iBuyer beware

You finally have it! You queued all night in the rain to be first to buy the latest go-to gadget and now your dream has come true.

You are the first in the country to own the iThing, a device so revolutionary no-one knows what it does.

You got your picture in the newspaper and some guy interviewed you for some online tech blog. You had your five minutes of fame (it's the internet age - no-one gets 15 minutes any more).

What is the iThing? It isn't a phone, or at least you don't think it is. Maybe it's for reading eBooks, though what it actually does is immaterial; you waited ages for it, and now it's yours.

The viral YouTube videos, mysterious tweets from company "insiders" and zillions of hits on their Facebook wall turned out to be marketing ploys, as were the carefully engineered "security breaches".

Even tasteless headlines of yet another worker's suicide at the city-sized factory where the iThing is made didn't hurt pre- sales spin - there's no such thing as bad publicity in marketing.

You had to let your subscription to geekzone slide and give up on Second Life but it was worth every penny. Until the next product launch you can immerse yourself in iThing culture, downloading expensive- but-ultimately-pointless apps and "thinging" with other iThing users.

But there's a problem. The forums are alive with disgruntled users crying out for help (or is that blood?). It turns out if you hold your iThing a certain way, strange things happen!

However, the manufacturer is claiming there is no real problem, but does recommend not actually holding it while using it. A software patch will be released to cure the non- problem.

I'm obviously being facetious here; there is no such device. However, as we all know, this scenario isn't so far-fetched. It sometimes happens that new technology hits the market and almost immediately users begin finding flaws with it.

It is surprising, considering there are usually armies of "testers" who use these things in real-world scenarios for months before we get to see them, so you'd think they would have ironed out all the problems - or at the very least be aware of them - by the launch date.

Operating system vendors have historically been the ones accused of releasing their products too soon, knowing sometimes serious bugs exist but rushing to market in order to beat the competition or simply to start filling the coffers sooner rather than later.

Over time, patches are released and fixes implemented, but usually only after thousands of complaints and subsequent bad press.

None of it seems to make much difference.

A recent example was the release of Vista, a flawed and universally loathed version of Windows which, according to Microsoft, still significantly outsold its predecessor (XP). Most other businesses releasing such dodgy products would end up in court or the poor-house.

How then can we avoid being caught up in this type of situation? Is there actually anything we can do, other than sit back and wait for the dust to settle before buying the latest gadgets to protect ourselves?

There's nothing I can recommend. Usually, with careful pre-purchase research, we can make more educated buying decisions, though with big-money companies deliberately withholding or obfuscating the facts, this is often not possible.

It seems that buyer beware is still going to be the mantra of the modern technology shopper.

* Dave Thompson runs a computer-services company in Christchurch. Contact: dave@computerkungfu.com

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