Are Early Adopters the Beta Testers for New Gadgets?
As electronic devices get ever complicated, we’re ever more powerless when they seemingly die on us. Fortunately, the majority of failures end up being software bugs, so usually a patch can be downloaded from the internet and everything’s working again. Even so, sometimes failures are hardware related. Witness the XBOX 360 failure rate and how flooded the support for XBOX 360 have been in attempting to handle the heat failures. When hardware dies, the only thing you can do is post it back for fixes. Whatever you do, do not try to fix it yourself as this will void your warranty.
Inescapably the first people to purchase such electronic gadgets end up as the guinea pigs, whether they like it or not. It’s always a smart move to avoid being one of the first to purchase a breakthrough tech gizmo. Early adopters pay more, and experience more failures than people who wait for the next versions to be released (which are often cheaper).
If your mobile – or gaming console – or mp3 player – does have a problem, look on the web and see if others have had the same issue as you, and what steps they took to fix it. You can oftentimes save hours of working through the same hoops as others. Frequently other individuals have hunted down a specific number for Sony Ericsson help for instance.
