Amazon Shipping Sucks

October 6, 2006 | Author: jciv

Last weekend I ordered an ATI TV Wonder Elite from Amazon for $77.99 for transferring some home videos. That was near the lowest price I found and was still cheaper than many after I upgraded from FREE Super Saver Shipping (5-9 business days) to Standard Shipping (3-5 business days) for $6.17 more. It was shipped Monday at 11:30pm. If you count that last 30 minutes of Monday, we are at five business days and it is still 400 miles away. But once I realized it was PM I guess I can’t be that upset with DHL. But Amazon’s delivery estimate said October 5, 2006 – October 16, 2006. October 16 is ten full business days from when it was shipped. It is hard to believe it won’t be here Tuesday (Monday is Columbus Day) since it is already in Texas, but if that estimate turns out true, I will have waited half a month for shipping less than 2,000 miles.

Looking into this a bit further I have discovered shipping begins with DHL, but through their DHL@home service, the package is actually delivered by the local post office. And of course, the post office is known for their speed and reliable delivery. DHL’s webpage says Standard Delivery is 2-4 business days and Deferred Delivery is 2-7 business days whatever that is. It appears DHL handles shipping up to your nearest (major?) post office so assuming you live anywhere near the post office, it should only take a day or two to make it the last bit to you.

I think we can assume DHL is including postal service delivery time in their estimate. So how does a max of seven days (for Deferred Delivery) turn into a possible eleven? I am not very good at math so I will let you figure that out. Even if the estimate doesn’t include the time it takes the postman to deliver it, once it has reached your city, it should not take four more business days which would get you up to the Amazon estimate.

And for those who think the Amazon estimate is just being safe, read “Why DHL Sucks” about 3-5 day shipping taking 7 business days. When I pay for 3-5 day shipping it better arrive in five business days. If I was willing to wait that long I would have chosen free shipping like usual. When I order on the weekend and actually pay for 3-5 day shipping, that means I want to use the item the next weekend.

I remember back when 3-5 day shipping meant you often would get your item in three days and sometimes it might arrive in two days. Those days are long gone. When I track non-DHL shipments, they often reach my city pretty fast and then sit there for a day or two before they do final delivery even if it is Friday so they don’t over shoot their low arrival estimate.

Posted in rant, scams | 5 Comments

Office Student Edition Scam

September 7, 2006 | Author: jciv

Have you been computer shopping and noticed that most low cost machines don’t come with Microsoft Office? You might find it comes with a time limited trial version of Office. Maybe it has Microsoft Works instead. It isn’t unusual to find a machine with a stand alone version of WordPerfect. And then there are the dirt cheep machines that leave you with no word processor.

So assuming you are the kind of person that doesn’t shoo the salesmen away till you have already decided, you point out that this machine doesn’t come with Word. He acts surprised a machine wouldn’t come with it and says you can get it for only $100 more. You think, wow that is a really good deal since I thought it costs more than $300 for Small Business Edition or more than $400 for Office Professional. What, I can install it on three machines? That is an amazing deal! The whole machine I was looking at costs only $400 why would I spend almost the same for one piece of software when the salesman is pushing it for $100.

Did you mention that you needed this new computer for your business? Yes, the salesman asked what you needed the system for and you told him it was for your business. Did you mention having any students in your family? No, why would that come up, this is a business purchase. Did you point out Works Suite comes with Word? Yes, but he responded that for a business you might need Powerpoint and Outlook. Clearly he knows you are buying this for your business.

Is this an isolated incident? I don’t think so. I have heard this several times over the past few months at different computer and office supply stores. It helps makes the computer sale plus $100 of software and the salesman isn’t going to get in trouble with Microsoft for your business not being eligible for Student Edition, just you. He can always say you told him it was for your kids homework.

So what are the legal alternatives since Microsoft is charging insane amounts for their office suite? Well, my choice is WordPerfect Office which does a good job with most Word documents. Though at $250, its Standard Edition isn’t that much less than MS Office Small Business Edition. Microsoft Works Suite is also a good choice at $100 since it comes with the previous version of Word (which usually is good enough). There is also just plane Microsoft Works for about $50 if you just want a simple word processor and don’t actually need Word for compatibility. But if not having actual Word doesn’t bother you, there are Open Office or AbiWord which are completely free and read and write Word documents.

