Monthly Archive for August, 2007

Still No Laptop

Published on 29 August, 2007 in Life and Technology. 1 Comment

Thats just over 2 months that this saga has been ongoing. The laptop is now away to Acer again for evaluation and if Acer confirm that it does indeed have half the RAM that it is supposed to have they will issue an RMA number and then I can get my new laptop. Its been a while but I think its very close to being over. God will I be happy to see the back of Comet & Acer and hopefully I won’t have to deal with any of them ever ever again.

In other news I have managed to get OS X running on standard PC hardware. This was hard but I finally got there. It installed fine and then the driver hunt began. Some had to be manually written which was hard but got some things working such as the graphics and Bluetooth. I could not get the network or sound running however so my OS X experience was toned down considerably.

I reinstalled Vista so I could re-gain the internet and sound but everything seemed so clunky and hard to use, the interface wasn’t as pleasing and application load times were very long compared to the same applications in OS X. This has made me want to move to Mac. But being the respective person I am, I will not continue to run it no hardware its not supposed to as this isn’t helping anyone including me. All I wanted to do was to test the OS and I loved it and that was minus sound or network.

Plus rather too conveniently for my liking a new Apple store has opened in Glasgow which is not far away from where I live so on Sunday I plan to go up and buy a Mac Mini as I already have a Dell 20.1″ monitor, Logitech G7 mouse and Apple Pro keyboard.

I have chosen my new laptop if Comet won’t be stingy and actually order the one I want, here is the link if you want a look. :)

As always comments are welcome!

Latest

Published on 23 August, 2007 in Life, School and Technology. 1 Comment

Well lets start with the reason there has not been a lot of blog posts, thats school. The highers are really intensive but fun so thats one thing I suppose. One subject thats really interesting me is Business Management. This covers things such as how to set up and run a business but also goes through all the legal compilations and consumers law etc. Its a real intensive course but one worthwhile and will be very useful in real life. Even if you aren’t looking for a job in running or managing a business I would recommend this course.

Secondly lets move onto the laptop situation, well thats still been resolved. It has been away to Acer for another repair which I didn’t even want but had to accept. I got a phone call from Comet this evening stating the laptop had arrived back into the store and appeared to have been repaired and working correctly. I excitedly went and picked it up and rushed home to use the laptop after it being unusable for the best part of two and a half months. The excitement was short lived because when I got home and booted it up everything worked but very slowly. I thought at first it may just need a reinstall of Windows but I was wrong, looking in the system properties dialog showed there was only 384MB of RAM, this was disturbing since this was a 1GB machine. I rebooted and checked the BIOS and sure enough it confirmed there was only 512MB of RAM installed. The other 128MB was stolen by the integrated graphics chipset. Phoned Comet as soon as this was confirmed and they said to bring it in tomorrow and they would get it fixed. By fixed I don’t know what they mean, could be another repair which would be ridiculous to be quite honest, or hopefully a refund so I can just start a fresh and finally get out the repair cycle that is going nowhere. I bought the laptop to study my highers with but as I have said above the highers have not started and there is still no working laptop. Will keep you up to date with further developments.

Lastly the Sony Ericsson W880i has been sent back to Virgin Mobile due to the absolutely shocking network coverage. I only ever got 3G once and rarely got enough signal to text or phone someone. There was no point in continuing the contract like that so I contact Virgin and I was still within my 28 day cooling off period. Explained the situation and they sent me an RMA bag which has been filled and sent back to them. They dealed with the return very professionally and didn’t ask any questions. Also they didn’t charge me for the calls and texts I had already used which was a nice touch. Overall I would fully recommend the company, just check the coverage map on there website so you don’t make the same mistake as myself.

Phone Returned & Still No Laptop

Published on 18 August, 2007 in Life, School and Technology. 1 Comment

Since my last post a lot has happened, I have returned to school, sent my W880i back and have still not received a new laptop.

Firstly on to the phone, it arrived on Monday as promised by Virgin Mobile, but to my dismay the network coverage is absolutely crap, I was sitting in most places of the house getting a good signal with my old phone which is on the Orange network, right beside it the Virgin would be getting none. Virgin Mobile doesn’t really exist, it’s whats called a “virtual network”, this means although it appears to be on the Virgin Mobile network it’s actually using the T-Mobile coverage and branding it as it’s own. What does amaze me though that T-Mobile are loosing business by letting Virgin Mobile set cheaper costs than themselves and it is actually there network that all this is being done on.

