Call centres are not there to help you

Subject: Don't stick your keyboard in the dishwasher

Working in an IT dept for a mid sized business, I get a lot of filthy keyboards being returned to me. I find that after a quick rinse in the dishwasher (quick rinse, no detergent) and a couple of days in a warm room to dry out, the keyboards look and work as good as new - and if one did happen to drown I would simply do exactly what I would do without a dishwasher - buy a new replacement. I reckon that someone in the vole hardware division is looking to drive up sales of new "vista compliant" keyboards.

Tim Baker

Subject: Sony listens to St Blair

Maybe whilst he's got their attention he might like to mention some things that are dear to a few more hearts... Namely the crazy price hike for the stripped out hardware (aka UK) model.

Then he can move onto Microsoft about OS prices.

Then when he finally does F*** O**, sorry, step down, we might have something nice to say about him. At the moment all we'll remember is lies, jobs for the boys, starting a never ending war and signing more and more of our democracy to the US of Europe.

Steve

Subject: low-power low-cost OS?

"Shurely, it can't be that hard to come up with a low-power, low-cost OS that the next billion can get their heads and fingers around."

Hmm, I wonder where one could find such an OS?

Heh,

Matt

Subject: Call centers are not there to help you.

Trust me, I used to work in one. For a rather large (million plus customers) cable ISP. I constantly got reprimanded for trying to solve users' problems, instead of getting them off the phone as quickly as possible as per instructions. If you could find an excuse to get them to call Dell or HP or anyone else, you were supposed to push that whether it was true or not. It's all about calls per hour. It's also hard to really help someone when you're not allowed to use any negative words such as "no, don't, stop" etc, unless you want to be written up when the higher ups happen to monitor that call for "quality assurance".

Anyone with an average call time longer than 600 seconds was in trouble. That's usually about enough time with the average person to figure out what model modem they have, if it's connected by USB or ethernet (Does it look like a phone jack ma'am?), find out if they have a router, find out their Windows version (What color is your start button?) and maybe get them to reboot modem, router, and PC, possibly bypassing the router if the cable can reach. Anything beyond that (80% of the calls) takes longer unless you start fishing for any excuse to throw them at another support (Oh you changed your mouse last week? Call Dell!).

GLDM

Subject: Creative Delisting...

Another Creative tid-bit for you. Sensaura (remember them, Creative bought them and moved the company to 3DLabs base in Egham) have shut/been shut down. Not entirely sure what the story is/was... mostly cos' I was plastered when all the old Sensaurians got together - Pete's write up is here http://imekon.blogspot.com/2007/05/sensaura-memorial.html

Something about Creative insisting each division makes a profit e.g. they monitor the bottom line of the R&D departments... Hmmm... One of the problems was that many of Sensaura' customers saw Creative as a competitor (e.g. Realtek, C-Media, Via etc). I don't know how many stayed on after the buyout. I suspect most just stayed till their contract was up. I seem to remember Realtek grilling me when I was over there, trying to make their own 3D Audio thingymabob.

Makes me wonder what the plan for 3DLabs is............

MCP

Subject: gossip from taiwan re: wii

Hello Mike,

I can confirm that in Taiwan, brand new pre-modded wiis can currently be found in Taipei for 10,000NTD, possibly slightly less if you shop around or have Taiwanese friends to haggle on your behalf. They're definitely capable of running US and japanese games out of the box. At current exchange rates that's around 155 quid in real money, or around 320 USD, including the modchip and modding.

Nintendo has completely shot itself in the foot by failing to provide Wii's to retail outlets across Asia, especially Taiwan. Just a couple of months ago, there were people bringing bagfuls of Wii's back whenever cheap tickets to Japan became available.

After initially cracking down on it at customs, Taiwan began allowing 'personal imports' of this type to take place. I recall on the news, even Taiwanese politicians were being stopped at customs carrying a bunch of wii's in their luggage back from Japan, at one point.

So now, the Taiwanese market is utterly, utterly dominated with 'personal import' wiis. And to compete effectively, they have to be modded to make the maximum profit from the trip - which grey market customer would want an unmodded wii, after all?

So well done Nintendo! You completely failed to supply the market, in a country full of geeks capable of building modchips, and now the market is absolutely chock-a-block with modded wii's that will be running backup and homebrew software. When Taiwanese shop stock finally arrives, it will have hellish trouble selling against the incredibly well established modded-Wii grey market.

Games, too. By the time the Wii officially reaches most of Asia, the illegal 'backup games' market will probably be completely in place. If Asia had been supplied quickly, there would have been far more people ready to buy originals in the shops.

I would speculate this is now why Nintendo are waiting; to compete effectively, they will need to sell at a very good discount to current grey market prices, so they're possibly trying to drive down production costs to achieve the best possible launch price in places like Taiwan, Thailand and so on. Or to maximise profits on the hardware, since game sales might be pretty weak. But who knows?

