Thursday, January 06, 2005
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal

AFTER-CHRISTMAS HEADACHE: Electronic Limbo

Gadget gifts can be frustrating to use, especially when manual ignored

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Santa was very good to you this year, and you have a new computer, an iPod and a home theater system sitting under your rapidly decomposing Christmas tree.

Now, you think, it would have been a truly wonderful holiday season if you could only get the dumb things to work before the arrival of Bastille Day.

Relax. Take a deep breath. Then take the advice of a few valley tech experts, who say that enjoying a new -- but, perhaps, frustrating -- electronic Christmas gift doesn't have to be that difficult.

All it takes is doing a few decidedly low-tech things. Namely: Spending some time reading the instruction manual, then hanging on patiently during your roller-coaster ride along the learning curve.

It's not surprising that so many electronic Christmas gifts turn out to be frustrating. In most cases, the problem is simply that the product is something new, said Steve Mullen, spokesman for Circuit City.

"It does take some time to learn anything that's new," Mullen said.

That's particularly true if a gadget is so new that the consumer has no frame of reference for knowing how to use it. Take the iPod, a portable, digital music player that stores downloaded song files on a tiny hard drive.

The iPod was, by many accounts, this past season's hottest gift. But consider this: An iPod wouldn't have been on anybody's Christmas list five short years ago, because the groundbreaking device didn't hit the market until the fall of 2001.

Meanwhile, some more familiar consumer electronic products -- VCRs, telephones, DVD players -- have become so laden with sophisticated features that they can be difficult to use for people who are more accustomed to the devices' earlier, lower-tech incarnations.

Even TVs have "gotten more complicated," Mullen noted. "It used to be you'd walk in and (a sales clerk would say), `How big do you want?' and `We have these.' "

Now, Mullen said, choosing a television is not just a matter of picking a size, but of making decisions about screen types, high-definition and a dozen other things.

Are some types of electronic gifts tougher to learn than others?

"I think people have different issues with different things," Mullen said. "Some people know computers like the back of their hand, but if you gave them a big-screen TV, they wouldn't know how to hook it up."

But computers are "probably near the top of the list" for difficulty, Mullen said, mostly because customizing a computer requires opening it up to add such items as internal modems or memory cards.

A computer, Mullen noted, is "one of the only consumer products where you do that. If you buy a DVD player or VCR, you can't upgrade it by opening the box and putting something in."

Many times, though, using a new electronic gadget requires spending time with the instruction book.

"More times than not, people come in here and don't know how to turn it on, and it's right on the first page of the instruction manual," said William Nagle, tech services manager at CompUSA, 490 N. Stephanie St., Henderson. "People refuse to read the thing."

If it's any consolation, Nagle said store tech employees often have to do the same thing when customers ask for advice.

"We have to," he said. "We don't know every single model of every MP3 player. So, read the instruction manual and have a little bit of patience."

Spend some time getting to know your new gift. That's the best way to learn not only about what it does, but about what it can do.

For example, even newcomers to iPods and digital MP3 players know -- or quickly will learn -- that they can download songs for them through online stores. Then, Nagle said, they'll probably learn how to import music from their own CD connections onto the players.

But, if they stay with it, Nagle said, the iPod newbie will eventually learn that the devices also can be used as a sort of portable hard drive, to transfer data files of other sorts from one computer to another.

But don't expect to learn everything about your new gadget at once. "There is a learning curve," Nagle said.

In the case of such complex devices as computers, high-end TVs and home theater systems, consider taking advantage of the installation services most retailers offer.

Mullen noted that consumers typically opt for professional installation of such items as car stereos, because "it's a little scary to start opening panels on a car."

But, he said, Circuit City also offers professional installation service for such items as home theaters, large flat-panel TVs and "even things you might not think about (such as) PlayStations or Xboxes."

Of course, installers will take care of all of the complicated hookups confusing electronic systems require. But, Mullen said, Circuit City's installers also will provide a basic tutorial about using the device and perform other tasks such as programming universal remotes.

Costs for installation services vary. However, Mullen said, installation of a basic home theater package from Circuit City -- which would include everything from unpacking the boxes to offering the consumer a 15-minute demonstration -- would run $149.

If it's any consolation, the manufacturers of high-tech gadgets feel your pain.

"Manufacturers are trying to find ways to make these things simpler," Mullen said.

"The best example I can give you is the digital camera. It used to be that you had to have a decent amount of computer knowledge to be able to take digital pictures, import them to the computer and then print them out as prints."

"Nowadays, there are a number of different ways you can print without the computer even getting involved," he said.

As a result, the digital camera has "become a more mainstream product," Mullen said. "There's not that fear of it anymore."