Juan writes that his granddaughter has a cute little digital picture frame marketed to children. He tried to hook it up to his computer to load some pictures on it for her, and couldn’t get it to cooperate with his computer. Juan tried to connect the picture frame using both Windows 7 and Vista, both of which the product’s marketing materials claim are compatible operating systems. Only…not so much. “Sometimes the program works and sometimes it doesn’t,” an employee helpfully told Juan after asking if he has a Windows XP system lying around.

Juan writes:

My daughter purchased a nice( VTECH, KidiLook), system that carries digital pictures for her daughter and I said I would load it on my system to place pictures on it, I loaded the program onto the W$ndows VISTA (rarely used but up to date) system and ran the program. the system said “KidiLook is not connected to a PC Please turn it on, connect to a PC and then try again.” I know something about computers so I removed the program from the computer, rebooted and reinstalled it. The same thing happened.

I figured that maybe I did something wrong, so put the program on my W$ndows 7 system ( used even Less) the same thing happened. In both cases the computer recognized the usb plug and the VTECH, KidiLook could see the computer (it shows a little picture of a USB plug) (Sigh)

Time to call customer support. I was able to speak to a support person that had me go through what I had already done. remove, re-set (his words), and re-install the program. We did this twice on the W$ndows 7 system and then he asked me “if I have a XP system”, this was when I got a little angry. I said “no I do not have an XP system, the VTECH, KidiLook system is advertised to work on the system we just tried to get it to work on, and it does not work on my VISTA system either.” He said “I am sorry we could not get it to work on your system, but sometimes the program works and sometimes it doesn’t.”

I was at a loss for words. I probibly could have been arrested for what I was thinking so I hung up. That last statement from customer support was repeated twice.

Does anyone have any ideas as to what to do next? besides mailing the system back to them in pieces.

Depending on how long she’s owned the product and what store it was purchased from, consider taking the frame back to the store. Or, instead of smashing the toy with a hammer, Juan could just e-mail the pictures or put them on a CD for his daughter to put on the picture frame at home–assuming that she has a computer on which the device works.

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