Glenn's Daily Script » Technology

Dell Customer Service – A Review

Glenn — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 03:30:53 +0000

As I’ve said in many past posts, I’ve become primarily a Mac user. However, I’m not one of those snobby Mac users that must only buy Apple products. I’m someone who likes to get value for my money where I can. So when I needed a larger monitor for my new Mac Pro (this was a few years ago), I got a Dell 24 inch monitor and have loved it.

Last April, I decided to become a 2 monitor guy and because of such a good experience, I got another Dell 24 inch monitor.

This one though, I’ve had some problems with. The monitor doesn’t wake up from sleep after the computer has gone to sleep consistently. Sometimes it works great and other times, the new monitor wakes up for a second (though not long enough to show anything) and then goes back to sleep (showing a Dell message box saying so). The latter has been happening more and more.

I contacted Dell Technical Support and after an initial hiccup (you better have your original invoice if you are calling them about a peripheral and not a full system!), I got to someone and explained my problem and after about a 20 minute conversation, he authorized a new monitor to be sent to me to replace my defective one.

This is another example of great customer service (see my T-Mobile) comments.

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Dell Customer Service – A Review

TIVO Support – Fixing Channel Guide Info

Glenn — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 16:38:17 +0000

I have a Tivo Series 3 and a Tivo HD. On both of my systems, I was seeing channels that had a number in front of them (i.e. “1 Womens HD”). Any of these channels that had a number in front of them had no channel guide information and just stated “To Be Announced”.

I sent in a support request to TIVO about this issue. It took a few days before I got a response. That was a little disappointing since many companies are moving to speed up support responses (especially those via the internet). The answer solved 90% of these channels and now I have guide info for almost all of the newly added HD channels. I can still watch the few that don’t have guide info but I don’t know what is going to be on that channel in advance and can’t set up a recording.

The answer showed a short cut to getting to Channel Guide setup. There was also a bit that tells whether you are talking standard or digital channels.

For completeness, here is the info I recieved:

Choose TIVO Central (usually by pressing the TIVO button)
Select Messages and Settings
Select Settings
Select Channels
Select Channel List
Press the ENTER key
Follow the onscreen instructions. The TIVO will ask questions regarding your channels and service.
Ensure that you enter the proper zip code.
Ensure that you enter the proper provider for your service.
In the screen directly after you enter your cable provider, press the ENTER key. This will take you to a list of available lineups. In my case, I needed to choose .
You will be given an opportunity to review the line up after you chose (note: it will not have the premium channels like HBO)
Answer the remaining screens based on your service.
It will take 10-30 minutes to reset this data so go do something else.
Finished

Snow Leopard – First Impressions

Glenn — Sat, 29 Aug 2009 16:06:50 +0000

I received Snow Leopard yesterday. We currently have 5 Macs. I have a Mac Pro and a MacBook Pro (15″). Each of the boys have an iMac. And lastly, I have a MacMini connected to our Home Theater setup where we can replay movies that are on a very large Drobo with 4 drives that are 1 1/2 Terabyte drives which gives about 4 1/2 terabytes for actual storage due to redundancy.

I quickly updated 4 of the Macs (the MacMini isn’t done yet – hopefully today). Setup went great and I had no issues with any of the setups. I guess I don’t have any software that doesn’t run under the new 64-bit architecture that is Snow Leopard.

It’s not a high impact update though. My systems all seem pretty fast to me so I’m not sure I’m observing a “snappiness” increase that has been bandied about on many blogs. I’ve noticed some of the UI changes including stacks and the darker overlays. They are nice. I am looking forward to playing with the updated spaces and expose. Those seem like smart changes.

I haven’t yet touched Quicktime though this afternoon when I practice my Guitar, I should use it then.

On my kids systems, I am putting Bootcamp partitions for Windows. They use their Mac’s using OS X for web browsing and homework but they still like to play the occasional PC game and so need Windows to do it. I’ve got Xander’s system working and need to spend some time on Mitchell’s after I do my morning workout. Of course, this opens the door for all those PC games they haven’t been able to use for a while which means “Dad, can you install…” over and over again.

I did go through and explore using system profiler to see what runs 32-bit versus 64-bit in the app space. I also verified that the reports are true that it’s running a 32-bit kernel. At this point, since I use VMWare’s Fusion, I will be glad to wait a bit till VMWare updates their kernel extensions to 64-bit before trying to run a 64-bit kernel. I hope the wait isn’t too long.

Overall, it’s a good update and worth the $49 for the family pack (which as you can see, I use all 5 installs).

T-Mobile Customer Support Rocks!