The phone itself is really smart and nice and slim, fits in the hand nicely and the rubbery texture makes it a pleasure to use, there is however one major problem and thats the tiny buttons! Big or fat fingers? You can forget about this phone as it will be completely useless and really annoying to use. Unfortunately my fingers were just within the size margin of being suitable to use with this keypad and after a few days of swearing when I was getting N instead of O in texts I got the hang of it. The camera is OK quality but some pictures are blurred due to the fact that there is no focus available unlike the rest of the SE phones which have a feature called auto focus. I only tested 3G once due to signal problems and although the video was not as high a quality as I first expected it was still adequate and didn’t “stick” or anything like it would on a web cam.

Basically although the phones was really nice and has some decent features, it was simply unusable due to the fact that almost 99% of the time I didn’t have any signal unless I was in line of sight with a mobile phones mast, this is really bad and not what I expected from a major phone company. The really weird thing was that putting a T-Mobile SIM in the phone gave me a much higher signal than the Virgin SIM ever did, either I had a faulty SIM or T-Mobile are not sharing fairly. So now the phone has been returned and I am hoping to get the same phone or a K810i on Orange when my contract finally runs out on September this year.

Next on to school, well what can I say. We have all received our new uniforms which are OK except from the blazer which frankly put is too far, but since I am now an S5 pupil at the school it is compulsory for me to wear it so I guess I am stuck with it if I want an education. Apart from that it’s fine and all the highers are still on that I choose so no timetable problems so far. Overall im quite glad that we a re finally back because the holidays were starting to get boring, fair enough time without having to do anything is great but after 7 weeks you want to actually use your brain once in a while.

And lastly on to the laptop, well as readers know this had been an on-going saga for the past 2-3 months. It’s really starting to piss me off the way that company’s are just bouncing me around from Comet to Acer to GE Capital to Consumers Advice. All look as though they want to help but always want 10 working days to process things. I get my hopes up and then they come back to me and blame another company and so the cycle continues. Basically I have a faulty laptop that is completely useless to me for anything. No one wants to take responsibility for it. I received a further letter from Acer this morning telling me that they were not authorized to offer a refund and could only replace or repair the laptop. I do not want this as I have completely fell away from the brand and if I never seen another Acer laptop in my life it would be too soon. On Wednesday I finally snapped and repeatedly phones company’s and did not let them pass on the blame but instead go and actually talk to someone higher up in the company and come back to me with a resolution. Eventually I got Comet to see some sense and they asked me to bring the laptop in to send to Acer to have a look at it and since it is broken basically wait until they feel like giving me an RMA number then allowing Comet to replace/refund the laptop. When I took the box up to Comet I was surprised when I was handed back the battery, manuals and box. This would suggest to me that the machine was going in for another repair, this wasn’t happening. I asked the assistant to put on the sheet that I wanted a refund/replacement. If the laptop comes back from the factory and has been repaired I will not be accepting the machine as I have completely lost faith in the model and would not like to ever use it again. Again it’s a waiting game and I will have to wait until Comet get back to me.

Until then thanks for reading this rather long post and hopefully the next will be shorter and happier.

New Phone

Published on 12 August, 2007 in Life, School and Technology. 2 Comments

Well as my last blog post stated, I really wanted to switch mobile contract providers. I have opted for Virgin Mobile for two reasons, great value and they don’t brand the phones firmware.

I have went for the £25 a month plan offering me 150 minutes and 500 anytime any network texts, and the sexy (unbranded) Sony Ericsson W880i in Black & Flame Orange.

Arriving on Monday, so hopefully will be able to give a quick review on Monday night and then a full review a couple of days later.

Starting back at school on Wednesday, the joy. So won’t have as much time to sit around doing nothing and updating the blog but I will continue to try my best.

Hopefully this Acer saga will be over by the end of the week and I hope to buy my MacBook on Friday after school.

Thats all people!

Comet & MacBook & Orange

Published on 10 August, 2007 in Life and Technology. 0 Comments

Firstly sorry about the length of this blog post, it’s just that a lot has happened since last post!

Well let’s start with Comet, as you know this Acer laptop that I have has caused lots of trouble, was away seeing lawyer, the last time I seen one she told me to deal with Acer directly which I did and wrote an official letter to them, asking them to reply by Wednesday. It’s now Thursday and still no letter, so went to lawyer again today. This time she advised to go straight to Comet since Acer were obviously unwilling to help in anyway.

Went over to Comet, got a very helpful sales person who was actually interested in my complaint. I only had the laptop with me and not the charger and manuals etc.

Have to return today (Friday), and get the laptop sent away to Acer, they then issue an RMA number which allows Comet to refund or replace as far as I know, hopefully the laptop won’t be away for a while.

Secondly as you know by the previous post I was wanting an Apple MacBook, I was looking on the Apple website and even with my education discount (which is very hard to actually receive), it’s still dearer than what Comet can offer. The only application I use which hasn’t been released as an Universal Binary (cross processor platform compiled), is Microsoft Office 2004. This doesn’t bother me much as Office 2008 is due to be released this year round about Autumn time.