If you are interested in learning more about Microsoft licensing, ZDNet has a quiz. I was pretty surprised by a few of the answers.

Update April 2, 2007: I can no longer find anything about who qualifies for what version on Microsoft.com. The “not eligible” link above now points to the Internet Archive’s copy. Microsoft must not want you you are not allowed to use it till their lawyers show up. The page I previously linked to now redirects you to the main Office site. Looking up Office Home and Student 2007 at some retailers gives you this information:

  • This product is for non-commercial, non-commercial location, educational use only.
  • This is a personal learning license for qualified educational users only. (Example: In a household, only the students are eligible to use the software, however parents can use the software when assisting students.)
  • You can install this edition on up to three (3) PCs in your home.
  • This product does not qualify for future upgrade pricing or installation(s).
  • You may not transfer your usage rights to another individual or allow them to install the program at another location.
  • You are only eligible to use this product while you are a qualified educational user.
  • Microsoft provides only installation support for this product.

That is pretty significantly different from the 2003 version:

  • You must be a qualified educational user or a household member of a qualified user when you acquire this product.
  • You’re restricted to using this product for non-commercial (non-revenue-generating) use.
  • You can install this product on up to three computers or devices in your household.
  • You can’t transfer your usage rights to another individual.
  • You are still eligible to use this product after you or a member of your household no longer qualifies as an educational user.

The reason I am updating this is because someone I know just bought a new computer for what they thought was a really good deal (display model 10% off, a $200 rebate in store, and a free printer) and thought they got Microsoft Office. They did get Office, but only for the 60 day trial. I explained what they got and how much it would cost to buy the proper version of Office. Since it did come with Works, it will be $239 for the upgrade to Microsoft Office Standard 2007. They were pretty upset about not being told they were getting only the trial.

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Vista Pre-RC1

September 3, 2006 | Author: jciv

Microsoft recently released another public beta of Windows Vista so I downloaded it as soon as possible. I just got around to installing it. This isn’t the 64 bit version though like I got last time; I have read that was slow for a lot of people so maybe not releasing another public 64 bit beta yet of it was smart.

It does seem a good bit faster than the last build I tried. My system still rates a 1.0 on the Performance Score even though the average of the components is 3.22, but now there is an explanation why. The “Base Score” is “determined by lowest subscore.” That does make sense since a major bottle neck can slow down the system significantly. But in my case, all I loose is gaming graphics and Aero. For many users that would not be a big deal. Since the scoring system appears to start at 1, you would expect that system to totally suck. But Microsoft says, “a computer with a base score of 1 or 2 usually has sufficient performance to do most general computing tasks…” So how do users differentiate the really horrible systems from the not so bad ones?

I opened up IE (which again didn’t appear in the Quick Launch toolbar until first run) and clicked on an article on Homer Simpson on the opening MSN page. I was then presented with a Suspicious Website popup, saying the site might be a phishing website. Good to know their system works so well it tags their own site.

MSN Simpsons Phishing

I have not seen the UAC dialog much, but that could be because I was setup with an Administrator account. I thought users were supposed to be Standard Users. Looks like MS wants there to be at least one admin on the system other than the built in account. That makes some sense, but is going to leave that one user more vulnerable that necessary.

I really miss the Up button in Explorer. I use that all the time. You can do basically the same thing using the URL bar, but not by simply hitting one button in a constant place. I often would traverse folders very fast using the Up button. I hardly ever use the back and forward buttons.

I really like the ability to type commands or program names into the Start Menu, it really makes finding programs easier and faster. That is a good thing because I hate the menu otherwise. It is not nearly as easy to use as the Classic Start Menu or even XP’s menu. I like that My was dropped from the System places, but now they are hard to find. I keep looking for My Computer or My Documents and they just aren’t there. Computer and Documents just don’t stand out.

I pressed the “shutdown” button in the start menu and of course, being Vista you aren’t supposed to actually power off your system. It attempted to go into suspend or hibernate (whatever the default is) and quickly popped out. I assumed it was because I wiggled the mouse as I let go, but when it came back my wireless mouse was no longer recognized so I doubt it. Using the keyboard I again hit the shutdown button. This time it seemed go half to sleep and would not wake back up. Good thing I wasn’t trying to put Windows to sleep.

