Companies I Won’t Be Buying My Next Android Phone From
Motorola After owning a Motorola Milestone for a while, despite impressive hardware, Motorola themselves have been very lackadaisical about providing updates – I’m pretty certain we won’t be seeing Official Gingerbread on it, even if Froyo comes sometime this year. This wouldn’t bother me too much if it had not been for the locked bootloader. Unlike most other manufacturers, Motorola decided Open Source meant Locked Down and essential farted in the general direction of both owners and developers. There are workarounds, but they are much more complicated for the layman to carry out than other Android phone manufacturers. Samsung Samsung have recently fell out of favour with me in the netbook department, but now they pull a stunt like this? Sorry Samsung, you’ve lost me, and to think people have bought your netbooks because of … Read entire article »
Filed under: Android, Complaints
3rd Times a Charm… Linux, Wifi and Samsung N210
If you follow this blog you will know that I’ve mentioned wireless and the Samsung N210 in the past. Kickstart Samsung N210 Wireless Update: UNR 10.04 Wireless on Samsung N210 The first one post was the most successful blog post I’ve ever written, and judging by the number of posts in the Ubuntu forums it’s something many people struggle with constantly with this netbook. I’ve found that the solutions I posed previously worked, but had to be redone each time after a kernel update. What’s worse is that with each new ‘Buntu distro upgrade, an entirely new wireless problem appeared. To be quite frank, I’m getting sick of this and I won’t be touching another Samsung netbook. In fact when it comes time to refresh I’ll probably opt for a System 76 box. The latest upgrade … Read entire article »
Filed under: Complaints, Linux
This Letter Acknowledges No Debt To You, Or To Any Company You Claim To Represent
My favourite response to companies who email me out of the blue demanding money and clearly not playing by the rules… With reference to the above account, I would like to inform you the alleged amount owed is in dispute/I have no contract with you/I have never heard of you. I would now like the following information provided to me at your earliest convenience: A true copy of the alleged credit agreement you refer to for this account. This is my right under your obligation to supply a copy of the agreement under the legislation contained within s.78 (1) Consumer Credit Act 1974 (s.77 (1) for fixed sum credit). A signed true copy of the deed of assignment of the above referenced agreement that you allege exists. A statement of account I understand that under the … Read entire article »
Filed under: Complaints, Takeback
How I Came to Hate the BlackBerry Pearl
In case you weren’t aware my order for a Motorolla Milestone finally came through – bought with my own cash to replace my BlackBerry Pearl 8120 business phone. But how did I arrive at this level of contempt for BlackBerry, and why Android? It’s partly down to progress in smartphone tech and partly down to discovery of limitations with the Pearl – which led to inevitable smartphone envy. When I first got my Pearl last summer, it was through our business account. At the time the Android didn’t exist and the only other cutting edge smartphone on the market was the iPhone. I turned down having an iPhone for £50. I’m still glad I made that decision. I had just returned a HTC Diamond back to O2 because it was a 5 year … Read entire article »
Filed under: Complaints, Distractions, Technik
3gp Video Format on Linux
I don’t know about you, but it irritates me how many mobile phones I’ve used that only save their video in one propriety format – 3gp. From what I gather 3gp is a format backed by 3GPP – a collaboration of telecoms providers – probably for it’s compact size limit (for sending MMS) but why then can’t they offer another encoding version for video you don’t intend to send? 3gp doesn’t work out of the box on Linux – but I’ve found even with restricted media packages in place that the audio won’t play. Google “3gp audio” and a myriad of results will return with links to free converters. Support for linux seems to range from either some fairly complex command line fu, to manually installing and compiling codecs for working in your … Read entire article »
Filed under: Complaints, Linux, Troubleshooting
Goodbye Orange…
On Friday my wife was due a new Android mobile phone delivered from Orange via DPD. It never arrived. After a couple of phone calls to Orange customer services it turns out that our flat number was missing from the top of the address and DPD never saw fit to correct this on one of my wife numerous calls throughout the day. Furthermore, the delivery driver didn’t feel it was worth his time calling my wife’s mobile upon arriving at the block of flats to assert which flat number it might be. This kind of wilful incompetence seems ever more pervasive in the customer service departments of industry, and the main problem is that we were not DPD customers, we were Orange customers, and Orange is DPD’s client. Try explaining this … Read entire article »
Filed under: Complaints
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