Tips help cut back tech stress from Top Ten Reviews : Sage Magazine

Tips help cut back tech stress from Top Ten Reviews

Technology makes our lives easier ? until something goes wrong. According to a new survey released this past week by Virgin Digital Help, only about a third of people say that technology stressed them out. But that figure more than doubled when participants viewed a list of specific devices and services.

The top three stress producers are related ? problems with Wi-Fi caused the most stress (12.4 percent), followed by ?the cloud? (11.4 percent) and then trouble with networking and syncing devices (10 percent). When any of these three or a combination goes awry, you can?t get to the information you need. Say you?ve synced your iPad with your home computer and have left town for a few days. No Internet service? Can?t get on Gmail? Not syncing? You?re stuck.

Virgin Digital Help, a personal tech support service, conducted a small survey of 210 adults in the U.S. and U.K. over Facebook, Twitter, email and phone. Nearly 80 percent of the participants were 18-34 years old ? people who grew up with much of today?s technology. But sometimes tech problems are out of our control, no matter how proficient we may be or how old.

Compatibility issues

According to the study, consumers take particular issue with the fact that technology keeps changing (18.6 percent) as well as compatibility issues (15.2 percent). Women were more likely to be stressed out by tech than men, 31 percent compared to 20 percent, and about 27 percent of folks over 55 said technology was ?just too complicated.?

In the past week I was hit with the big three: no Wi-Fi, which meant no access to online documents in ?the cloud? and Gmail slowed to a crawl ? at times, it wouldn?t even load. So what to do when something goes wrong?

If you lose your Wi-Fi connection, first check your PC?s network and sharing center by right-clicking on the double computer screen icon usually located in the lower right corner of the screen. Make sure you are connected to the proper network. Try Windows? automatic diagnose-and-repair function. If you still can?t get a connection, restart your computer. While this has worked for me in the past, it did not this time.

Calling the customer service line for my provider was a last, but necessary step. Be prepared to answer security questions and have your router at hand, so that you can read off model numbers. When my device?s model number did not match the provider?s records, she insisted I had replaced it. I had not. Finally, she re-established the connection and changed my account to reflect the correct equipment. In this case, patience was more important than technical expertise.

The ?cloud? problem

Solving the connection problem also resolved my ?cloud? problem. However, Gmail was almost unusable. Google?s help section said that the problem could be caused by a conflict with software on the computer, an overloaded browser cache or a temporary problem on the Gmail server.

If it?s an incompatibility with software running on the computer, this would have been something that I recently added. If you can identify a change or addition you made to your computer, try uninstalling or disabling the program to see if it?s the culprit.

Have a question? Email Leslie Meredith at lesliemeredith@technewsdaily.com, or join her at AskLeslie on Facebook or Leslie Meredith on Google+.

Filed under Life Strategies, Tech ? Tagged with cloud, compatibility, Facebook, gmail, Google+, stress, technology, Twitter, Virgin Digital Help, Wi-Fi

Source: http://www.abqjournalsage.com/2012/07/29/tips-help-cut-back-tech-stress-from-top-ten-reviews/

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