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Tivo Finally Got It

August 22, 2006 | Author: jciv

My Tivo has been trying to record UFOs: Seeing Is Believing on National Geographic all month. I really liked the show, but I have seen it way too many times since May 2005 when it was new. I cancel it by changing the channel each time I catch Tivo recording it, but apparently Tivo really wants it. Now that it finally got the whole thing it should be happy for a while. It is nice that Tivo will attempt to get a suggestion again later if you change the channel, but if I keep canceling the same suggestion you would think Tivo would figure out I don’t want it recorded.

Update Aug 27: Today, less than a week later, I caught Tivo recording the same suggestion again. I let it recorded the whole two hours again.

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Snakes On A Plane

August 20, 2006 | Author: jciv

Snakes On A PlaneThe thought of a movie about snakes on a plane was just so stupid I was not going to see this movie. But I gave in Saturday. The reviews of the movie were not nearly as bad as I expected. It is frequently referred to as dumb B-movie summer fun. The idea just kept growing on me and when my friend called and asked what new movies are out I knew what we had to see.

It certainly is no award winner, but it is a very fun movie. The movie is a lot like an airplane hijacking movie except you can’t try to reason with snakes and you can’t shoot them all. Some of the advertising makes it seem like a horror movie, I don’t care for horror movies, but didn’t really see it as a horror movie. It is violent, gross, suspenseful, and sometimes scary, but if it wasn’t it wouldn’t be nearly as fun. Of course, if you suffer from Ophidiophobia you should skip this movie. Otherwise, if you need one last good summer movie, this is it.

No matter how stupid the idea is, “Snakes On A Plane” is such a good title that it has apparently become a new way of saying “shit happens” according to the Urban Dictionary. I doubt I will be using it, but at least I will know what it means if I ever come across it.

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Recover Damaged JPEG files

August 19, 2006 | Author: jciv

I am not talking about when you accidentally erased your camera’s memory or it got damaged, there are already plenty of solutions for that. What I want is to fix photos that have somehow been corrupted. In my case, photos of my Grandmother’s 80th birthday were put on a bad CD (not by me). Not that many were damaged, but it has annoyed me for several years that I couldn’t recover them. Finally I thought I found the solution with PixRecovery.

Turns out it does little or nothing at least for my images. Looking into the files I can see why nothing could be fixed. The bad areas are mostly full of null characters from the bad CD read. At the time I copied them I attempted reading them in lots of different ways to recover anything possible. I did get several back or at least less damaged copies. I also ended up with a bunch more that showed damage so I presume the built in CD error correction was helping a lot. PixRecovery wasn’t able to do anything even with the less damaged files either, there was still a block of about 2000 nulls in a row even in the least damaged image. There just wasn’t anything to recover in those spots which throws off the whole rest of the image.

Corrupt JPEG

It is nice though that they provide a demo version so you can see if it works. I am sure for some people it must work. But since the full version costs $149.00 I am kind of glad it didn’t help. I only had a few bad images, but if it works for you and you have more than a few that need fixing, that is certainly worth the price if your photos are important.

Anyone know of any other solutions? Even realigning the blocks (and hopefully color) with a blank spot in the middle would be an improvement for these images.

Posted in camera, review | 2 Comments

Gateway Fishing

August 5, 2006 | Author: jciv

I got a call today (Saturday) from Gateway wanting to check to see if I was having any problems with my recent purchace of a Gateway system. I am having trouble with the left mouse button only working half the time, but I didn’t want to get into that at the time, it still kind of works anyway. When I have nothing better to do I will call tech support.

But the reason I am posting is because the main purpose of the call was not to see if I was having any problems and get them fixed. It was to try to sell me a warranty since mine was only for 90 days. Now I remember getting a two year extended two year warranty on this machine so I was a bit concerned. She then clarified that I do have the extended warranty, this warranty is for my antivirus. I asked why would I want that, she had no answer and quickly ended the call. Now I do think everyone needs up to date antivirus protection, but you shouldn’t be tricking people into keeping up their subscription. I don’t really like the McAfee Security Center that came with the machine, it is bloated (though probably less than Norton) and keeps bugging me about updating SpamKiller which I disabled. I have yet to even register so my update subscription is no where near running out yet.

