>30% of the phone market if the Sony Ericsson are to be believed.
That's not what Sony-Ericsson said, they said they expect 30% of the phones sold to HAVE a camera in them. You make it sound like they said all of these people are actively seeking out camera phones, when that's most likely not true.
There are plenty of people who want other features that don't come in phones that don't have cameras. I just upgraded to a T616, but I didn't want the camera, I wanted Bluetooth, modem capability, calendar, sync capability, etc. I would have been perfectly happy to get a model that had all of those things, but no camera, but Sony Ericsson doesn't seem to make one of those anymore. I have to keep my T68i for use on days when I go to clients with "no camera" policies in place. With the T68i, the camera was an optional snap-on accessory. I don't know why the phone vendors can't offer models of their higher-end phones with and without cameras.
Well, I was more or less preparing to sue them over it.
Then, I was contacted by a woman who worked for AmEx who saw my posts on a now-defunct anti-AmEx site, amexsucks.org. She looked into my problem and very quickly got the balance transfers reversed. This left an unexplained balance of $138.19 on the card. I paid for all of my purchases on the card, so the balance should have been zero. I fought with them and got a $100 "goodwill credit," but they insisted I pay the remaining $38.19.
So I did. I sent the CEO a nasty letter and enclosed my pulverized Blue card, and $38.19-- in pennies.
Yes, they accepted the payment.:-)
I still don't know how those balance transfers got attached to my card. I applied for it online, and before I even got the card in the mail the balance transfers were on it-- I had not requested any balance transfers. The woman who eventually solved the problem said AmEx could not disclose how it happened without being subpoenaed. The only possible explanation I could come up with would be that it was either some sort of inside job, or they got hacked.
I did upgrade to the T616, but I wasn't offered that option by anyone connected with this T226 deal-- I initiated it myself when I got interested in what new phones were out there.
And if the vendors don't take Bluetooth seriously, they are idiots. I've got a Bluetooth headset that I use via voice dialing (another feature missing from the T226). I also got rid of my Palm and make do with the robust calendar and contact capabilites of the phone (the T226 has these, but they are weaker than the T68i/T616's), and sync everything to my Macs (something else the T226 can't do) via Bluetooth. Oh, and in a pinch I use the modem capabilities (yet another feature not in the T226) to get my iBook connected to the net.
So, you may think that I was just bitching about the lack of Bluetooth, but I was really bitching about the lack of all the other features that make Bluetooth so damned useful to me.
The vendors just give Bluetooth short shrift because they can't make it into a revenue source like the stupid ringtones, backgrounds, and games.
The first I heard of this "upgrade" program was a card I got in the mail a week ago last Friday. It doesn't say, "Hey, if you want, you can switch to this phone," it says, "We're giving you this phone in exchange for yours."
When I saw what a feature-lacking piece of shit the T226 is compared to my T68i, I called the number on the card to see if I had an option of declining this allegedly-generous gesture. When they told me I could refuse the T226, they took my name and checked to see if my T226 had already been shipped out, and it had-- via UPS, according to the CSR, who told me to just refuse the package.
I am in complete agreement that the T616 should have been the replacement phone for the T68i. Not everyone is purely interested in stupid-ass ringtones and games. Every feature I bought the T68i for is missing in the T226, so I don't see how anyone can call that an upgrade with a straight face.
I wish this ruling had been around about five years ago, when I was fighting with American Express.
They stuck me with $12K of bogus balance transfers on a brand new "Blue" card, and refused to believe they weren't mine despite my attempts to rectify the situation over a period of almost a year.
They were amazingly quick to sic the lawyers on me, though, when bought amexblew.com and created a site detailing their indifference to my problem.
It's about time some company got smacked down for trying to silence an online critic with a legitimate beef.
You should expect some things to break in a major version upgrade. You're forgetting that even though Apple called the versions 10.0, 10.1, 10.2, and 10.3, they are more like OS X beta, OS X 1.0, 2.0, and 3.0... the changes that are going on are more analagous to a Win95->Win98 type thing than, say, OS 8.5->8.6.
