Africom’s ZTE supplied modems are having compatibility issues when connected to Windows Home 7 machines. The problem occurs when the connect button is clicked on the dongle’s menu, leading to that most hated of Windows menaces; a blue screen. We visited the Africom shop along Jason Moyo Avenue on Friday and were immediately surprised by the lack of staff at the often congested shop.
While there were only 3 people in the shop serving the somewhat average queue of customers, a customer assistant there was well receiving but could not offer a solution. The assistant attempted to explain that all the dongles were responding this way on the specific Windows Home 7 OS and that the only solution was to “install another operating system”, something that downright shocked us.
For those fortunate souls who have never experienced a blue screen, try to picture a scenario in which all your immediate information is lost to an error message characterised by an infamous blue background. The only way out of such a predicament would be to restart a computer, losing any unsaved data in the process. Upon being prompted for a realistic solution, the assistant offered another dongle and as stated; even that new dongle triggered another blue screen.
The only recourse was that the assistant offered to reimburse any customer experiencing such a problem. We believe the fault lies with the Chinese supplier, ZTE who ironically work with a great deal of the world’s leading telecoms operators. While their cheap price advantage is clear to operators, this can come with other forms of cheapness as we have witnessed.
To date, Huawei appears to be the most trusted Chinese telecoms and hardware supplier. If you’ve experienced problems with their hardware or are having problems with any other hardware supplied by a local operator, please post it below so that other consumers can be aware.
