Get Smart

January 25, 2017

It’s exciting when you decide to upgrade your smart phone. You chat to your converted colleagues, look at their trendy new phone covers, discuss the latest features, do a little online research then off you trot to your retail service provider outlet.

When I walked out with my shiny rose gold iPhone and accessories, I was ready to convert. My grandsons and daughter were excited as they are the recipients of my hand-me- downs, which I must say are always top-of- the-range.

And so it began. Friday 6.15pm I started my set up. Simple instructions. Log into iTunes (seeing I am an Apple girl) on computer, backup old phone, restore and transfer data to new phone then life goes on.

Come Saturday 1.30am and life was not so sweet as I placed my weary head on my welcoming pillow. I didn’t like the thought of giving up. However at this stage of the morning that had already greeted me, I resigned myself to the fact I needed to give it one more go after I slept.

My mini Allen key was ready. As a last resort I could return my SIM card to the old phone having already sacrificed nearly eight hours of wasted time that could have been utilised elsewhere.

What was the issue? I have upgraded phones before but I had obviously forgotten about all the other necessary bits required in order to continue with life as we previously knew it.

With the latest iCloud available I rarely do manual back-ups on my computer. I soon realised this was a mistake. I had been purchasing music on iTunes and had forgotten to sync with my computer.

The transfer purchases was one of my first computer prompts and little did I realise, the beginning of things to come. There was also the matter of the software upgrade and if I had read the instructions correctly I should have pressed ‘No’ rather than ‘Yes’.

Consequently, the mental endurance began as the whole installation process took place.

But it didn’t stop there as my laptop soon alerted me to the fact that I was suffering from low disc space. Oh no!. Everything came to a halt.

The one-page instructions don’t remind you to ensure you have at least 5G to be able to do your back-up (a tip I picked up the next morning when I Googled my problem).

I had no space. My Friday evening had been was taken up transferring photos, music, documents etc to a portable hard drive. One positive. I had purchased a

portable 1TB months ago with the intention of transferring photos.

But it didn’t stop there. What I didn’t expect was for my laptop to unexpectedly shut down. The dreaded black screen!

I had previously experienced the shut down with this laptop some weeks earlier but it seemed to rectify itself when I rebooted it. Nothing major, or so I thought, and left it at that.

In hindsight my IT son had indicated that it sounded like my hard drive was corrupted, I may need a new one and to bring it with me on my next visit to his place!

Nevertheless I didn’t give up. I kept calm, repeated the reboot process and hoped the Windows page would appear, which it did and I defragged and cleaned up the hard drive to make more space.

By 12.15am Saturday I acquired 33G of free space and was ready to upgrade my phone. Once again I followed the instructions and to my dismay another ‘free space error’ message popped up.

It took another hour or so to move large files onto my portable hard drive and finally I logged off for needed sleep .

A fresh start . It was an early rise for me on Saturday morning, determined to back-up my phone even with my laptop issues. I was more alert and Googled the issues on my iPad as I sat in bed with a cup of tea and toast.

To my relief I discovered that there are others who have experienced the same message error even after a disc clean up and there were a number of suggestions to assist if iTunes backups couldn’t be completed.

I also tried my second larger computer during the whole process and although I could install iTunes, it would not recognise my iPhone when connected via the USB. I later found a comforting instruction on how you can fix it if your device doesn’t appear in iTunes.

The challenges continued. By 11.30am Saturday, partial success. I could back-up off my old phone, however when I connected my new iPhone another message appeared to say it required the new software before you could restore back-up.

It was after midday, and more repeats of the message: iPhone could not be updated successfully, see error message. A break to the beauty parlour helped and on return home I dialled a 1300 number using my landline phone that is rarely used.

I didn’t get to speak to Mike from Apple support for long as he dropped out due to flat batteries in the hand held landline phone. Andrew from Apple also dropped out from my second handheld phone but this time he and I were savvy enough to provide him with my work mobile number.

It was Andrew who quietly guided me to a successful outcome just in time for Saturday evening dinner and I felt that I was now the smartphone changeover guru.

All in all to assist with the complete changeover process I used 1 x laptop, 1 x computer, 3 x iPhones 1 x iPad, 2 x hand held portable phones and a 1300 number to a prompt Apple support group.

I convince myself I love technology, but at the back of my mind I cannot help thinking – if only I had a hard copy of all my data. Am I showing my age?

Be the first to comment

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published.