Glenn — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 02:23:53 +0000

A few days ago, Kathy and I went to a local T-Mobile store to look at the new MyTouch 3G which we had seen via a friend (who actually works at T-Mobile). We wanted to play with it a bit longer and really explore the keyboard, browser and ask a few questions around synching.

We had a great time until we tried to buy 2 of them (one for each). We had only completed 17 months on our contract and the store couldn’t find a way to let us buy them unless we were willing to pay double the $199 contract rate (which was only about $80 less than full price). We were very frustrated (me, more than Kathy as she’s a patient person).

Well, I decided to see if I could talk directly to T-Mobile and maybe find a way. I called 611 on my current phone and got to a Customer Care Representative. She was very nice but couldn’t really help me. At least until I indicated that we might look to changing carriers then she said she would transfer me to Customer Retention. Customer Retention immediately said that yes, we could do it and after going through their required hoops, we had the phone ordered.

In the end, it took 2 people and less than 20 minutes. I’d say that it was a great experience and I came out a very satisfied customer.

WordPress 2.7

Glenn — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 04:21:03 +0000

WordPress is the blogging software I use on this blog. They have done a major rework of the management interface and some other bugs, features, tuning work.

The UI is pretty good. I’ve been running it since RC1 and it’s stable and has some nifty features. If you are a blogger, I’d recommend the upgrade.

WordPress on iPod Touch

Glenn — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 09:02:58 +0000

I am trying the new WordPress application for the iPod Touch/iPhone. It as simple to set up. The keyboard makes it hard enough that I am not likely to post very often.

Vista and Fusion

Glenn — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 22:36:12 +0000

I’ve just setup up a new virtual machine under VMWare’s Fusion. Since Kathy has been having good luck with Vista, I decided to take the plunge too and used Vista SP1 for this new virtual machine.

My purpose for this installation is to run a few simple programs that I have yet to shed myself of.

1) MS Money is what Kathy and I use to manage both our daily money and validate and sanity check our financial planners work. If I found something that could replace it on OS X, I probably would at least for the long term planning work. NOTE: If there is anyone out there using something that might work, let me know.

2) Alarm programming and control using HAI’s software only works under Windows. This is not likely to change.

3) UPB home automation software, like UPBStart, is currently only Windows compatible. This could change though maybe not. People have to have a motivation and mostly that is about making money so I’m not sure OS X is a target market for home automation.

4) I’m the treasurer for our kids’ school’s PTSA and so I use Quick Books. I could go to a OS X version but Intuit does a lousy job for transferring the files between OS X and Windows. Also, after I serve my second year, the replacement would likely be using Windows so keeping it there makes sense.

I’d go nearly instantly to OS X versions for the first 3. Maybe someday!

WordPress Upgrade

Glenn — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 23:02:41 +0000

Upgraded both my blog and our Family Twitter blog to the latest WordPress release which is version 2.6.

I immediately had a problem with a plugin (WP-DowloadManager from GamerZ). After going to the plugin site which had a discussion forum, they had already found out that WP 2.6 is now using the same function name as the plugin hence the error. Of course the developer is just awesome (as are all of his plugins) and he had a quick beta fix right away.

The WordPress community is really fantastic.

Apple’s iPod Touch and Mobile Me

Glenn — Sun, 13 Jul 2008 08:25:34 +0000

Like many users of an iPod Touch (or iPhone though I don’t have one of those – because of AT&T) and Mac computers, I’ve been waiting for some updates.

For the Mac computers, we’ve been waiting for Mobile Me updates which will allow for push updates of mail, calendar, contacts across multiple computers and updated iPod Touch’s and iPhones. I have 2 computers that I use – one is my laptop – and this kind of functionality sounds perfect and better than anything out there if it works.

Apple really horked the process on this one. They took down .Mac services to update to .Me services which took more than a day when they initially advertised it taking about 4 hours. Also during this time, no one could get the update for OS X 10.5 Leopard. Lastly, they even had to do a patch update to fix issues.

Now as to how it works, it looks pretty good now that it is up. I’ve seen the stuff pushed and synched between all the devices. I’ll keep an eye on it but I’m generally happy with it.

For the iPod Touch, the update was promising the ability to add applications from a store on iTunes. On the iPhone, they have some additional things depending on whether you keep an older iPhone or go for the iPhone 3G. I’m not getting an iPhone so I only care about the iPod Touch features. In addition, this update works with Mobile Me.

Apple really horked this process too. The update was supposed to be available Friday morning but it wasn’t really up till Saturday during the evening. For a user, this is very frustrating and lowers loyalty.

As to the update, it’s nice to get apps but none of the apps that are really for the iPod Touch are great. They are fun and simple but no app truly adds the functionality that says it’s the new killer app for the device. As Apple opens up the store to more apps, maybe we will see one but not yet.

