Nothing's Ever as Easy as it Seems...

So, I was pretty excited when I had the opportunity to buy Microsoft Office 2007 Suite for a great deal. As a (now former!) student at UWEC, there was a website I could log into and get this great student discount. Instead of around $300, the CDs were shipped right to my house in 3 days for only $75.00! So, it showed up last Friday, and right away I tried to load it. Ummm... it didn't work. So, I went online and learned I had to first remove the old Office stuff. No more Word and PPT. Not a problem, though, because I'd load this right up, right?

Not right. I ended up having to download and install SEVERAL Microsoft Updates (apparently, it's a really good idea to install those right away when your computer tells you to). So that took most of the weekend. But finally, all updates were installed by Sunday morning. And the damn CDs still didn't work! Ugh. I found out I could call the UWEC computer help desk, but of course, not on a Sunday in August. Grr.

So this morning, I gave them a call. A very nice young man named Kyle was ever so helpful! He pointed out that these are DVDs, not CDs, and should run in my DVD drive. They don't. He told me then that my only option was to call the company where I ordered them from and request a new copy. I was profuse with my thanks.

But, I thought, before I call this company, I should double-check my DVD drive. And guess what!!! That doesn't work. Nothing will read in that drive. So, I went online and bought a stupid new DVD drive. Another $45.00. Then I found a great website on how to install DVD drives. I thought, "Great! I can do this myself!" Untill I actually read the steps. It seemed a bit more complicated than I want to tackle. I called my local computer store (Viroqua Office and Computer Supply) and found out that they will install it for me, along with any software for between $35 and $70. Good lord. Not that that's a bad price, but my "GREAT DEAL" on software has turned out to be a lot more work than I'd expected. But then again, what else is new and different???