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I don't get it -- why can't things work the way they are supposed to?

I recently had a birthday, and bought myself a shiny new Logitech diNovo Edge bluetooth keyboard for my home theater PC (which is a Mac Mini running Vista Ultimate). Totally not necessary, but hey: birthday!

After unwrapping everything and trying to install the bluetooth dongle that came with the keyboard on two different computers, I had to draw the conclusion that the dongle wasn't going to work. According to the instructions, just plugging it in should make Vista install the Bluetooth control panels, but it didn't. It could see the dongle in the Device Manager, though.

So I decided to turn on the Bluetooth controller in the Mac Mini. Unfortunately, Apple doesn't ship the drivers to Microsoft, so there's no plug-and-play in Vista. Instead, I tried downloading the drivers from Apple's site, but alas: no drivers available on their site. Instead, Apple claims I have to purchase an upgrade to Mac OS X 10.5 to get the drivers for Windows Vista as part of Boot Camp. This on a machine that runs a single-boot Vista system! I mean, Apple can do what they want with their own bits, but compared to any other IHV (and _especially_ one with premium prices), that's fairly ludicrous. However, back when I got the Mini a year and a half ago, I downloaded a Bootcamp beta (which you can't download anymore!) and had the foresight to actually burn the Windows drivers to a CD. I only found this out after much frenetic searching, but I could finally enable Bluetooth. Woot! So far, I'd spent about three hours of my birthday trying to make my birthday present actually work (all using hardware and software that is supposed to be plug-and-play, from allegedly the brand leaders in the market).

But now starts the real fun! I can enter the passcode on the keyboard pretty well, and the touchpad on the keyboard does work to move the mouse, but typing on the keyboard has a 10 second lag. Strike that -- a while later, it's a 20 second lag. Strike that -- yet a while later, I can't type on the keyboard at all. This is a $160 keyboard, that stops working within 15 minutes of starting! (Yes, I thoroughly charged the batteries before starting, and the indicator light showed a fully charged battery). Spending more fruitless time online, I finally post a message on the Logitech support site with the proper information about product, problem, software versions, etc. In total, over four hours of my birthday lost.

When I get an answer from Logitech, they suggest that I "reboot" the keyboard by removing the batteries and holding keys down. They also support I try the Bluetooth receiver in another USB port (notice the part about using the internal Bluetooth receiver on the Mac Mini? Yeah, that was in the problem description for Logitech). Looking at the keyboard, it's welded shut. It's a fairly thin (half an inch? less?) keyboard, with a custom built-in chargeable battery, and no user-replaceable battery. So, clearly they hadn't read my problem description, and didn't care enough to even send the trouble-shooting report for the proper product (which is their top of the line keyboard). Bah! I told them that none of their advice actually worked, for reasons already stated in the first e-mail, and waited for a reply.

And waited.

After almost a week, I decided to get an RMA from Newegg, and send the keyboard back. I'll spend the same money on something else I don't need. When filing for the RMA, Newegg wanted to charge me a re-stocking fee, but after I called them up, they not only waived that, but also sent me a pre-paid return label. Woot! Teh Egg FTW!

Meanwhile, at the beginning of September, a prominent game console manufacturer had promised to send me a developer kit for their console for me to beta test some hobbyist-facing technology. At the beginning of October, the hardware actually arrived. Yay! However, it turns out that, because the different departments (legal, hardware, development group, etc), they had only managed to release firmware version X to my development box, whereas it turns out that the actual software I'm supposed to test only runs on version (X+N). Oops! So, they're trying to figure out what to do about that, because lawyers apparently need to be involved in everything. It's like they're from a different country or something ;-) So, no early beta console development for me. And I had so looked forward to that!

During this time, right before my birthday, I also had a pretty terrible experience with Steinberg Wavelab, where first the copy protection had significant problems, somewhat caused by me already having another copy protected Steinberg product (Cubase Studio) using a different copy protection method (USB dongle instead of Windows software). After all that, the software still doesn't work -- it crashes on start. I've mailed Steinberg support, three times now, but still no resolution (they answered the first time, but not since).

Okay, three strikes against the hype of life. So, today, the replacement birthday present arrived: a Sutdio Products B3 microphone. (Not that I can sing, but hey, it looks neat on the desk!) After a while or re-arranging to make space, failing to find the phantom power button on the back of my mixer (turns out it's on the front!), and swizzling cables between mixer and computer, I had it working. It sounds really nice! I should make some music!

So I turned on the E-mu X-board 49, which I got a while back because it's one of the few MIDI controllers with Vista 64 drivers, and tried playing something. Nothing comes out. I dig around cables some more, check all the device set-up control panels, and even write a small test program that uses midiInOpen() to try to read MIDI from the input port. Nothing. The X-board happily flashes its lights when I press the keys, but neither Cubase nor my test program can see any data come in. I spend more time (hours) trying to re-install drivers, re-install application software, re-running setup programs from elevated command lines, and general work-arounds, with no luck. MIDI controller keyboard appears dead to the world (but I still get the USB on/off sounds when plugging it in/out, so it's not THAT dead). If you're counting, that's the fourth strike against the hype, in just the past few weeks.

Now, it seems that whenever I get any kind of gadget, there is a 50% chance that it won't work. I don't know which is true, but at least one of the following must be:

1) Because of the "Race to the bottom," no company can actually TEST the stuff they build, and thus it ships as soon as it APPEARS to work (even though it doesn't).

2) There's a hardware distortion field following me around. Whenever I get near something, some previously unknown force starts causing quantum tunneling within circuitry close to me, and perfectly working gear will spontaneously break down.

3) I require too much of my gear. I pour over marketing materials, reviews, user manuals and specifications for weeks before making a purchase. I then plan out exactly how I want to use the full set of features of the product. Perhaps wanting things to actually do what it says on the tin, while conforming to actual standards and interoperate with the rest of the world is just crazy-talk.

Or maybe it's all three?

Post Scriptum: I got a copy of Sound Forge Audio Studio with my microphone. At least that installed just fine, and the only copy protection was a printed code that was activated online. Then it just worked. THAT's how software is supposed to be!

Post Scriptum 2: All the re-jiggling of computer sound reminded me of another "doesn't work right" problem: My Yamaha MW 12cx mixer has a built-in USB audio interface. However, whenever I use that with any recording software, the mixer puts a quite noticeable whine into the signal path, which makes it not really usable. I have to use the input/output of my Sound Blaster sound card instead. Now, given that Yamaha owns Steinberg, and Creative owns E-mu, I would expect badness from the Sound Blaster soon, too. In this theory, the Yamaha hardware has a glitch, and the Steinberg software doesn't run, and the E-my hardware doesn't run, so the Creative hardware should have a glitch, too, for symmetry. If you believe in those things...

On better news: I re-ran Windows Experience Index on my machine today, and it bumped me from 5.6 to 5.7. All the scores are 5.9 except for the CPU score (which is an C2D E6850, not overclocked). Now, if only hardware manufacturers actually advertised the experience index score with their systems, then perhaps software vendors could actually start using it. Yet another thing that doesn't seem to quite work out the way it's supposed to, I guess. Wait, wasn't this supposed to be the happy paragraph that closes this rant?