I don't know yet which of the modchips they are fitting most often here in Taiwan. If I find out, I'll pass it on.

X

p.s. I would prefer this to be treated as an anonymous bit of gossip rather than attributed to my name. I'm not wanting to be emailled by a zillion people asking me where to buy these modded wiis. They're not hard to find, so people can work it out for themselves...

Subject: Apple security (not)

You're categorically and irrevocably an idiot if you think that something about Apple, it's hardware or it's software mkes it less vulnerable to attack. The blindingly obvious truth is that no one wants to spend their precious time writing viruses and other malware that will affect only 3% of the computers in the world - that time is much more wisely spent on efforts that will affect the other 96.5% of the computers in the world, to maximize the effect of your mad genius.

Apple ironically succeeds at being "more secure" as a result of it's failure at securing a significant portion of the computer market. As does Linux, BeOS, SkyOS, and all the others. It is clearly self-evident that if any of these other platforms had significant portions of the worldwide market, they would be under just as much attack as Windows. Asshats.

Kaleb

Subject: Samsung shows off 70-inch LCD TV

Oh, sure, but was it FULL-HD like the ones Samsung adverstises? Gotta have my FULL-HD, you know - so that one day if I can afford to buy a BD or HD-DVD that actually supports 1080p I'll be all set.

Jim

Subject: NATO agrees urgent action needed to beat cyber warfare

If estonia is relying on NATO rather than doing something itself it might as well surrender now. Someone should have taught them about NATO and the EU before having them join it I think. Even if the EU/NATO does something it will be ineffective and pointless and only meant to make some elitist people wealthier by paying them to sit in committees with no actual tangible results.

W.

Subject: WTF is JPR ???

The figures are wrong and will be proven wrong shortly... AMD actually had an upturn in Q1 '07 and is gaining market share back from Intel.

Nice try to skew public opine however.

W

Subject: Sony ticked off by Blair

Sony? Think? Corporate Responsibility? Ethics?

If Sony had to think about its actions, its corporate responsibility or its ethics it would explode.

Live shows sacrificing goats to naked women while claiming in the same breath that somehow bluray porn is evil; selling crap second rate electronic equipment and charging premium dollars for the privilege; installing rootkits on computers because the customer is forced to buy the crappy rootkitted cd; suing grannys and 8 year olds for nothing and others for getting non rootkitted cds; and, DRMing their HDTV users into bankruptcy when their bluray dvds stop their tv from functioning so they have to buy a new TV to watch "Spiderman 13 - Who-needs-acting we're milking this till it bleeds" are par for the course for Sony.

Why would anyone at Sony think that simulating shootouts in cathedrals was a bad thing?

Ninjavap

Subject: Apple has nothing on INQ

Is it possible to explain in more detail how can you be sure they told you everything? I mean really?

P-modo

p.s. yes, I know it's a silly question, but anyone would like an answer for sure ;-)

Subject: Safari is FAST on a PC

I downloaded the Safari web browser and find it faster than Firefox, recommend Inq folks give it a try and comment.

Thanks,

Gabe Sorzano

Subject: Apple info on the INQ

So what guarrantee do you have that they handed over all the information? There's no way for you to know for sure and considering the person who handed the information to yourselves was an apple employee and not a third party... well, i don't need to continue do I?

It's not that i'm paranoid, i just don't expect companies to look out for their customer's best interests.

Kind regards,
James

Subject: Blogging is live ?

Who do they think they're kidding ? Blogging is a string of words pushed to a web site. To read them, users have to link to the right web page, and continuously refresh their browser to get any new info. That hardly counts as live.

And, since there is neither podcasting nor any other casting mentioned, this basically means that blogging is, at the most, comparable to faxing, but where the recipient has to ask for the fax and doesn't get anything if he doesn't ask.

Sorry, but no agreement here. Blogging is text only (the article specifically states no images were taken), so there is no way in hell that this can be considered live.

A live representation contains the excitement, the tone, the ambient atmosphere, and the events in real-time. Radio is live, TV is live, Webcasting is live. Refreshing one's browser to catch the latest update is not live, not by a long shot.

This is repression of journalistic freedom. The guy could have been jotting down his words on a pad, to phone them in later. It's the same thing as far as I'm concerned.

This is outrageous. I hope the newspaper is going to raise a ruckus on this one.

Pascal

Subject: Need to get a clue first to sell to the next billion.

I've been trying for a couple years now down here in South Africa to get VIA and AMD to wake up and figure out how to get their low cost PCs to sell. I've talked with VIA's PC1 guys and I've taken apart AMD Geode based machines that are selling (in small numbers) here. I'm convinced neither company has a clue, at least at the high level.

