Wednesday, February 02, 2011

Expanding the Limits

Being such a technological pack rat, I run out of computer storage often. My two main drives were bursting at the seams, with not even enough room for a return address to be added. While still on winter break, it was time to do something about it without it disrupting my school routine. Calling my trustee friends at ExPatTech here in Budapest, I scheduled an upgrade. With 2 new drives of 1 TB of storage each, Alec Dean, the owner came to install them.


While he was here, Alec told me about a program that is free for personal use that could potentially come in handy when I need to access one computer from another. The program is TeamViewer, which he installed and showed me how easy it is to use. Little did we realize how soon I would need it.

I finally broke down and gave into my cravings for a smarter phone than the one I had. What I had been using was a Nokia N96, which at the time of purchase was to replace the Palm Treo before it. The Palm was in repair more than in my palm. Nokias are reliable, but going from a touch screen back to a keyboard and having to navigate with directional buttons, just did not make using the phone a fun experience. It took so long to do a Google search, I could have written them a postal letter inquiry faster.

After much exploration I decided on a Samsung Galaxy i9000. Even in New Zealand they were advertising it as Europe's phone of the year. It was love at first tap. Within minutes, I downloaded the programs I knew I wanted and others I didn't know I wanted, but were just fun and free.

However, my life being my life, when I tried attaching it to the computer with the special program that Samsung requires for their phones, the phone showed a connection, but the computer did not. Play, play, play around with it, but nothing. It would not work. What I wanted was music on my phone without having to pay for it again by downloading it from some outside source. Then too, I did like the idea of syncing my contacts, calendar, and notes between computer and phone. No go! There is something in my energy field that prohibits anything electronic from working the way it should the first time around. 

Plan B was to find another program to do my bidding. Syncables 360 seemed like the ticket, so I plunked down the $39.99 for the program which would allow me to sync 3 computers and my mobile phone. At $10 each, it was a bargain. Download, install, "You are not authorized to use this program." What do you mean I am not authorized. Here is my serial number. Nope, not letting you through the gate. 

Whip off a note to tech support, where Mikhaill writes me back suggesting we link computers so he can witness the problem. We arrange a time: 11am in San Francisco and 8pm here. We use Techinline.net, but he cannot connect to me. He wonders if it is because I am in Hungary. We try the other computer, but he gets through fine. Hmmm...no firewall to block him. Mikhaill spends a good forty-five minutes meandering around my desktops. It looks like a ghost has taken over the computer when you see the cursor moving and windows opening and closing without your doing a thing. Finally, Mikhaill checks with their engineer. The problem is on their end. He will get back to me in a couple of hours with a new version of the program. Finally, it is not my fault.
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1 comments:

Paul Roberts said...

Hi Ryan

You need to have the phone in keis mode, look for the "USB settings" option is either in

settings > about phone
settings > wireless and network

depending on the version of android you have.

you can also just copy the files from the computer to the memory/sd card of the phone.

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