OS X best practices right now, according to me: -Keep production machines to the previous generation of OS X from what's current. -Don't upgrade to the current version until it's had at least three major updates (not necessarily 10.x.3). -Research your planned upgrades extremely thoroughly and test, test, test. -Roll out the upgrades to only one person at first, and let them pound on your build for a week or two to see if any upgrade deal-breakers shake loose. -Once the deal-breakers have fixes and/or workarounds applied, roll out to everyone else.
Only one of my clients ignored my advice and went to Panther en masse before 10.3.2 was even out, and they paid the price in lost productivity when they discovered that some stuff they needed didn't play nice with it. Everyone else is listening to me and sticking with 10.2.8 for now.
Hopefully by OS X 10.4 or 10.5, things will have settled down sufficiently for us to go back to the old ways of just upgrading with few to no worries, but at the current time OS X is still in a state of flux that makes this too risky in a production environment.
~Philly
Re:Whats wrong with microsoft?
on
Gates on Spam
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· Score: 1
or do they use common words to seem that much more ubiquitous?
Yes. When Microsoft hired branding-wizard Roland Hanson away from Neutrogena back in the early 80's, it was his idea to "co-opt the generic" with regard to product names. Which is why Microsoft's word processor is called Word, and their graphical operating system is called Windows.
It was also Hanson's idea to preface every product name with "Microsoft," to ensure people knew the company who made their software, thus building the Microsoft brand. Unfortunately, the side effect of this is that non-techie people often have no real concept of the fact that these are all different products. If I had a nickel for every time I've heard someone say something about "the latest Microsoft" running on their computer, I could retire.
Why is Ballmer gloating like this wasn't expected? Microsoft has worked for over a decade to make their applications into Roach Motels for your data, and the cost (not just financial) of transitioning away from them as painful as possible-- to make many of their dissatisfied customers see sticking with MS as the lesser of two evils, and dissuade them from switching to something else.
I'm not surprised at all that making the switch away from Microsoft is a rocky and expensive road, after all the work Microsoft has done to make it that way... but once it's done, it's done and you're no longer a slave to Microsoft's licensing whims and mandated upgrades, which in the long run would be much more expensive.
Why is it that people seem to think Apple's written policies simply do not apply to them? And if people act this way with other companies, why does it only seem to be newsworthy when Apple is involved?
First we've got the iPod retards, who apparently think there are at least eighteen months in a year. I mean, why else would they act like Apple owes them something under the terms of a one-year warranty when their battery dies eighteen months after purchase? Are they traveling at the speed of light? Do they use the Martian calendar? Who knows? They also seem to think that Apple told them the battery would never die, but that's another rant.
Now we've got this other tool posting his whine about not being allowed to return a customized machine. The link to Apple's written policy on that is only on the bottom of every page generated by the Apple Store web site, so it's easy to see how he failed to see it. So now he's trying to raise a public stink in the hopes Apple will make an exception for him to quash the bad publicity he's trying to generate.
These people who flagrantly ignore written policies and then get indignant about it must be the same type of people who park their hulking SUVs in spaces marked "Compact Only." I think the next time I see one of those, I'll key it to demonstrate my contempt.
When you buy a car, you own the car, period. You can do with it as you wish.
When you buy a CD or DVD, you're not buying the music, you're buying a plastic circle and a license to view/hear the contents of that circle. If your plastic circle eats it and becomes unusable for some reason, you still possess a license to the content, and as such should be able to get replacement media for the cost of producing the media.
Problem is, the movie/record companies don't want to have to replace your media, but they don't want you to have the right to make backup copies of it, either. And they own more congressmen than you.
What practical advantage does it have over ordinary audio-only phones?
Hmm.... well, theoretically, it would put a complete end to the concept of the blind date (if it's not dead already), much like teleportation would kill the concept of the alibi.
Considering that today's youth, when observed in AOL chat rooms, won't even talk to someone else in the room without seeing a photo of them first, I think videophones are ready to be adopted en masse... they just need to be cheap enough for those same dumb kids to be able to afford.
Passion for work doesn't come out of ANY college of ANY type.
Yeah, but it stands to reason that someone who was willing to go through four years of college and get a degree in something technology-related had some passion for what they're studying.
