Where's the manual?

So I just bought a new computer last month. An HP Pavilion with a DVD Burner. To explain: my previous computer (which is now in the closet) was 8 years old & had a 40 GB hard drive. I know, you’re saying “40, don’t you mean 400”. Nope, 40. 768 MB of RAM & a 2.0 GHZ processor. This one has 640 GB of storage. Like I’m ever gonna use that. And 4 GB of RAM. Good for video, I guess. ESPN’s requirements are quite high, which is why watching sports on their website was painful.

But here’s the thing. Not all of us are computer geniuses or geeks. We need to know what to do when setteing up this stuff. So why is there no manual with this thing? I had to go to Borders & spend $20 on a book to find out what my new computer does & how to use it. Mind you, my old system ran XP, this one runs Windows 7, which is quite different. I mean I bought a $40 Waterpik for teeth cleaning. THAT came with a manual, but a $600 computer, not so much.

This seems to be the new thing. Spend lots of money on technology, then once you leave the store, or in my case, once it comes FEDEX, you’re on your own. Why is that? It’s not like HP gets extra money by selling you a manual separately, because they don’t have one. So you go to the bookstore & have to decide between about 20 different books. Wonderful. And mind you, every computer is different. I want to know about the specific software loaded on this thing. Lots of HP stuff & other stuff. Games, a bunch of media software that I can’t figure out. The books won’t have that, but a manual might.

I think its laziness & cheapness. Same with my new printer. No manual. Just a stupid poster. Yeah, I figured out how to set it up, but really. Also, you sell a printer without a cable that connects it to the computer? Duh. And no, that’s not so HP makes extra money because they don’t make cables. So Belkin gets money that they shouldn’t because the industry is dumb.

Well enough ranting for now. I’m going to watch a podcast I downloaded from itunes. I burned a DVD, so I could watch it on my TV, just to see if I could & to at least use the DVD burner, only to find out the DVD player hooked up to my TV doesn’t read DVD-R discs. Only commercial pre-written Hollywood discs. Lovely, so I have a completely useless DVD burner. Isn’t technology wonderful?