Pixar doesn’t care about Copyrights

Glenn — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 11:50:41 +0000

What a great post that Crunchgear made regarding how Pixar violated copyright law.

Apparently, they don’t respect the current copyright laws and are, by example, telling us to not respect the laws either. Maybe we should re-write the existing laws so they work in today’s world to increase content creation rather than limit it.

The Pixar copyright violations stem from the use of a movie and it’s soundtrack being copied and replayed many times. This element of Wall-E were important at first to show loneliness and later to show romance.

Browser News: Download Firefox 3 Today

Glenn — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 00:27:41 +0000

At 10am (PST), Mozilla (makers of Firefox) is asking it’s existing and new users to help it with a challenge.

Their challenge is to establish a new world record for the most downloads of something for the internet in a single day. Since it’s a new record, anything measurable establishes the record but they want to set a really high bar by having as many people world wide as possible download Firefox 3.

Again, this begins today (6/17/08) at 10am (PST) so go to Firefox 3 download location and get Firefox 3 today.

(Yes, I know this sounds like a commercial but it’s not. I really like Firefox and think Firefox 3 is an enormous improvement over Firefox 2.)

Update: I had the wrong link to the download site. Go to the real Firefox 3 download location if you want to download it. You may want to wait awhile though because the website is really really really slow.

WordPress Upgrade – Feed (Atom, RSS) Breaks

Glenn — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 14:53:40 +0000

BIG ISSUE for feed subscribers.

I just upgraded from WordPress 2.5 to 2.5.1 and it broke all my links to the various WordPress Feeds (Atom, RSS, RSS2). I am still researching this and trying to find a way to fix it for those who won’t be back here (like my Mom) but I am not sure I will find a solution to get the old links working.

I have found a link that works and updated those that are on my pages/themes so if subscribers come back to my actual blog site then they will be able to get the new link.

Sorry for the issue – this is the first upgrade issue I think that I’ve ever had with WordPress.

Mac Mini

Glenn — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 16:38:59 +0000

A few days ago, I bought a new Mac Mini (it will be quite upsetting if Apple suddenly, in the next 2 weeks or so comes out with a new version!) for my kids to use.

Mitchell has been primarily using my old Powerbook so he’s already familiar with OS X and likes it (though most of that might be due to the small mouse that he really loves!).

Xander has been using an old Sony desktop so I thought this would be a great opportunity to get him familiar with OS X as well as being able to run Windows via VMWare’s Fusion.

First thing I realized is that I didn’t get enough memory for the system. Kathy is potentially getting that today so the system will get faster right away after install. It’s dog slow right now so it will make it much more usable.

Second, I have some issues with some of the Windows games he was using. VMWare’s Fusion has a video driver but it shows up as SVGA and with a limited set of features so not all games are happy with it. The games he generally plays are not super graphic intensive but they do have some needs. This is frustrating because I certainly don’t want to keep a Windows system AND a Mac system so that he can run games. This should just work. I guess there is an outside chance the memory increase might help since not all error message are truly accurate so maybe it is really telling me something other than the graphics won’t work – like inadequate memory.

Xander and Mitchell like the ability to see movie previews. The browsing has some hiccups but that is because parent control is set up and you have to add things as you go. Other than that, the web stuff he gets at (Club Penguin, Cartoon Network, …) seems to work now.

If I can solve the Windows issues, I will have a great solution. Now if I only had some time to work on this.

Our Family Twitter

Glenn — Sat, 29 Mar 2008 14:14:43 +0000

Ok, this isn’t exactly Twitter but I’m going to keep calling it that because at this point I’m not signing up for it. I’ve instead set up a separate WordPress blog with the Prologue theme so that my family can have a very personal twitter like interaction.

I’ve mentioned this in a past post. Last night I added the boys because Kathy and I thought we were have some fun with the site and that the boys would enjoy it. It’s possible after the boys get used to it, maybe we’ll expand it to our broader family and invite Grandparents (yes, that means you Mom!) and cousins and Uncles/Aunts if everyone wants to be involved.

No one can register directly because again it’s a private blog but reading it is open so if you want to view it, you can check it out through the “Family Twitter” Tab at the top of my blog or by going to our root web page and press the “Family Twitter” button that is towards the top of the page.

Themes

Glenn — Wed, 26 Mar 2008 02:29:33 +0000

I tried a new theme today but I’ve since taken it down. My problem with some themes is that I like the basics but the authors do such a great job at putting technology into them that they make it hard for people like me to come along and customize them a bit more.

The author of the theme that I tried thought they had put a lot of customization features in, and they did but not the ones I wanted to try.

I still like the theme (iTheme) that I am using after my minor customizations.