Many if not most of the people going through these MCSE mills are only interested in making a lot of money, and don't care how.
..."Learn to Drive Eighteen-Wheelers!" commercials on radio and daytime TV soon. And I say, thank God.
Some of the "Become a highly-paid MCSE!" commercials I've heard lately expressly mention that "no computer experience is necessary." It makes me shudder to think that some people may actually believe they can go from having zero computer experience to being an MCSE pulling down $80K in the time it takes to complete some boot camp.
Furthermore, if someone in this day and age has no computer experience, then they're clearly not interested in technology-- and IME, technology is not something you can be good at working with if it doesn't really interest you.
...and it's the best job I've ever had. I just hit my 3-year anniversary, the longest I've ever held the same job. Before that, all my work assignments came from Aquent Partners, formerly MacTemps-- the last one of which before my current job ended up in my being hired full time.
I still keep a frequently-updated resume available on Monster, just in case something better comes along-- but right now I'm making great money and my office is 10 minutes from my house, so "something better" would have to be one rung below "getting paid six figures to sit at home, watch TV and play video games all day."
Why not sell those 5.6 million cds and give the profit to educational programs instead?
For the same reason that Microsoft gives $xM worth of free software whenever possible to settle their lawsuits:
It's not a "real" penalty, it just looks like one to the rubes who don't realize that each physical software package/music CD costs practically nothing to produce, but is counted at its full retail value when given away.
Giving away profits as penalty for corporate wrongdoing? In George W. Bush's America? Ha!
In arcade games they addressed that issue by putting one flat-screen CRT in place normally, and putting the other so the screen surface was on a horizontal plane showing a reversed image, and putting a mirror right up to the edge of the other CRT for the reversed image to reflect from so the image was as close to seamless as possible. It worked pretty well.
It was done in larger multi-player games like (IIRC) the 6-player version of "X-Men"
...for a shitty company to get its customers back-- by buying the competitor the customers fled to.
I left Cingular two years ago because they kept not automatically billing my (unexpired) credit card like they were supposed to, and THEN sticking me with late fees on the unpaid balance, as if it were my fault that they didn't charge my perfectly valid credit card. After the third time I had to call them up and yell at them about it after opening the previous month's statement, I started looking at AT&T Wireless plans. Very soon after that, I switched. Took me about 30 minutes to cancel my Cingular service, they were throwing all kinds of shit at me to stay.. Free months, free additional services, etc. At the end of the conversation they asked me if I knew anyone who needed a mobile phone, so I could just transfer the account to them instead of cancelling it. A little desperate, are we?
And now I'm going to be their customer again, and there'll be one less place for me to go if their suckiness starts affecting me again.
what is the real reason an online company like Dell or MacMall would sell you a computer and then have you send in a mail-in rebate?
Psychology, the same reason stuff that costs $[x].00 is priced at $[x-1].95 or $[x-1].99.
Companies love rebates because then they can advertise the lower (post-rebate) price to draw you in, you'll pay the higher (pre-rebate) price to actually buy the item, and then you'll either forget to send in the stuff to get the rebate, or you'll be too lazy to do it, or they'll reject your claim if you don't follow the instructions exactly and send them everything they require to cut you a check-- then they get to keep that extra money. Even if you do go through the hassle of redeeming your rebates, it takes quite a while for them to get you your money-- and the whole time that money is earning interest for the seller.
I'd guess that 2/3 of people who buy stuff that qualifies for a mail-in rebate NEVER redeem the rebate, thus making it quite profitable for companies to offer them. You didn't think they just wanted to save you money, did you? Because if they just wanted to do that, they'd lower the price by $5 at the friggin' register instead of making your jump through hoops to get a $5 check two months after you've made the purchase.
...at least, their DesignJet 10ps printer does. I bought two for a client. One has worked fine from day one. As for the other, it was dodgy out of the box-- spontaneous reboots, things of that sort. We shipped it back and got a new one, which lasted only a few days before it became incapable of satisfactorily aligning its print heads, resulting in output blurry enough to give you a headache. Replacement three arrived yesterday. It gave us a flawless print head alignment on the first try, and printed three beautiful pages. Then it freaked out. Subesquent attempts to print, align print heads, or anything else that involved putting ink on paper resulted in the printer going into la-la land.