I don’t have any other virus protection on my machine though so I probably should do that soon as the definitions it came with are aging quickly. I am pretty careful about what I download, my email is scanned multiple times before it reaches me, and I rarely use Office or Internet Explorer so I am not that worried. After the trial subscription does run out I will probably be switching back to AVG Free. It seemed to be working fine on my previous machine, though it never had the opportunity to catch anything. I like how non bloated it is compared to the main alternatives. Scot’s Newsletter has a pretty good review of antivirus packages and AVG (though not the free version) came in third. Scot’s first choice, F-Secure, does sound pretty good though and is probably worth a trial.

Now that I have had this machine for a while, I guess you might wonder how I am liking it. I still hate the keyboard layout, I keep hitting the wrong keys and it still throws me off when using other keyboards. I do really love the battery life though. And I am still very happy with my non glossy screen which Dell has returned as an option. I guess I wasn’t the only one who didn’t like the glossy screens. I just wish they had done it a bit sooner so I could be writing what I can’t stand about Dell instead. That would easily have pushed me over to buying the Dell. Though now that I have this amazing battery life I am somewhat glad I didn’t.

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Google Browser Sync Sucks

July 21, 2006 | Author: jciv

This is based on a email I sent to Google’s support for the Browser Sync Firefox extension. All these issues I have been having since 1.0 of the extension, this is at least the third version and yet I still cannot use it on my desktop. Since I only have it installed on two computers, I really don’t know what use syncing is if the second one can’t update. I would uninstall it, but I keep hoping they will fix it.

The first problem is the extension cannot ever finish updating on my desktop. Second is, it leaves gigantic log files in my profile directory, there are currently a total of 1.6 gigabytes of BrowserSync logs in there for the last three days.

I have 90 days worth of history (yes I know that is nuts) in Firefox so do not want to attempt synchronizing history, but the extension’s settings dialog will not keep the setting of what I want synchronized after a failure and since it always attempts to sync on pressing ok and fails, I am constantly returned to the default settings. Once I set only cookies and saved passwords to synchronize and hit ok in the settings dialog, it begins processing but eventually gives “Settings change did not complete, please try again later.”

From looking at the log files, it appears BrowserSync is syncing everything even though I told it only to do cookies and passwords. The log file shows “Sync Failure – 403,Forbidden,Update exceeds single upload limit.” at line 286301 of the log file I attached to the email and shows tons of URLs from history I would prefer not to store online much less synchronize. BrowserSync should not be uploading stuff the user tells it not to. That is a huge privacy issue especially since the history is not encrypted. Yes I know nothing on the internet is truly anonymous. I think you can tell from my willingness to use Gmail or this extension, I am not a privacy nut, but I don’t want a list of everything I do online sitting in one place on someone else’s server.

The log of just one sync attempt is 24 megabytes which only took BrowserSync a few minutes to create. Their logging is far to verbose and uses way too much repetitive text. It is insane to have such large log files and certainly to keep more than the current one if they are this large.

The total logs on my laptop though are only 21 megabytes total. There I only have 30 day history and since it doesn’t keep failing, it doesn’t have to repeat the same stuff every time. But 21 megabytes is still a lot for log files being stored in your profile directory.

I am using Google Browser Sync 1.1.20060711.0 with Firefox 1.5.0.4 – Build ID: 2006050817.

Update: After playing with things some more, I finally got the sync to go through. I went through my cookies and deleted all but the sites I login to where cookies are useful. I also edited the extension’s preference manually in about:config to include only cookies and passwords. One or both of those solved the problem. Of course now that I was able to sync with my laptop most of the junk cookies got put back. But at least now things are finally synchronized.

I wish there was some way to view and edit what is stored online so I could clean things up. Or maybe even a way to specify which cookies not to sync. Though I do not think cookies are a major privacy issue, I still prefer not to make it easier on advertising companies to track me. Why synchronize stuff that isn’t necessary? While cookies are small, they still take up a bit of bandwidth to update.

