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Terms & Conditions, Licenses & Agreements, and other such whatnot

We had to replenish the brain of our computer last December. It was not a fun time, as we all too quickly realized that our new "brain" did not like our printer, scanner, or my work software. The first two after numerous attempts and countless hours, I was finally successful in downloading and installing driver updates to make the things work. Half of my software for work would install correctly, and the other half not only refused to install correctly; it also refused to UNINSTALL! After much frustration and grinding of teeth, I called tech support only to discover they no longer offer help on CS2, as CS3 & CS4 has now come out. The nice guy did give me a link to a website that told me how to manually uninstall the crazy software, but after talking to someone at church (thanks for not charging me, Jack!), I felt comfortable in my decision that following its advice and DELETING part of my new hard drive's files was NOT the practical thing to do. So I followed Jack's advice and bought a software upgrade instead of the whole version.
This does not make sense to me. If something is not installed successfully on my computer, then how will an upgrade work correctly? It does not make sense to me, but I'm thankful I followed his advice, for it WORKED!!!!! But I did have to download more drivers and upgrades for graphic cards and memory chips, etc and whatnot. GRRRR!!!!
And that's where the rub comes in. For every piece of software, download, or upgrade, there's this little box you check saying that you have read and are in agreement with policies, the licenses, the conditions, and such and such. I used to just check it and click yes, until I discovered the hard way that McAffee Antivirus Protection had a clause in their agreement that they have the right to charge your credit card every year unless you call them or write them a certified letter 90 DAYS BEFORE YOUR ACCOUNT EXPIRES telling them you do not want to renew their services. One of the best protection plans we've ever used, but that one just rubbed me the wrong way, especially as the computer that had their service had been dead and obsolete for six months.
So now I tried to at least skim parts of the things. Today for the last two I simply clicked the box. After all, what can an agreement for a graphic card (which I don't even know what looks like) that comes pre-installed on the computer say that I will have a problem with?
But then again, maybe I signed away the right to eat chocolate around my computer, or create dinosaurs with the color green, or gave the right to someone to come in and inspect for dust bunnies around the computer vents. You just never know.
So if they come in and take me away, you can rest assured it probably had something to do with that stupid little License & Agreement box I checked before I downloaded an update today.

Comments

Jennifer said…
What can I say....my husband is a genius! He really knows his computer! More people should ask him for help! Glad things are working for you.

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