That's a 75% failure rate, folks, on an ~$800 piece of equipment. Hello, quality control?
HP support recommended returning the printer for a refund and going with another manufacturer(!), which we decided to do in advance if replacement #2 turned out to be a lemon. In light of this article, I'm surprised they didn't tell me, "That's not a bug, it's a feature!"-- then again, my clients do not print anything that remotely resembles currency.
If you think Outlook 2001 sucks, you obviously have never had to use or support its predecessor, Outlook 8.2.2. Now *that* was some shitty software. It caused so much pain amongst the users at my last job, that I rolled out Outlook 2001 when it was still in beta-- within about a week of the beta becoming available. The New York office wasn't too happy with me about that, but they were in New York, and I was in Princeton with the affected users.
I still use Outlook 2001 in Classic on my iBook, because the Exchange connectivity Microsoft put into Entourage sucks ass (though I think Entourage is a great app otherwise), and I know I'm not alone.
When Microsoft talked about Office 2004 during the MWSF keynote, I was very annoyed to find out that they ignored the flood of complaints about Entourage not using MAPI. I sent mine off within a couple days of the Office X 10.1.4 update being available.
We waited a year for OS X native Exchange support, and when we finally got it it was so bad as to be unusable-- it relies on protocols that any competent Exchange admin will probably turn off when setting the server up, and in most corporate environments where there are Mac users that need Exchange connectivity, convincing the Exchange admin to turn those protocols back on is non-trivial to say the least.
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>>But, honestly who buys a phone for the CAMERA?
>30% of the phone market if the Sony Ericsson are to be believed.
That's not what Sony-Ericsson said, they said they expect 30% of the phones sold to HAVE a camera in them. You make it sound like they said all of these people are actively seeking out camera phones, when that's most likely not true.
There are plenty of people who want other features that don't come in phones that don't have cameras. I just upgraded to a T616, but I didn't want the camera, I wanted Bluetooth, modem capability, calendar, sync capability, etc. I would have been perfectly happy to get a model that had all of those things, but no camera, but Sony Ericsson doesn't seem to make one of those anymore. I have to keep my T68i for use on days when I go to clients with "no camera" policies in place. With the T68i, the camera was an optional snap-on accessory. I don't know why the phone vendors can't offer models of their higher-end phones with and without cameras.
~Philly
What was the final resolution of your case?
:-)
Well, I was more or less preparing to sue them over it.
Then, I was contacted by a woman who worked for AmEx who saw my posts on a now-defunct anti-AmEx site, amexsucks.org. She looked into my problem and very quickly got the balance transfers reversed. This left an unexplained balance of $138.19 on the card. I paid for all of my purchases on the card, so the balance should have been zero. I fought with them and got a $100 "goodwill credit," but they insisted I pay the remaining $38.19.
So I did. I sent the CEO a nasty letter and enclosed my pulverized Blue card, and $38.19-- in pennies.
Yes, they accepted the payment.
I still don't know how those balance transfers got attached to my card. I applied for it online, and before I even got the card in the mail the balance transfers were on it-- I had not requested any balance transfers. The woman who eventually solved the problem said AmEx could not disclose how it happened without being subpoenaed. The only possible explanation I could come up with would be that it was either some sort of inside job, or they got hacked.
~Philly
I did upgrade to the T616, but I wasn't offered that option by anyone connected with this T226 deal-- I initiated it myself when I got interested in what new phones were out there.
And if the vendors don't take Bluetooth seriously, they are idiots. I've got a Bluetooth headset that I use via voice dialing (another feature missing from the T226). I also got rid of my Palm and make do with the robust calendar and contact capabilites of the phone (the T226 has these, but they are weaker than the T68i/T616's), and sync everything to my Macs (something else the T226 can't do) via Bluetooth. Oh, and in a pinch I use the modem capabilities (yet another feature not in the T226) to get my iBook connected to the net.
So, you may think that I was just bitching about the lack of Bluetooth, but I was really bitching about the lack of all the other features that make Bluetooth so damned useful to me.