So, it doesn’t really suck (once it is working). But I got you to read this post didn’t I.

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My New Notebook

June 20, 2006 | Author: jciv

If there is anyone reading my blog, you probably were wondering if I got my new notebook on Monday like predicted. I did. I just have been so busy playing with it I couldn’t find time to post.

I really like the battery life. It is amazing compared to what I had before. I guess not buying an off the shelf, low end machine helps. I got the 8 cell primary battery and an extra modular 6 cell that fits into the DVD bay. Total estimated time seems to be between 8 and 6 hours depending on what I am doing. I couldn’t believe it. I don’t need to carry around the charger anymore unless I will be using the laptop all day.

The Wi-Fi and Bluetooth can easily be turned on and off using the function key. I kind of wondered about that since some new HPs had such nice wireless on/off buttons and I wanted to be able to turn them off easily to save power. Volume, brightness, and the other usual stuff is also available with the function key. But there is a nice built in popup display that tells you the level or other status information when you use these keys. There is even a battery and wireless status popup. And these are not Windows popups so no drivers or EXEs running to provide them, they are built in to the hardware and appear as a small blue box in the upper left corner.

Speaking of EXEs and stuff running, there was a lot of stuff preinstalled that I didn’t want. There were 14 tray icons worth of things running and I have now cut it down to 7 of those though 2 are only hidden. I could probably even drop the ATI , but I will wait and see if I ever need to use it for a while. There is also a “protected” partition on the computer where they put recovery stuff. I would much prefer that be on CDs and not taking up space.

I am happy with Windows Media Center, it is very much like XP Pro with a few multimedia additions which aren’t really useful to me, but the $100 lower price was really nice. Hopefully they keep that up for a while.

The mouse touchpad is pretty good, it is a bit smaller than my old HP, but not too small. I am not so annoyed by the horizontally undersized right mouse button anymore. It isn’t that bad, but the size and surroundings of the mouse buttons is a problem. The small size of both buttons is less a problem than the sounding. The area around the buttons and under the touchpad is smooth and clearly to the touch separate from the rest of the surface. The size of this separate area is just about the size of my HP’s buttons. Sometimes I repeatedly end up pushing this border area rather than a button wondering why it isn’t working.

I didn’t want to get the glossy LCD screen so I went with the old fashion style which Dell was not offering. The texture on Gateway’s screen though seems to cause some minor lightness distortion. It seems that solid light grey areas are lightly textured when viewed at the slightest from perfect angle (as in the edges of the screen when looking at the middle). It is very minor and most people probably would never know, but I do a lot of photo scanning and editing especially of black and white photos.

What I really hate about this laptop is the keyboard. I thought the mouse was going to be the big annoyance in switching, but the keyboard is certainly as least as important (if not more) if you do anything more than just simple typing. If you frequently use Home, End, Insert, Delete, Page Up, Page Down, Print Screen, or the left Control key and know where they are on a regular keyboard, you will hate this keyboard.

They flipped the laptop Function key with the left Control key. That is horrible. I have been using this machine for over a week now and 90% of the time I want to press Control, I miss and don’t realize it at first. You might think you can get used to it, I have started to. But that turned out to be another problem, lately when using my desktop I can’t hit the Control key without looking first. Not because I ever miss it, I just hesitate unconsciously preparing to miss as I always do with the laptop keyboard. It is driving me nuts.

Print Screen can only be accessed by holding down the Function key and then pressing the Insert key.

Down the right side of the keyboard from the top are: Delete, Home, Page Up, Page Down, and End. Home being next to delete means I have to hit undo frequently. And with End where it is, I have started to avoid using it, the mouse is easier.

Keyboards were basically standardized long ago for a reason. Just because it is a laptop doesn’t mean you can’t try to get close to the standard layout. On this laptop there is a one inch border along both sides of the keyboard they could have used to spread things out and do it properly.

With all these complaints, would I buy it again? Probably. The extra modular battery, non-glossy screen, and lighter base model were all important factors in deciding on Gateway over Dell. I still hate the keyboard and probably will be extremely happy when I replace this machine in a few years, but it is a really good one otherwise.

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