In general, I prefer PC to Mac, if only because I don't have enough money where I can easily prefer Mac. My wife has a MacBook, and it's clearly a nice machine that works well, but I've always been a PC guy. I'm also not enough of a tech nerd to really let it define me too much. As you'll soon see, the issue I'm bitching about regards my iPod and my PC laptop. But today has been one of those days where I wonder why exactly I own a PC. And why exactly I can go from loving to hating technology.
In recent weeks, my iPod classic has sporadically not initially worked when syncing to my computer. I'll get an error window telling me that there is a USB device hooked up to the computer (important information, actually), but Windows does not recognize it. That's a problem. In the past, I'd been able to do some mix of locking or not locking my iPod, and turning it on or off before syncing it. This ended up working. Eventually--as in, within about two or three tries after the initial one--the computer would acknowledge the iPod, and all was well in the world. Until today.
Today, I went to charge my iPod to load up some new podcasts I was listening to (not including the one I co-host with Grant Holzhauer, called Entertained, which you should totally listen to and subscribe and review, and everything else, on iTunes; our site is http://entertained.podbean.com, so check us out!). Again, I got the window telling me the computer didn't recognize the device. I tried the usual fixes, and nothing happened, except that error window. I'd had some issues with only one of the USB ports working, so I took a look at the ports themselves, to find something truly distressing: the USB ports were--and still are, as of this writing--out of alignment. Meaning, the external place for the USB ports are there, but the USB ports themselves are, internally, not lining up. I have no idea why this is; my guess is that there's something inside the computer that should keep them aligned, and it's moved or broken or something.
After trying to do a little DIY, I realized that I ought to let a professional look at it. So I went to Geek Squad. (Feel free to insert a joke about how I still haven't had a professional look at it.) The employee was one of the rare folks working on a presumed commission who was, thankfully, more honest about helping me out. See, it takes 85 bucks for Geek Squad to ship the device to their main center (wherever the hell THAT is), and then we can get to the work of actually, you know, figuring out what's wrong. It would've been a few days before the folks at the main center got hold of it, but the problem was when the Geek Squad employee told me that the issue may be so bad that I need to get a new computer. I highly doubted this, and I still do, but I suppose that was just the woman covering her ass. She said I'd want to back up my information first. I would love to do this, you know, but I have an external hard drive that only works...WITH A USB PORT. Unfortunately, no amount of rejiggering there has worked for me.
So, home I went with a still-in-need-of-repair computer. I figured that, as long as I could hook up my iPod and my headset microphone for recording Entertained (seriously, listen to it), I'd be set for the time being. I'd forgotten about a friend of my dad's who's very good at PC repair, and I've contacted him in hopes that he'll get to fix it, or at least look at it in some detail. Even more, after I got home, I was able to work with the headset microphone to confirm that, yes, it would work with the sole USB port that's still functioning. Which leaves the iPod. Of course, the iPod cord still caused the error message. Before and after the Geek Squad trip, I went to Google and tried to find some guidance. Most of the sites, including the official Microsoft sites, offered the same fixes, all of which I tried to no avail. One of the Microsoft forum pages--in a post written by an official employee--pointed me to a very helpful tutorial on Apple's website, where I could learn about how to sync my iPod to iTunes and get music!
About 30 minutes ago, I found another Microsoft page, where someone--not an employee of the company, mind you--had a solution that had worked for them, and it was different than the others. Here's what I was supposed to do: uninstall the USB driver that the iPod connected to, and shut down my computer. Now, I'd done this much before, but the rest was where it got odd. Next, I was supposed to take out the power cord, and let the computer run on battery. I'd wait a minute, and then hit the power button. And then, voila, the iPod was supposed to work. I was at the point where I was willing to try anything, so I went for it. Guess what? THIS WORKED. My iPod, as I am writing, is connected to my computer. The cord hasn't moved. Nothing else has changed, and I've already put the power cord back in. Now, I'm not complaining that the iPod is working. It is, and I'm glad. But that's a really stupid fix. Right? I'm not nuts to think this is an absolutely idiotic way to solve the problem, am I? Oy.
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