Technology - easy or not?

I seem to have spent the last six months setting up new technology, either for myself or to help others.  All these things we were told were "easy" and would "only take ten minutes".

WRONG!!!!!

Sorry for shouting there, but it needed to be said.  I don't think I am particularly clever or stupid, but the instructions or lack of instructions for all these new gadgets are not helpful.  They mostly seem to have been written in a foreign language, translated into another foreign language, words left out or translated from the original Latin.

I had a new phone several months ago.  Admittedly, I did not go into the local shop and buy it there and get the youngest child in there to set it up for me.  I have set my last three phones up myself with the help of the internet, and lots of Google searches.  This one was particularly awkward and it took over a fortnight of searches to sort the basics., and find the settings that I needed to alter.

I have had a Kindle Fire for over 12 months, but when I recently got the new bigger version, I was quite wrong in thinking it would be the same settings.  Back to Google!  Mostly done now, thankfully.

I am quite lucky, in that I am thoroughly bolshy and stroppy and hate to admit defeat.  I am also very lucky in having Shaz Brooks' very kind husband locally, who either knows what I need or knows where to find it.

In the last few weeks, I have been asked for help from two friends, who are far from being stupid, but have been made to feel like that by difficulties in setting up their tablets to work with the other technology in their homes.  I reckon you almost need to know the answer before you can ask the right question to sort out problems.

My latest problem of my own came when I wanted to set up a second speaker on the Sonos system (plays music from your computer wirelessly anywhere in your house where you have placed a speaker.).  Having set the system up in the first place without too much difficulty, I foolishly thought it would be a five minute job to remove it from its packaging and integrate it with the existing system.  Oh, no!

I knew it would need a software update to get it sorted, but I tried all evening to persuade it to update with no luck.  It could not even see the new speaker.  Five minutes after I fired off a furious email to Sonos, it miraculously did an update and then recognised the new speaker in 5 seconds.  Coincidence!  I doubt it.

It worked well for a week and then lost the speaker off the system again.  This morning, after I had threatened it with the dustbin, it decided to find the speaker again.  I made a very silly decison then to buy a smaller speaker to put upstairs in the bedroom to play my relaxation music to help me get to sleep.  That is still in its box while I summon up the time and energy to go through all the problems again.

How do the rest of you deal with your technology problems?  Do you have a "Doug" who can help when needed?  Do you just send the stuff back to the shop etc?

After that stropbox rant, I am having dinner, before heading up to dive into the tip that is laughingly called my craft room.  I shall be taking photos as I go to display later.

Have a good day, folks!