Never having to say you're sorry

A few weeks ago, my laptop started playing up. It ran sluggishly and some functions seemed to have gone on a work-to-rule. It finally got bad enough that I googled the symptoms.

Google said it needed an update. That's unusual, I thought. The thing updates with monotonous regularity, at least once a week, sometimes more. But, thinking back, I didn't remember having to start my days reopening Word documents (and other things I'd left open to work on) for a while, so I checked.

Last update had been 20th May.

OK, then. They'd proved these frustrating updates are necessary to the machine's well-being, so I set about manually updating. After several minutes, it said, “Update failed. Retry?”

Three retries later, I packed the laptop into its bag and carted it to the Computer Studio in Crowborough, where the guys are always brilliant, and would probably take seconds to fix what had defeated me for more than an hour.

They began by restarting the computer. I'm embarrassed to say, I don't do this. I just shut the lid at night and re-open the next morning. I didn't even know for sure how you could restart it. (I'm a techno ninny. Don't judge me.)

The laptop tried to restart. “It'll be a couple of minutes,” said my friendly tech expert.

In those “couple of minutes” we could have cooked and eaten a three course meal, cleaned our homes, and done a week’s shopping.

He aborted the attempt and tried again. Twice.

On the third attempt, it actually opened, but that was all. So I had to leave the poorly computer in the laptop ICU, praying that

a) it would not be too expensive, and

b) I wouldn't lose my work.

About a week later, they phoned to say they'd found and fixed the problem. They had to completely rebuild windows but, superheroes that they are, I hadn't lost a single document.

“So what was the problem?” I asked.

“It was the last Microsoft update,” they replied.

Apparently, that update on 20th May, was corrupted. It did several unspeakable things to my laptop, making it very poorly, and then it switched off the program allowing it to receive further updates.

There was nothing I could have done to avoid this. My laptop was forced to take the update. And, the guys at Computer Studio said, I was not alone. Apparently, thousands of computers were affected.

You would think that might have made the newspapers. A post on Facebook, perhaps. But nothing. Just a wall of silence.

You might also think Microsoft would send out a message to all customers – after all, they know who we are, they invade our computers all the time. They could have said, “this has happened, we're very sorry. Please do these things to put it right.”

But... no. Not. A. Word.

It seems, to paraphrase Eric Segal, being a powerful tech company means never having to say you're sorry.

NB. Since the photo was taken, the Computer Studio has moved. It's now in the main Crowborough High Street, between Hair Gallery and the Factory Shop.