anyone who does not have a secret dream of leaving one’s job and going around the world as a professional photographer. So I can only use it in automatic mode which does not prove to really work well in all the circumstances hence I am not 100% happy anyway.

I also have a wonderful Sony photo printer. I don’t know if anyone still prints photos these days. I don’t, I just have a photo printer that my husband gave me for my first birthday together. That was 7 years ago but I have recently finally ran out of paper. Over the years I only used the device to print an occasional calendar with a photo for a friend or an exceptionally good shot to be framed. So while the quality is just perfect and the printer is easy to use and everything, I only started to actually use it after our son was born and various relatives wanted to have a few shots to keep and not every one of them could keep them on their computer. So I have finally ran out of paper and ink and had to buy a new bundle as the little one keeps growing and making funny things we love shooting – and grandmas love having around. I dropped by a store and bought a new package and while the price did seem to be quite high, I did not realize until properly counting that printing one photo costs me about 70 cents now (Snapfish charges 9 and here in Russian I can order them for about 10). Now what’s the point in having a photo printer at home if you don’t print your nude photos all the time?

Come to think of it, I have at least some complaints about my dishwasher, hairdryer, iPhone dock station, electric kettle, and even my vacuum cleaner. As it turns out, there are no perfect devices and everything is just a compromise of features and making tough decisions on what matters the most to you and what can be sacrificed. And even if everything else is perfect, I think you will probably agree that at least the price point could be lower! Or have you found your perfect gadget?