fighting with my PC
For a guy who likes gadgets, you wouldn't be able to tell by the type of phone I carry.
I have a very basic i335 phone. This is a good phone for me because it's just a really simple phone that doesn't even have a camera. It makes phone calls and I can kind of check sports scores on its very ineffective internet browser. It handles being dropped pretty well. One thing it does, though is let me save photos to a file stored on the phone and I should be able to download them to a computer.
I have some pictures on my phone I wanted to keep, once I figured out I could actually save them from the text messages they came with. My phone has a USB cable port so I figured I'd just plug in the phone and copy the pictures to my Mac. It's a newer phone, so it should work, right?
I plug the phone in. They're not compatible. Time for plan B.
I have this Dell PC. It's old by computer standards because I've had the thing almost seven years. It's mostly a dust collector that still runs XP. I can't justify upgrading either the computer or its software because it spends most of its life in a closet collecting dust .Last night, I cleaned off the dust and plugged the computer in.
I attached a USB cable to the phone and plugged it into the computer after waiting for what seemed like 20 minutes for the computer to boot up. I'm sure it wasn't that long, but it seemed like it. The phone found the computer but the computer can't find the phone. Great. The phone isn't plug and play. I need software.
After spending about an hour and a half trying to figure out what kind of software I needed for this thing, I downloaded the necessary programs to my Macbook and, with the help of a flash drive I found laying around on my desk, installed them on the PC. I followed all the directions carefully and then attempted to connect the phone. No luck.
I played around with this for hours. I read all kinds of articles on the internet about my problems and still no luck fixing them. I finally downloaded a different piece of software from the phone manufacturer directly to the PC. and tried to install it. It wouldn't install. I finally gave up and went to bed.
This morning, I got up and checked the PC. The software installed sometime overnight, so I tried again to connect the phone to the PC with a USB cable. The phone recognizes the computer; the computer won't find the phone. I'm right where I was last night. I had a cup of coffee and came up with this ingenious idea: Swap cables.
I have quite a few gadgets around the house and plenty of cables I've long since forgotten what devices they attach to. I keep them in a little wicker basket under a table I use for a desk in my bedroom. A quick search resulted in finding another USB cable. So, I plugged the phone into one end and the other into the PC. It worked. Like a champ.
I was able to download the photos from my phone and again with the help of the flash drive, they're now in iPhoto on my Mac. From there I can do all kinds of things with them, like edit them, add effects, and actually e-mail them to people. I tried to e-mail these photos from my PC with no luck.
The PC is still set up on a desk in a spare bedroom just in case there are more photos I need to remove from my phone, but it's mostly just a dust collector again.
It just doesn't compare to my little, simple to use, always ready to run about a minute after startup, Macbook. So, what's the morale of the story? I need a phone that's Mac compatible!
BTW, I chose to change the title to this post. The first title was a bit extreme...
I have a very basic i335 phone. This is a good phone for me because it's just a really simple phone that doesn't even have a camera. It makes phone calls and I can kind of check sports scores on its very ineffective internet browser. It handles being dropped pretty well. One thing it does, though is let me save photos to a file stored on the phone and I should be able to download them to a computer.
I have some pictures on my phone I wanted to keep, once I figured out I could actually save them from the text messages they came with. My phone has a USB cable port so I figured I'd just plug in the phone and copy the pictures to my Mac. It's a newer phone, so it should work, right?
I plug the phone in. They're not compatible. Time for plan B.
I have this Dell PC. It's old by computer standards because I've had the thing almost seven years. It's mostly a dust collector that still runs XP. I can't justify upgrading either the computer or its software because it spends most of its life in a closet collecting dust .Last night, I cleaned off the dust and plugged the computer in.
I attached a USB cable to the phone and plugged it into the computer after waiting for what seemed like 20 minutes for the computer to boot up. I'm sure it wasn't that long, but it seemed like it. The phone found the computer but the computer can't find the phone. Great. The phone isn't plug and play. I need software.
After spending about an hour and a half trying to figure out what kind of software I needed for this thing, I downloaded the necessary programs to my Macbook and, with the help of a flash drive I found laying around on my desk, installed them on the PC. I followed all the directions carefully and then attempted to connect the phone. No luck.
I played around with this for hours. I read all kinds of articles on the internet about my problems and still no luck fixing them. I finally downloaded a different piece of software from the phone manufacturer directly to the PC. and tried to install it. It wouldn't install. I finally gave up and went to bed.
This morning, I got up and checked the PC. The software installed sometime overnight, so I tried again to connect the phone to the PC with a USB cable. The phone recognizes the computer; the computer won't find the phone. I'm right where I was last night. I had a cup of coffee and came up with this ingenious idea: Swap cables.
I have quite a few gadgets around the house and plenty of cables I've long since forgotten what devices they attach to. I keep them in a little wicker basket under a table I use for a desk in my bedroom. A quick search resulted in finding another USB cable. So, I plugged the phone into one end and the other into the PC. It worked. Like a champ.
I was able to download the photos from my phone and again with the help of the flash drive, they're now in iPhoto on my Mac. From there I can do all kinds of things with them, like edit them, add effects, and actually e-mail them to people. I tried to e-mail these photos from my PC with no luck.
The PC is still set up on a desk in a spare bedroom just in case there are more photos I need to remove from my phone, but it's mostly just a dust collector again.
It just doesn't compare to my little, simple to use, always ready to run about a minute after startup, Macbook. So, what's the morale of the story? I need a phone that's Mac compatible!
BTW, I chose to change the title to this post. The first title was a bit extreme...
Comments
Post a Comment