The whole point of me telling you this was because im hoping it will be able to get the MacBook since it’s directly available from Comet, im hoping I can just pay the extra to it. I am also looking to seek a refund on the insurance as it has never been used, and I won’t have the laptop anymore.

Thirdly, im looking for a new mobile phone contract provided, had my current contract for 2 years, always received my upgrade to any phone free of charge and without any problems, my contract is very good for value (£19 for 3000 texts). Well my contract is due for renewal again in September, because I have been a customer for a long time they offer me my upgrade a few months before this date. I went into the Orange shop and inquired about my upgrade, not only had a 25 quid charge appeared from somewhere but also they wanted to charge me for my new phone. I was looking at the LG Prada which would cost me £149.99 on top of the upgrade fee, the Sony Ericsson W880i would cost me £299.99. And to add insult to injury doing so would upgrade me from my current 12 month contract to an 18 month contract. So thanks Orange but no thanks, I am now looking for a new provider, I may wait until the iPhone is released in the UK and go with the company that gets the exclusive because it looks like some neat hardware to me.

Hopefully update with some good news next time, with the laptop issue finally resolved.

New iMac's & MacBook

Published on 7 August, 2007 in Life, School and Technology. 0 Comments

Apple today released a new iMac, I have to say I quite like it except from the black frame round the screen, from brushed aluminum to a big black piece of plastic, God knows what was going through Apple’s mind.

They are quite high specifications, the most powerful one has a Intel Core 2 Extreme, 4GB RAM, 1TB HDD. Not to mention the Radeon HD graphics.

The new keyboards are very very thin and the keys are laid out as they are on the MacBook, with spaces between each key. The keyboard now uses Bluetooth 2.0.

The Mac Mini also made the transition over to Intel Core 2 Duo completing the whole range, there is now not one single computer that’s not Intel Core 2 Duo or higher.

On other news, im still going for the MacBook, just leaving the stock specifications alone and adding 3 year Apple Care, because of the education discount I will get the bundle for just under £700. Pretty good deal if you ask me. I am planning to upgrade the RAM to 2GB but Apple would have charged me £110 for this, this is ridiculous considering how easy it is to fit RAM and the fact that I can buy 2GB for £60 from Crucial.

Exam Results!

Published on 6 August, 2007 in Life and School. 0 Comments

Well the exam results are finally here, I opted to receive them via the SQA website.

The site has been displaying the “results will be available early morning” message and then after a refresh decided it was time for a 500 server internal error.

I tracked down the now changed URL and found my results, most likely one of the first people to know my results this year.

The results went as followed:

Computing Studies – 1

Technological Studies – 1

English – 2

Modern Studies – 2

Chemistry – 3

Physics – 3

Mathematics – 4

French – 4

Overall I am very happy with these results and don’t change any of my future plans, I was hoping for a 3 with maths but then that can’t be helped.

MacBook

Published on 4 August, 2007 in Life and Technology. 1 Comment

Well due to my current laptop saga I am looking for a replacement, one product that is really attracting me is the MacBook.

The fact that it can run OS X and Windows XP/Vista is a great bonus, I have been reading reviews and looking at pictures.

Overall I am happy with the look and layout of the hardware on the laptop but a couple of reviews had complaints about the lack of a right click when using Windows and also the mag safe connector, they said it was too loose and disconnected with normal laptop usage.

There were reports of high operating temperatures but this has been fixed apparently, according to Apple they changed the way thermal paste was applied to the processor and the temperatures are now no higher than the PC laptop counterpart.

So if anyone has a MacBook some advice on the above would be great, I am going to wait until after the 7th of August before making any decisions as Apple are having a conference and rumors have it that there will be some new Mac hardware. I can’t hold off until October to wait for OS X Leopard but after all the usual £99 upgrade price isn’t much to ask compared to what Microsoft charge for Vista.

Laptop Return

Published on 2 August, 2007 in Life and Technology. 0 Comments

The laptop returned for the third time yesterday, I unpacked it and noticed the rubber foot that was supposed to be getting fixed has not been replaced, on powering up the machine the BIOS beeped twice and stated there was a drive failure, turns out it was still the optical drive. Great! The two things it had been away getting repaired had not been repaired. Phoned Acer, they wanted to take the machine in again, I declined because of the appalling customer service on previous repairs.

I have since took legal advice and it turns out I am well within my rights to get a full refund, I have now sent an official letter stating that I want a refund, I have also stated I want a reply by Monday the 13th August 2007. Will be interesting to see what there reply is.

So there we have it, don’t buy an Acer laptop or anything from Comet for that matter.

Better go and get ready, going to the Salt Cot to the curry club, should be a very nice dinner.