This Beat Is Technophobic

Growing up loving sci fi fare such as Star Wars, Star Trek, Dr Who, Space 1999, etc, I love the idea of cool tech...I just think it doesn't like me.

I won't go into the shenanigans I've had with internet connections, viruses and trojans over the years (hint: stay the frig away from Internet Explorer: that shit's a crap magnet so switch to Firefox or something!) nor hassles with drawing tablets but my patience and wallet are both hurting recently...

The first pain was my Blu-Ray player. The first one I ordered just froze and wouldn't even open, I had to unplug it to switch it off. A replacement arrived but just spat out the disc with a nasty error message (luckily the Avengers Blu-Ray I bought was the Sainsburys doublediscer...though I also ended up with a 1 disc version I no longer need...) so a THIRD player arrived last week. I tested it round my sister's first (as I was visiting hers on the way home from collecting it). Hooray, it works! BUT...it won't work on my giant screen but old school TV.

This means I've been looking at new flatscreen TVs, a waste as nothing's wrong with my TV other than it won't play BluRays and it's only 5 or 6 years old. Luckily, I sold some leave back at work so had a bumped up pay packet this month but the size of TV I need means this won't be cheap. I have a Fair few subtitled movies so a cheap little screen won't be of any use to me so I've had a look in the local pawn shop and have spotted a good size one for about £130...though I'll still need to buy an HDMI cable and get a taxi home, adding on another £20...oy oy oy...

On top of that, I picked up a nice tablet, half price at HMV. Have no wifi at home so haven't loaded any apps yet but have managed to load some art on. However, some of the preinstalled programmes didn't load when I switched it on so I can't use the eReader programme, among others. I can find it and tick it but that's all: just tick, nothing opens or loads. I'm going to have to either show this to somebody used to smartphones or tablets to see if they can suss it or take it back as it's not bloody working.

Technology: nice idea, bloody annoying reality...