cellphone, Mobile 3 comments

MTN Shop (Wollowbridge) customer service shocking – refuce to replace faulty HTC Desire SD Card #MTN #HTC

By on June 26th, 2010

I have a HTC Desire with a faulty SD Card.  This morning I went to the MTN Shop in Willowbridge, where I got the phone less than a month ago, to have the SD Card replaced.  I was amazed at the shocking service that I received. 

First they wanted me to buy a new SD Card to replace the faulty card that they supplied.  I just bluntly refuced since they supplied the phone to me with the faulty SD Card and it is a known HTC Desire problem – the cards that are supplied with the phone is inferior cards.  Then they claim that it is not their problem since they are only the middle man and I need to take it up with HTC.  I insisted that they supplied the phone to me and they need to ensure that it is in a 100% working condition. 

Then they said they can return the phone to HTC to get it fixed and that would take at least 10 days.  Remember, there is absolutely nothing wrong with the phone, it is only the SD Card that is faulty.  When I asked what they going to do for me since I will not have a phone when they send it back.  They just said that they not going to do anything.

These shops are quick to take one’s money and supply you with phones but after that there is absolute nothing they prepared to do if something is wrong and it is clearly their problem.  They have non-existing customer service.  Most of the time the people working behind the counters are rude and are just not interested in solving one’s problem.  It still amazes me that these shops make any money.

I know that there is maybe one or 2 shops that will go out of their way to keep their customers happy but the one in Willowbridge just does not care at all.  I suggest to whoever reads this to never do any business with that shop.     

So MTN and HTC (Leaf in South Africa), if you are reading here, what should I do to get my SD Card replaced?

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Mobile 3 comments

HTC Desire — SD Card saving/writing problems part 2.

By on June 21st, 2010

In a previous post I mentioned that my HTC Desire has intermittent problems writing to the SD Card.

From my Googling and reading I tried the following without any success. 

One suggestion was to switch off the Automatic Backup to SD Card which I did.  No luck.

Another suggestion seems to be that running Task Managers is a very bad idea. See this article. I was using Advanced Task Manager and I uninstalled this.  For a while it seems to do the trick since I had no problems yesterday writing to the SD Card.  Well, that was short lived since when I woke up this morning, the problem returned.

So back to the drawing board .. think next will be trying another SD Card to see if it is the actual SD Card rather than the device.

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Google, Open Source No comments yet

Twitter Location — Firefox more accurate than Google Chrome

By on June 20th, 2010

I notice this morning when I viewed Twitter via the browser interface it had an Add Location just under the Tweet/Update input box.  I added my location in both Firefox and Google Chrome and Firefox was more accurate about it.  I assume it is either using IP addresses or more likely my Wireless on my laptop to get my location.

This is what Firefox came up with:

and this is from Google Chrome:

I am actually staying in Bellville so Firefox was spot on.

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Mobile 15 comments

HTC Desire — problems writing to SD Card — #HTC

By on June 19th, 2010

As mentioned in a previous blog post I have ordered a HTC Desire and have received it a couple of weeks ago.

The HTC Desire is a great phone and I am very happy with it except for one minor issue I have with it.  There is a intermittent problem writing to the SD Card.  Here is the error message, for example when you want to take a picture or use the camcorder.

Unable to save file to SD card due to insuffucient file permissions.

Also when you send something to the phone via Bluethooth when the phone cannot write to the SD Card, nothing happens.  No error message that the file cannot be written to the SD Card.

Switching the phone off and the on again solve the problem for a while.  That while can be anything from a couple of minutes to a couple of hours. I have Googled and it seems that it is a known problem with the HTC Desire and also the new HTC Evo.  Most people have the view that it is due to inferior SD Cards that HTC uses.  Mine has a Sandisk SD Card in so do not know whether that is true.  I have also read that HTC is working on a patch for the Evo, not sure whether the Desire will get an update.

One suggestion is to reformat the SD Card which I will try sometime.  Since it is a normal FAT filesystem, I will just put the card in a Card Reader and use my Linux desktop, copy everything off the card as backup, reformat the card again as FAT and then copy everything back onto it.  Maybe what I should try first is to see if I can use a spare SD Card, format it and copy everything over to it and see if the spare have the same issue.

If anybody have some advice on what they think, please feel free to comment.

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Open Source No comments yet

Upgrade to WordPress 3

By on June 18th, 2010

This blog was just upgraded to WordPress 3.0 .. if you see anything funny and not behaving like it should be then please let me know.

Linux, Mobile No comments yet

Eat your heart out iPad — I want one of these

By on May 30th, 2010

From TechSource, I quote

On the hardware side, it has 1 external USB, 2 internal USB, motion sensor, Ethernet connector, microphone and headphone ports, front-facing web camera (2-Megapixel), ambient light sensor, accelerometer, and more. On the software side, the device is running Linux but we don’t have further details about it. It could be Android, or could be a heavily customized Linux distro. However, it’s certain that it will rely on HTML5-based applications, it will have Flash support, and it will feature Android-compatible development platform.

