Shiny, new failure

As we come upon another new year, I thought I should dust off the cobwebs on this blog.  While I’m at it, why not a new blog design as well?  I’ve been in the mood for something a little more open, a little more minimalistic.

Though I celebrate neither Christmas or the New Year, this season has always had an air of change about it.  Of course, part of it has to do with the carpet-bombing of Christmas shopping advertisement, but beyond that, there are a number of birthdays in the month of December of close family members.

Historically, I’ve been horrible about birthdays close family and friends.  I never remember the birthdays and when I do, I haven’t made much of an effort to get a really thoughtful gift.  This year though, I’ve got to change that.

A good friend of mine had his birthday in October, so for his birthday I organized a golf outing with a few mutual friends of ours.  We all really had a tremendous blast.

Now, my sister’s birthday is coming up in early December, so I’m thinking, I have to do something really special for her.  What speaks of brotherly love better than a brand new laptop?

I’ve always hated laptops for a number of reasons.  As someone who has always built his own machines from scratch and relies on the interchangeability of standardized parts, laptops really annoy me.  They’re expensive, costly to maintain, come with Windows Vista, and can’t run games at 1920 x 1200.  That said, I know my sister would really like one to browse the Internet in any room of the house and get her office work done remotely.

Yesterday I took a trip to Future Shop here in Canada and settled on a Toshiba L300 (PSLB8C-04P01X) featuring an Intel T5800 Core 2 Duo:

The Toshiba L300 at Future Shop

The fact that I was able to find a Toshiba with decent specs and a decent price tag as well went a ways toward making me feel better.  I have an impression that Toshiba laptops are built more solidly than other brands.

As well, I have to admit that my hate quickly fades with new technology, laptop or not.

Except when the experience of using it is awful.  As was the case with the Toshiba L300.

For starters, from the moment I turned on the laptop to the moment I could actually use Windows, 1 hour and 45 minutes had elapsed.  The laptop rebooted approximately 5 times during this process, 2 of which happened at points where Windows had become momentarily usable, making you think it was ready for use.  Uber Fail #1. What was the laptop doing in all that time?  Completing the Vista installation, and ensuring I’d be encumbered by software offers that I didn’t want.  Fail #2. What would it take to get a clean Vista installation on the laptop?  An act of God given that laptop manufacturers no longer include the O/S on disc.  Fail #3. Forget Vista, what about XP?  Not supported (no drivers).  Fail #4. Fine, the hell with XP.  What about Vista drivers so I can re-install in case I get a copy of Vista at a later date?  No dice.  The laptop is a model built exclusively for Future Shop, so there are no drivers available online at all, let alone any other support materials for the model on the Toshiba website.  Fail #5!

"Get lost! We don't have any of your precious drivers here!"

By the end of Fail #1 I had already had enough, let alone the other 4 points of frustration.  Imagine I had given the laptop to my sister without having opened it.  She would’ve been furious at having to wait so long for the system to become usable.

The other point of extreme frustration that deserves mention is the fact that laptop manufacturers do not include a clean Vista disc with laptops anymore.  They’ve instead gotten into the habit of including a recovery partition on the hard drive.  This is to ensure that:  1)  You have to spend your own time and money to burn a recovery disc that has an O/S on it, and 2)  You’ll never, ever be rid of their annoying software offers since they’ve been backed up onto the recovery disc as well.

Needless to say, the whole experience was an epic failure, and the laptop was promptly returned today.  If there’s one thing to be said about Future Shop, it’s that they took back the laptop without any hassles.  I was slightly taken aback by that!

I have a decent amount of respect for Microsoft as a company, and Windows XP as an operating system.  Even XP took time to mature, but it was never as horrible as Vista.  None of the problems I’ve described here are Vista problems per se (not to say Vista itself didn’t annoy me), but they have to be judged as part of the Microsoft/Vista experience.  This experience is so horrific that one has no choice but to conclude that OS X, Ubuntu, and even Windows XP are an excellent respite.  I’m just sad to say I had to give up on Vista.

