So, last year, in October, I came back to the states for a visit. Taking advantage of electronics prices in the states, as compared to in France, I purchased a Palm Zire 72, a wi-fi card to go with it, and a new Konica-Minolta Dimage Z3 digital camera.

Well, this was an experiment that didn't work as well as one might have hoped. The Zire 72 was virtually recalled for a problem with the paint (all the paint on mine came off after a few days) and the battery suffered serious damage in a failed experiment involving French electricity. The Z3 was a nightmare, and suffered from innumerable glitches.

In the end, I couldn't be bothered to deal with getting my products fixed in France, so now that I'm back there's been a flurry of warranty work - the palm is now a brand new unit, and the camera has been sent off. However, note that at the beginning of this post I said 'October 2004' and it is now October, 2005. The camera is going to be a close call, and they may try to charge me to fix it - I'm waiting with baited breath to see if they repair it or not. Actually, the best solution would be for the US postal system to lose it, because I insured it for its purchase price. But I don't think I can be that lucky. So we'll see what happens, and I'll keep you all posted.

Jason in Egypt commented:
Yikes! I didn't know you were having so many technical issues with your gadgets. The camera worked fine when I was with you in France, didn't it?
on Fri Oct 7 15:53:25 2005

David commented:
The backlight didn't - I rarely use the 'big' screen (it isn't that big on the Z3 anyway - something like 1 1/4 inch), so assuming the viewfinder is working, it doesn't matter what the other screen is doing. But when the viewfinder started to go, that was it.

I hope this doesn't turn out like my Dell - I had the hard disk controller go while I was in France, and I called them up to ask how much replacing it would cost, and they told me $500. I responded that I could get a new laptop for that, thanked them, and hung up. So now I have a beautiful 1600x1200 LCD screen connected to a lump of dead metal. I think I'm going to try to sell the mess on eBay....

on Fri Oct 7 17:19:25 2005

Add a Comment
Back to the Blog