Some of the specs:

  • LCD 10.1“ resolution 1024×600
  • Multi-Touch Capacitive panel (with coverglass)
  • RAM 256MB DDR
  • 4GB internal Storage NAND-Flash (1GB to 8GB)
  • Ethernet 10/100
  • WiFi (Atheros) b/g
  • Bluetooth 2.1
  • SDHC card reader
  • Battery internal (8 hours+)
  • 3G (with internal USB dongle optional)
  • Zigbee (with internal USB dongle optional) — [Have no idea what this is]
  • Camera (2 Megapixel)
  • 2 x speakers 2 W
  • 5 buttons (on/off, + / – , home , menu)
  • Foldable foot
  • VESA mounting
  • Kensington lock — [Need this here in SA 🙂 ]
  • Size : 268 x 168 x 16 mm Weight : 800 gr.

Here is a short Youtube:

I am sure that there will be much more of these devices hitting the marker running some form of Linux or Android.

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Google, Ubuntu 2 comments

Why I use Google Chrome more and more on Ubuntu 10.04?

By on May 15th, 2010

I am running Ubuntu 10.04 and have both Google Chrome (v 5.0.375.38 beta) and Firefox (v 3.6.3) installed.  Although Firefox is still setup as my default browser, I find myself using Chrome more and more and it is mainly for the following reasons:

  • Chrome starts up much, much faster than Firefox.  I have almost the same amount of extensions of similar type in each browser.
  • After upgrading to Ubuntu 10.04 from Ubuntu 9.10, Flash stopped working in Firefox.  Have no problems with Flash in Chrome.  I have tried everything suggested to fix the Flash problem in Firefox but none seem to work.
  • Like the idea that I can install extensions in Chrome without restarting Chrome.
  • I sometime use standalone web-apps (Google Reader) and tried both using Prism and Chrome standalone and I just like the Chrome standalone better.
  • Overall Chrome just feel much more faster and snappy.
  • By default Chrome gives me more real estate – yes i know I can get some minimalist theme for Firefox.

There are a couple of IBM work extensions that I use that is only available in Firefox so will have to carry on using Firefox until they bring out Chrome versions.  This might be one of the reasons why Firefox loads so much slower, but I cannot think this couple of extensions can have so much influence on Firefox’s loading time.

In the long run, if this trend continue, I cannot see myself using Firefox that much anymore.  With each new version of Chrome it just gets better and better.  I can fully understand why Chrome is being considered as default for Ubuntu Maverick Netbook Edition.

Lotus Notes, Ubuntu No comments yet

Upgrade to Lucid — 2 done (sort of), 1 to go

By on May 10th, 2010

As mentioned in this post and this one, I have 3 machines to upgrade.

Today, I bit the bullet and did my IBM production workstation.  As mentioned in this post, the upgrade path is not the normal Ubuntu one but an internal IBM one.  It went fairly well except for the internal part that failed.  Luckily I knew what internal repositories get used and updated my sources.list and ran the update which downloaded and upgraded some internal packages.

After the upgrade, the window buttons were sitting on the left and I hated it.  I immediately changed it back to the right. One thing that does not look right is Lotus Notes which does not display everything properly.  Will have to dig into it tomorrow to figure out what is going on.  For those that run Lotus Notes under Ubuntu, the mail and calendar tab display properly but the home tab is just blank and the resync tab has also got issue.  When opening a mail in a tab, the top part, including the toolbar does not display.

Overall it seems to be stable but I have this impression that booting takes a couple of seconds more.

Mobile 4 comments

HTC Desire – ordered

By on May 9th, 2010

I have always been a Nokia man, but have decided to broaden my horizons and go for an Andriod phone.  Yesterday I popped into my local MTN shop and placed my order for the HTC Desire. 

On Twitter, MTNSouthAfrica last week said and I quote

The HTC Desire should be in stores next week – global flight crisis and limited availability from HTC have been a problem!

Hope I do not regret it like when I used a Samsung phone for a short while.  Cannot even remember what Samsung it was, but it was horrible and I moved back to my trusted Nokia.

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Ubuntu 1 comment

Ubuntu EMEA Regional Board – 2 from SA

By on May 6th, 2010

Congratulations to David and Jonathan who was elected to the Ubuntu EMEA Regional Board.  It is great to see 2 South Africans flying the Ubuntu flag.  Here is the full EMEA Board:

  • Jonathan Carter (still on board)
  • Laura Czajkowski
  • Alan Pope
  • Dennis Kaarsemaker
  • Stéphane Graber
  • Oliver Grawert
  • David Rubin

Also good to see some ladies making it onto the board also.

You can read the full story on Fridge.

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