Friday, October 27, 2017

Hamstrung With Samsung


My war with technology continues.

My 7 inch Dell tablet was tough but it finally wore out.  Dell no longer makes stand-alone tablets so I had to purchase another brand.  I had tried Amazon Fire with its semi-Android operating system and hated it.  It didn't play and work well with Android.  Also Amazon switched the default search engine to Bing.  Compared to Google Bing sucks.

I had a Samsung tablet some time ago and it was OK.  So I purchased one which fit my budget (under $100) knowing that its internal memory was really limited.  But the Samsung included a micro SD card slot, a feature I like because I could move files and apps over to external storage, freeing up the needed internal space as I had done with other tablets.

But my new tablet wouldn't allow any such transfers.  I returned to Best Buy and a Geek Squad tech spent over half-an-hour trying to make it work.  He told me the version of Android -- 4.4 -- on my tablet had been crippled to stop access to external storage, supposedly a security move.

Imagine buying a car with a large trunk, plenty of storage room but the hood has been welded shut.

So what about spending 40 or 50 dollars more for the next model up from that with a newer version of Android?  No go.  That model was also crippled.  I had to get one with Android 6.0, a unit way out of my price range.

Apparently there are workaround apps to the problem but I can't be bothered.  I blame Google for creating this problem.  And while Samsung didn't create the restriction it should've warned customers about the SD card limitation.

So with my eXperience with modern tech -- how they like to screw up a good thing -- I'm looking forward to jumping out of the way from self-driving cars.

4 comments:

Curt Collins said...

"Hello, this is Technical Support."

"Yes, this is James Kirk. I enabled starship auto-destruct, but the emergency has passed, and it won't shut off."

"I'm sorry, sir, but that model does not come with the auto-destruct disable option. Sadly, there's no update supported. Would you like to talk to one of our representatives about a model upgrade? I't'd be my pleasure to transfer you now."

Charles Gramlich said...

The self driving cars will probably be programmed to hit me

Terry the Censor said...

Software companies perversely elimimate popular features or disable the ability to customise the product. I often find it impossible to replicate the reasoning behind such decisions without the use of funny voices.

Ray Palm (Ray X) said...

Cartoon voices? I think the "reasoning" could be summed up with the inarticulate sounds of Taz the spinning Tasmanian Devil in the Bugs Bunny cartoons.