The vendors just give Bluetooth short shrift because they can't make it into a revenue source like the stupid ringtones, backgrounds, and games.
~Philly
The first I heard of this "upgrade" program was a card I got in the mail a week ago last Friday. It doesn't say, "Hey, if you want, you can switch to this phone," it says, "We're giving you this phone in exchange for yours."
When I saw what a feature-lacking piece of shit the T226 is compared to my T68i, I called the number on the card to see if I had an option of declining this allegedly-generous gesture. When they told me I could refuse the T226, they took my name and checked to see if my T226 had already been shipped out, and it had-- via UPS, according to the CSR, who told me to just refuse the package.
I am in complete agreement that the T616 should have been the replacement phone for the T68i. Not everyone is purely interested in stupid-ass ringtones and games. Every feature I bought the T68i for is missing in the T226, so I don't see how anyone can call that an upgrade with a straight face.
~Philly
I wish this ruling had been around about five years ago, when I was fighting with American Express.
They stuck me with $12K of bogus balance transfers on a brand new "Blue" card, and refused to believe they weren't mine despite my attempts to rectify the situation over a period of almost a year.
They were amazingly quick to sic the lawyers on me, though, when bought amexblew.com and created a site detailing their indifference to my problem.
It's about time some company got smacked down for trying to silence an online critic with a legitimate beef.
~Philly
the changes that are going on are more analagous to a Win95->Win98
Oops, that should be "Win3.11->Win95."
~Philly
You should expect some things to break in a major version upgrade. You're forgetting that even though Apple called the versions 10.0, 10.1, 10.2, and 10.3, they are more like OS X beta, OS X 1.0, 2.0, and 3.0... the changes that are going on are more analagous to a Win95->Win98 type thing than, say, OS 8.5->8.6.
OS X best practices right now, according to me:
-Keep production machines to the previous generation of OS X from what's current.
-Don't upgrade to the current version until it's had at least three major updates (not necessarily 10.x.3).
-Research your planned upgrades extremely thoroughly and test, test, test.
-Roll out the upgrades to only one person at first, and let them pound on your build for a week or two to see if any upgrade deal-breakers shake loose.
-Once the deal-breakers have fixes and/or workarounds applied, roll out to everyone else.
Only one of my clients ignored my advice and went to Panther en masse before 10.3.2 was even out, and they paid the price in lost productivity when they discovered that some stuff they needed didn't play nice with it. Everyone else is listening to me and sticking with 10.2.8 for now.
Hopefully by OS X 10.4 or 10.5, things will have settled down sufficiently for us to go back to the old ways of just upgrading with few to no worries, but at the current time OS X is still in a state of flux that makes this too risky in a production environment.
~Philly
or do they use common words to seem that much more ubiquitous?
Yes. When Microsoft hired branding-wizard Roland Hanson away from Neutrogena back in the early 80's, it was his idea to "co-opt the generic" with regard to product names. Which is why Microsoft's word processor is called Word, and their graphical operating system is called Windows.
It was also Hanson's idea to preface every product name with "Microsoft," to ensure people knew the company who made their software, thus building the Microsoft brand. Unfortunately, the side effect of this is that non-techie people often have no real concept of the fact that these are all different products. If I had a nickel for every time I've heard someone say something about "the latest Microsoft" running on their computer, I could retire.
~Philly
Why is Ballmer gloating like this wasn't expected? Microsoft has worked for over a decade to make their applications into Roach Motels for your data, and the cost (not just financial) of transitioning away from them as painful as possible-- to make many of their dissatisfied customers see sticking with MS as the lesser of two evils, and dissuade them from switching to something else.
I'm not surprised at all that making the switch away from Microsoft is a rocky and expensive road, after all the work Microsoft has done to make it that way... but once it's done, it's done and you're no longer a slave to Microsoft's licensing whims and mandated upgrades, which in the long run would be much more expensive.
~Philly
Why is it that people seem to think Apple's written policies simply do not apply to them? And if people act this way with other companies, why does it only seem to be newsworthy when Apple is involved?