What they don't seem to realize is that "the next billion" aren't going to walk into a computer store at the mall and buy a low-cost PC. They'll never get near that kind of store, because they'll never think of a reason to go there! The key to this entire market is the approach. The people they want to sell these machines to are non-technical, and may not even see what they'd do with a PC. However, they almost all own an extremely high tech piece of hardware that they use all the time. It's called a cellphone, and even if they have to steal electricity to charge it you can bet they have one.

These devices need to stop being "low cost", low (under) powered PCs, and start being super-cellphones. The cellphone companies have long ago worked out the problem such as how to sell a high tech device to a non-technical userbase, how to work out payments and subsidies so everyone can afford it, how to market it etc. They also have the best current solution for getting people in the middle of nowhere online. Forget wimax, GPRS is cheap, everywhere, and fine for browsing and email. VIA and AMD need to get *these* guys selling their little boxes, not computer shops. Build in some SIM readers and bundle them with contracts, and believe me your average cell provider could get "the next billion" to adopt them much faster than anyone else.

Toby Hudon

P.S. It would help if they doubled as TVs! C'mon guys, how much can it cost to throw a tuner onboard?

Subject: Microsoft Expression

Hi!

Huge fan from Canada! Thanks for a great site!

I thought I would pass this along in case anyone is interested.

www.microsoft.com/Expression/products/download.aspx?key=studio

Microsoft's Expression Studio web site. Their new web authoring and design package. I thought I would take a look. It's not the greatest design (imho) in IE but give it a "looksee" in Firefox. One would think that the vole would release a web authoring product that supported Firefox? Check out the drop down CSS menu in Firefox.

Anyway, thought I would pass it along.

Julian Maytum

Subject: Manchester Church and videogames affair

I thought you could have a laugh at this comic as well,

http://www.ctrlaltdel-online.com/comic.php?d=20070613

take it easy and enjoy it ;)

keep up the good job, Inq

greetings from Mexico,

Raskolnikov

Subject: Mail Response

I would like to state that I completely disagree with the letter sent to you by Bandy with regards to Intel customers being clueless and I am completely upset as a reader that you would publish his garbage in your letter section.

The comment made that Intel customers are clueless is unjust and unfair. I guess Bandy NEVER bought a Intel CPU (because that would make him clueless, obviously!!), in that case he is hardly qualified to state what kind of customers buy a certain kind of CPU.

CPU's get work done. I think harping on people for buying one product versus another and then classifying them as "Clueless" and deserving of exploitation is beyond rude.

One thing is for sure, millions of Intel customers are not clueless and AMD customers are not in any way superior to someone who buys an Intel CPU.

Bandy needs to get out of Mommy's basement and get into the real world before he shoots off his mouth at people.

Ress

Subject: Blair Sony Cathedral

Perhaps rather than blame Sony for insensitively using a Cathedral for the game backdrop of a firefight, when this sort of thing happens often enough in reality, Blair should be doing something to stop the actual real shootings.

That is the real problem. Perhaps he is being insensitive to the needs of the people, and instead of attacking Sony, he should attack the problem.

TG

Subject: Mad as a mataroo...

mataroo's letter re. Safari:

"The idea of them even trying to use Safari on other OS's is strange. The first thing that a Mac user does when jumping online, is get another browser."

No they don't. Safari wouldn't have a 4.7% share if this was remotely true.

"Every Mac I've been on (at an international newspaper) had either IE or Firefox running on it."

Anyone who uses IE on a Mac (unless they're using Parallels, I suppose) is mad. No tabs, clumsy, slow, slow, slow. Firefox is OK, but not perfect.

"In fact, about half of the safari browsers would crash or not even start up on a Mac machine... and it's native. Not only that, but when it did run.. it was slower than molasses."

Oh, come on. This is hyperbole gone mad. Safari would not even start? Either they are using Apple Lisas, or they don't understand technology at all, or he is making this up.

Safari can be a memory hog, and there used to be a bit of a memory leak which would slow it down (after a long time) - but easily cured. The latest builds are fine.

Rupert

Subject: AMD's roadmap is in a terrible muddle

Sorry to reply to this so late. I get pretty busy at work sometimes and get behind. Anyway, great story. I love how half the readership calls you and AMD fanboy and the other half call you an Intel fanboy. This must cause you to chuckle. Either way, 99% of the population proves Darwin was full of shit anyway! Keep stories like this coming. It's a refreshing change to all the rehashed garbage most others are putting out.

Necro

Subject: Religion

This whole sony/resistance v.s. The Church is just getting out of hand.. .. Its a video game for the love of god... Its like.. the religious people are bored and they have nothing to do is to pick at little things ... like there church in a video game..., The church is in the game as a way to make it authentic... I dont see how having aliens in your church in a video game is a big deal.. ITS FICTIONAL !!!

Pudgie

Subject: Nick F made me laugh out loud!

Nick Farrell's last sentence is why I read La INQmindless

John O