By comparison, the simplicity of OS X is a thing to marvel, and the malleability of Linux is empowering.  Neither can be said about Vista or the Microsoft experience.  Instead, I was held powerless and left to marvel at the absurdity of it all.

"You know you want me. I actually work."

Based on this experience I’ve decied that if I’m to get my sister a new laptop, it will almost certainly be a sparkling MacBook.  It comes at a premium, but the hassle-free experience is worth it.

I can haz more jigabites?

I’m not sure whether the same is true for others, but my Gmail account just surpassed the 7GB mark in available mailbox space.

7000MB and counting...

Of course, Yahoo offers unlimited space, but 7GB is plenty for me!  I still maintain that Gmail has the best interface of any mail client (desktop clients included).

Things sure have changed while I’ve been away!

I’ve been away from blogging for a while as things had been quite busy at work.  But, I’m back now and with a fresh look to the blog.

I have to commend WordPress on their excellent blogging platform, and for consistently adding new features.

Last time I browsed through the WordPress themes catalogue, you weren’t allowed to edit the CSS template of your theme nor change the title graphic without paying for these features.  I’m glad to see that has changed.  Now anyone can modify the CSS and title graphic of their blog.  I’m still using the default graphic, but I plan to change that in the near future.

Not only have I not blogged in a while, but it’s also been quite a while since I’ve watched the market.  I used to perpetually keep an eye on my Google Finance page while at work, but haven’t done that in over a month.  So, speaking of change, imagine my surprise when I took a look after all this time and saw it was a brutal day:

Wow, what a brutal day for that financial sector!  I knew the mortgage crisis had hit the market pretty badly, but this is a whole new level of hurt!

Things sure have changed while I’ve been away.

Update:  Apparently you still can’t change the CSS template without paying for the feature, though it appears that you can change the title graphic.  I would love to see custom CSS for free, but regardless, I still think the WordPress platform is wonderful.

At least have the guy put his windows up

Everybody hates being put on hold — it’s the bane of the modern customer support experience. Yet here I am, on the phone with my bank, on hold.

Well, at least they have some music playing in the background, and it’s my main man Yanni, no less.

What I don’t understand is why the quality of the hold music is always so poor. It always — always — sounds like it’s being played on one of those cheap, dollar-store, battery-operated, fell-and-hit-the-curb-one-too-many-times radios. Except you’re listening to it over a bad cell phone connection. And the guy on the other end is driving on the highway. With his windows down. And for brief moments here and there the sound cuts out so that it almost seems like the guy is driving through a tunnel.

It really couldn’t be any worse.

Actually it is worse, because it sounds like every customer service center in the world is sourcing their hold music from the same guy. In his car. With the windows down.

Customer service centers of the world: Please invest in a decent hold music system. God knows you’re already saving money by staffing one phone rep at a time (in India, no less). If we must be put on hold, at least hire a hold music guy who’ll put his windows up.

Wii Router Woes

I have a friend staying with me these days, and his birthday was a few days ago. He decided that he deserved a Wii, so between the two of us we bought him a Wii and a handful of accessories.

We had a bit of trouble getting it online. I own a Linksys WRT54G wireless router (revision 3) which is running the DD-WRT firmware (version 23 SP1, I believe). Apparently the Wii really doesn’t like DD-WRT firmware because it simply wouldn’t go online. I figured it had to be something related to the encryption mode in use. I was using WPA-PSK (TKIP) encryption, which is supported by the Wii, but the Wii just couldn’t make the initial connection to the internet. My router’s System Information console showed the Wii constantly connecting to and disconnecting from the router.

I eventually realized that the encryption setting may in fact be preventing the Wii from connecting to the Internet, despite the support for the encryption protocol in use. What I tried next was to disable the wireless encryption on my router and…. success! The Wii connected!

Following the initial connection, the Wii attempts to download a system upgrade, which I allowed it to do. I was hoping that the upgrade would include broader router and networking support.

Fortunately, my hunch was correct since I was able to re-enable the WPA wireless encryption without affecting the Wii’s internet connection. We wouldn’t want to be running an unsecured wireless access point now, would we!