First we've got the iPod retards, who apparently think there are at least eighteen months in a year. I mean, why else would they act like Apple owes them something under the terms of a one-year warranty when their battery dies eighteen months after purchase? Are they traveling at the speed of light? Do they use the Martian calendar? Who knows? They also seem to think that Apple told them the battery would never die, but that's another rant.
Now we've got this other tool posting his whine about not being allowed to return a customized machine. The link to Apple's written policy on that is only on the bottom of every page generated by the Apple Store web site, so it's easy to see how he failed to see it. So now he's trying to raise a public stink in the hopes Apple will make an exception for him to quash the bad publicity he's trying to generate.
These people who flagrantly ignore written policies and then get indignant about it must be the same type of people who park their hulking SUVs in spaces marked "Compact Only." I think the next time I see one of those, I'll key it to demonstrate my contempt.
~Philly
what kind of justice is it when scammers get to go free with the cash they stole?
American. Well, only if the scammer is a large corporation.
Mod me down if you want, but you know I'm right!
~Philly
...to counter the 912 "MP3" model, with a robot of their own.
As for that garish, yellow "HMV" model: yuck. Who wants a robot that looks like a 'Sports' Walkman or a droid from a Vogon Constructor Fleet vessel (assuming they'd match the color of the ship, of course)?
~Philly
When you buy a car, you own the car, period. You can do with it as you wish.
When you buy a CD or DVD, you're not buying the music, you're buying a plastic circle and a license to view/hear the contents of that circle. If your plastic circle eats it and becomes unusable for some reason, you still possess a license to the content, and as such should be able to get replacement media for the cost of producing the media.
Problem is, the movie/record companies don't want to have to replace your media, but they don't want you to have the right to make backup copies of it, either. And they own more congressmen than you.
~Philly
What practical advantage does it have over ordinary audio-only phones?
Hmm.... well, theoretically, it would put a complete end to the concept of the blind date (if it's not dead already), much like teleportation would kill the concept of the alibi.
Considering that today's youth, when observed in AOL chat rooms, won't even talk to someone else in the room without seeing a photo of them first, I think videophones are ready to be adopted en masse... they just need to be cheap enough for those same dumb kids to be able to afford.
~Philly
Passion for work doesn't come out of ANY college of ANY type.
Yeah, but it stands to reason that someone who was willing to go through four years of college and get a degree in something technology-related had some passion for what they're studying.
Many if not most of the people going through these MCSE mills are only interested in making a lot of money, and don't care how.
~Philly
..."Learn to Drive Eighteen-Wheelers!" commercials on radio and daytime TV soon. And I say, thank God.
Some of the "Become a highly-paid MCSE!" commercials I've heard lately expressly mention that "no computer experience is necessary." It makes me shudder to think that some people may actually believe they can go from having zero computer experience to being an MCSE pulling down $80K in the time it takes to complete some boot camp.
Furthermore, if someone in this day and age has no computer experience, then they're clearly not interested in technology-- and IME, technology is not something you can be good at working with if it doesn't really interest you.
~Philly
...and it's the best job I've ever had. I just hit my 3-year anniversary, the longest I've ever held the same job. Before that, all my work assignments came from Aquent Partners, formerly MacTemps-- the last one of which before my current job ended up in my being hired full time.
I still keep a frequently-updated resume available on Monster, just in case something better comes along-- but right now I'm making great money and my office is 10 minutes from my house, so "something better" would have to be one rung below "getting paid six figures to sit at home, watch TV and play video games all day."
~Philly
Why not sell those 5.6 million cds and give the profit to educational programs instead?
For the same reason that Microsoft gives $xM worth of free software whenever possible to settle their lawsuits:
It's not a "real" penalty, it just looks like one to the rubes who don't realize that each physical software package/music CD costs practically nothing to produce, but is counted at its full retail value when given away.
Giving away profits as penalty for corporate wrongdoing? In George W. Bush's America? Ha!
~Philly
In arcade games they addressed that issue by putting one flat-screen CRT in place normally, and putting the other so the screen surface was on a horizontal plane showing a reversed image, and putting a mirror right up to the edge of the other CRT for the reversed image to reflect from so the image was as close to seamless as possible. It worked pretty well.
