Technology Woes

Sometimes I love technology.

As so wonderfully expressed in this song. Remember I still want a portable scanner for Christmas (I really do love gadgets.)

Other times I really, really wonder why I even try to use technology.  I feel like I'm always step behind.

So here's my sad saga on my failed attempts at using technology to the ends I want.

The year--2003.  Leo and I bought a camcorder and his parents gave us a basic Gateway computer for our wedding.  We also bought a $40 printer from Walmart on Black Friday.

2004-- Leo gave me a dvd burner for our computer.  I was thrilled!  I promptly started uploading our newly filmed home videos, edited them on whatever program came with the burner, and then burned some Dvds.  I even installed the drive into the computer tower myself. My lofty goal: Stay up to date on editing our home videos so they are easily accessible, ready to watch, with background music and editing to get all the annoying parts out.  However, the dvd /video quality was so extremely terrible, that I uninstalled the drive and sold it on Ebay.  I figured I would have to wait till we could afford a nicer computer and/or dvd drive to get quality output.

Technology: 1
Me: 0

Fast forward to 2010--My parents give me their old iMac complete with iMovie and iDVD.  Happy, happy day!!!  I am thrilled.  I proceed with plans to start transferring our now 7 years worth of home videos to our computer via a firewire cable.  Unfortunately the formatting or what have you (I can't remember now the exact problem) was really slow and it used tons of memory so my plans were delayed.

Another friend gives us an Epson EX100 printer and I think, "YES! Upgrade!" despite the fact that our trusty little printer was still going strong--albeit with occasional finicky behavior that required some patience to deal with.  We sell the old printer on KSL for $10 bucks.  (Worst decision ever.)

Christmas 2010--Leo gave me the awesomest gift ever!  Final Cut Express and an external hard drive.  Yes! I proceed with my plans to edit and make our family videos more accessible.  But then our video camera dies.  Literally dies.  No resurrection possible.  And to top it off, although BYU will allow (free to students) video conversion equipment, their 8mm camcorder died too.  So now I have no way to transfer said videos to the computer without paying a bunch of money.

And the Epson printer drinks ink.  I'm not joking.  I could print five sheets off of one ink cartridge and it would be gone.  And the ink was triple the cost of our previous ink.

Technology: 2
Me: 0

2011 (still)--I buy a Kodak ESP 7250 printer from Sam's Club, figuring to invest some money into actually getting a really decent printer and it claimed to have the least expensive ink usage.  Ha.  The scanner is horrid.  I actually had the Epson and the Kodak connected to my computer for two years because I always used the Epson scanner (however after scanning a hundred pictures or so in the space of a couple of hours it would slow down to a snail's pace).  The Kodak printer also has terrible color matching to the computer; so bad that I would never use it print off birth announcements, photos, etc. like I did on the old Walmart one.  And unbeknownst to me at the time of purchase, you can't refill the ink cartridges and the ink cartridges have a computer chip telling the computer when they need replaced, only get this--it's based off of a certain number of prints, not the actual amount of ink in the cartridge.  And if the black ink (supposedly) runs out, you can't just continue using the colored ink or vice-versa, you have to replace it or the whole printer won't work.  (Frankly, I never cared much if I was printing out a recipe or a princess coloring page for the girls and it was all in blue or some other random mix of the colors still left--I wanted to use every drop).  On the bright side, the Kodak printer prints very crisply and nice.

I also buy a Panasonic HD camcorder used on KSL to replace our dead old one.  It's lovely and films lovely.  Only problem is, is that it uses MTS formatting and Macs use MOV formatting.  So I'm stuck buying Aunsoft Final Mate for $50 to convert it and maybe I'm getting old (not learning new tricks), but it doesn't seem very user friendly to me, so it gives me headaches every time I try to use it.  Ruff.

Oh, and the kids shoved pennies in our optical drive on the iMac, so now it only works 1 out of every 5 attempts or so to burn a Dvd or Cd.  Joy.  So all the Dvds I planned on making (including some I could start working on now of my parents' childhood photos) will have to wait till I can buy an external SuperDrive or something or the sort.

Oh, and we had to reinstall the hard drive (which was nice because then it was updated to Lion) but I forgot to uninstall Final Cut Express first, so now it won't let me reinstall it, and yes, it's been two years, but I've yet to contact the company about it because of the above reasons of my planned project not happening anyway, so it's been easy to put off.  Ruff again.

Technology: 3
Me: 0

So where does that leave me today?  And why am I going on about this?  Well, maybe because I broke down in tears and hysterics yesterday as I tried to figure out Final Mate again to convert the video files I wanted to upload of Ana's concert.  If that was the case, I'm sure it was just because of changing hormones as my body is getting ready to deliver (here's crossing my fingers on that one).

Oh, and our Kodak printer stopped working yesterday too.  Altogether stopped working.  I think we need to change the printheads, which I don't even want to think about how to go about doing, but really?  It's only two years old.  Why?  Why?

Technology: Beating Kami to the ground.
Me: Mostly dead.