Darkavich's Daily Ramblings

So, wanting to be impartial I went to the apple store here in Vegas (yea on vacation) just to see how things went.

While waiting to talk to people the woman behind the register answered 3 phone calls that she answered the same way “No, we do not have any more iPhones” and “Sorry, we do not know when they will be in.”

There were actually three demo units on the counter that people could play with. The question was asked if they should demonstrate how to use the phone by calling someone, and was told “I’m sorry, we are not allowed to use them to make calls”.

Now I was so taken aback by this I had to ask.. “why not?” to which the response was exactly what I expected. “They do not have service activated because too many people would use them to make calls”.

Holly CRAP!!!! Your selling a fracken phones! You better damn well have fully functioning units. Hell, you can demo the internet (because it was on wifii..) They had the nerve to tell someone “See how fast the internet is?” when I asked “is it wifi or edge?” and they could not tell me!!! I pointed out “Uhm, if the phone isn’t activated I am pretty sure it’s wifi” and well that’s just plain misleading to the customer.

BTW, if there is someone that knows how to tell if a phone is currently on wifi or edge, please let me know.

This experience has left me scratching my head. Anyone remember the Nokia 9000il phone. Best phone ever made in it’s day. Those of you that don’t know what I am talking about, rent a copy of “The Saint” to see it in action. I loved this phone, but it died because nobody knew how to sell it. Go into any Pac-Bell wireless store, which became cingular, which is now AT&T (how ironic), and they couldn’t tell you anything about it, and what they did tell you more than likely was a lie.

I sure hope this is not an omen of things to come. Remember even if you have the best product in the world you will never sell it if your sales team are a bunch of uneducated liars.

Keeping my fingers crossed for when I visit the san diego office and as them the same questions.

…It does think I am a geek.

So today I looked at the suggested recordings and it recorded the CES 2007. I actually found several items I may look at getting.

ionAudio Vinyl Recording USB Turntable

iAxe

Outcast Speakers

I actually own this one:

Gorillapod

As some of you know, my camera went belly up on my last vacation on like the 3rd day of my vacation. So I have no pictures or movies to share with you. I took the camera back to Sony (I did have an extended warranty) but fully expected them to not cover the camera.

It took about a week longer than expected, but in the end they could not fix the camera. They gave me back my original purchase price. I basically received a free upgraded camera for the same price. So I am working on learning all the new features of this new unit. So, I hope to have lots of new photos online soon.

Ok, so I purchased a copy of Casino Royal from Costco. It’s the 1st DVD I ever bought at costco. I brought it home and popped it into my DVD and it would not play, the dvd player just spun and spun… I figured, “crap” it’s a bad dvd. So I only get to costco about twice a year. So I popped into target and bought another copy. No luv! It didn’t work.

So I forgot about it for a month or so. I was talking with a coworker and he said there was lots of talk on the boards about this dvd. So I went and searched and found out that not only was everyone in the world having problems with this DVD, but dozens of other titles. It turns out that Sony in their ultimate wisdom, have changed the copy protection and of course it’s broke LOTS of dvd players, mine included.

So I thought, wonderful! I am going to have to return them. I decided to try the hi-tech way and I went to their web site and tried the contact us link.

I sent the following message:

To: Sony Consumer Mailbox
Subject: My DVD will not play

I have two disks of Casino Royale that will not play. From the DVD
boards it sounds like this is a flaw with the copy protection on this
disk.

Can you please tell me what is going on and fix my DVD’s?

I received the following reply in 8 hours.

Dear Valued Customer,

Thank you for your patience as we researched the compatibilty issues between our DVDs and a few DVD players.

In order to receive replacement(s) for the DVD(s) in which you experienced trouble please reply to this email with your name, the make and model number of your DVD player, the UPC # of the movie title(s) that you are experiencing an issue with and also your home address . Your replacements will be sent via FedEx therefore PO Boxes cannot be used.

We apologize for the inconvenience.

Regards,

SPHE Consumer Affairs Team 2

I sent them the information they requested on wednesday and tonight (Friday) there was a fed-ex on more doorstep with two copies of the bad DVD’s!

So Sony, while I recognize the fact you can do whatever you like to try to protect your media (Personally, I think its going to be your downfall) but you need to make sure it’s backwards compatible with all technology.

I do acknowledge and applaud the fact you made it very easy to replace my media at your cost.

Thank You!

On a side note, I emailed Toshiba (the maker of my DVD player) and they emailed me back the next day as well telling me there is a firmware upgrade for my model to fix this. I am still waiting for my firmware disk (guess it didn’t ship fedex). More on that once it arrives.

I picked up an external drive for my Tivo3 this week. I was informed of how to add a 2nd drive to my tivo..

I had some trouble that turned out to be the crappy connectors on esata cables. I followed the surgery instructions here and all is good now.

I can now record 98 hours of Hi-Def shows.