It was done in larger multi-player games like (IIRC) the 6-player version of "X-Men"
~Philly
Well, in that case I'd like to say a big hello to the Cingular executive who has mod points on this fine morning.
~Philly
...for a shitty company to get its customers back-- by buying the competitor the customers fled to.
I left Cingular two years ago because they kept not automatically billing my (unexpired) credit card like they were supposed to, and THEN sticking me with late fees on the unpaid balance, as if it were my fault that they didn't charge my perfectly valid credit card. After the third time I had to call them up and yell at them about it after opening the previous month's statement, I started looking at AT&T Wireless plans. Very soon after that, I switched. Took me about 30 minutes to cancel my Cingular service, they were throwing all kinds of shit at me to stay.. Free months, free additional services, etc. At the end of the conversation they asked me if I knew anyone who needed a mobile phone, so I could just transfer the account to them instead of cancelling it. A little desperate, are we?
And now I'm going to be their customer again, and there'll be one less place for me to go if their suckiness starts affecting me again.
~Philly
No, that's different scumware.
~Philly
what is the real reason an online company like Dell or MacMall would sell you a computer and then have you send in a mail-in rebate?
Psychology, the same reason stuff that costs $[x].00 is priced at $[x-1].95 or $[x-1].99.
Companies love rebates because then they can advertise the lower (post-rebate) price to draw you in, you'll pay the higher (pre-rebate) price to actually buy the item, and then you'll either forget to send in the stuff to get the rebate, or you'll be too lazy to do it, or they'll reject your claim if you don't follow the instructions exactly and send them everything they require to cut you a check-- then they get to keep that extra money. Even if you do go through the hassle of redeeming your rebates, it takes quite a while for them to get you your money-- and the whole time that money is earning interest for the seller.
I'd guess that 2/3 of people who buy stuff that qualifies for a mail-in rebate NEVER redeem the rebate, thus making it quite profitable for companies to offer them. You didn't think they just wanted to save you money, did you? Because if they just wanted to do that, they'd lower the price by $5 at the friggin' register instead of making your jump through hoops to get a $5 check two months after you've made the purchase.
~Philly
...at least, their DesignJet 10ps printer does. I bought two for a client. One has worked fine from day one. As for the other, it was dodgy out of the box-- spontaneous reboots, things of that sort. We shipped it back and got a new one, which lasted only a few days before it became incapable of satisfactorily aligning its print heads, resulting in output blurry enough to give you a headache. Replacement three arrived yesterday. It gave us a flawless print head alignment on the first try, and printed three beautiful pages. Then it freaked out. Subesquent attempts to print, align print heads, or anything else that involved putting ink on paper resulted in the printer going into la-la land.
That's a 75% failure rate, folks, on an ~$800 piece of equipment. Hello, quality control?
HP support recommended returning the printer for a refund and going with another manufacturer(!), which we decided to do in advance if replacement #2 turned out to be a lemon. In light of this article, I'm surprised they didn't tell me, "That's not a bug, it's a feature!"-- then again, my clients do not print anything that remotely resembles currency.
~Philly
If you think Outlook 2001 sucks, you obviously have never had to use or support its predecessor, Outlook 8.2.2. Now *that* was some shitty software. It caused so much pain amongst the users at my last job, that I rolled out Outlook 2001 when it was still in beta-- within about a week of the beta becoming available. The New York office wasn't too happy with me about that, but they were in New York, and I was in Princeton with the affected users.
I still use Outlook 2001 in Classic on my iBook, because the Exchange connectivity Microsoft put into Entourage sucks ass (though I think Entourage is a great app otherwise), and I know I'm not alone.
When Microsoft talked about Office 2004 during the MWSF keynote, I was very annoyed to find out that they ignored the flood of complaints about Entourage not using MAPI. I sent mine off within a couple days of the Office X 10.1.4 update being available.
We waited a year for OS X native Exchange support, and when we finally got it it was so bad as to be unusable-- it relies on protocols that any competent Exchange admin will probably turn off when setting the server up, and in most corporate environments where there are Mac users that need Exchange connectivity, convincing the Exchange admin to turn those protocols back on is non-trivial to say the least.
~Philly