Why does SA put up with this?

I recently acquired a Macbook unibody model that has the new DisplayPort adaptor, which has been giving me many problems. Now this post will not go on about this.

I had to buy a Displayport to VGA adaptor for $29. Simple enough. So I phoned up Digicape and they had them in stock – for R564!!! (That is about $54). Now before you tell me that I would be mad to buy that, I called Project3, their main competitor. They asked R510. Other competitors ask round about the same.

How can something that costs $29 all over the world cost this much in South Africa? I realize of course that people are desperate to buy the adaptors, so they will pay for it, so they can rightly so increase the price momentarily while there is still some hype behind new macbooks. But a 40% increase in price is unacceptable, and is called profiteering.And dont tell me the shipping and import fees are 40% on something that weighs about a 100 grams at most.

When asking them why they ask that much, the customer service guys just normally laugh, and say they have no control over it.

South Africans need to expose companies like these for what they are – oppurtunist crooks. Digimates my arse.

External screen issues with my Macbook, and a thanks to Apple.

Apple continually reminds us that Mac’s “just work”. I havent been quite so lucky.

I recently acquired a new Macbook 13inch unibody model. I also purchased a minidisplayport to VGA adaptor at a ridiculous R510 (About $50). When connecting to a high resolution screen with a pixel rating of 1600 and up, the screen starts to switch off sporadically every few minutes. I use a 22 inch Samsung at work and a 24 inch Acer at home which both have the same symptoms. Needless to say this is very, very irritating.

I posted this problem on Apple’s discussion forum, with no clear solution listed. This is a huge problem with these machines and I have not heard of anyone who can fix this. With no official statement from Apple I decided to email sjobs@apple.com and one of the european PR reps phoned me to find out about the problem. I explained the entire situation and she assured me that they will work on a solution.

My colleaugue has the exact same machine with exactly the same problems with his machine using his VGA adaptor. So this is clearly not a one off fault.

I must say I do appreciate Apple’s excellent customer service, despite the fact that problem is not solved yet. Having a almost daily call to tell me that the problem will be fixed is quite novel for me, seeing as I live in the customer service starved country called South Africa.

Here’s hoping they solve it soon enough.

What I use these days (updated Oct 2009)

Here is what I use on a almost daily basis. It will give you good idea of where my opinion lies and why I use certain things. I paid for all my software and I always have valid reasons for using certain applications or hardware, and I am also a bit of a early adopter.

Windows PCs
Computing hardware

I use a few machines every day, but these are my main machines. I am currently using the macbook the most, but sometimes I use the two Lenovos for Windows work. When I have a choice I will always buy Lenovo hardware, or Apple. I have had unpleasant experiences with HP consumer hardware. I always use external monitors on my desk, my current being a Samsung 2263uw 22 inch which runs at 1680 resolution and has niceties like a USB hub and webcam.

Lenovo IBM Thinkpad Z61m

I got this machine in February 2007 and it has served me well. It originally came with Windows XP, but it was immediately upgraded to Vista Enterprise edition, and now its running Windows 7 RC fulltime. I upgraded its RAM to 3 gig, and it is a solid and pretty speedy piece of hardware. The screen runs a roomy 1680 pixel resolution and the keyboard is a joy to use. Not the greatest looking machine, but man is it quick.
Was my primary machine but I am now switching to the macbook.

Lenovo Ideapad S10e

I bought this machine as a secondary PC and is quite a cute little number. It runs a Atom processor and 2 Gig RAM and a 160 gig hard drive. I was always a little hesitant of netbooks (especially after seeing the first eeePCs), but there is very little trade offs in using this machine. But I desperately want to put Windows 7 on this machine.

MacBook (late 2008)

My pride and joy. A base model with a 2.0GHz processor, 2 Gig DDR3 RAM and a little too small 160 gig hard drive. It runs Mac OSX leopard and I run a bootcamp partition with Vista Enterprise and a VM machine running XP SP3. I want to upgrade the RAM to 4 gig, but DDR3 chips are still very expensive. Build incredibly solid from aluminium and the display is really nice and bright. Still cost a bit more than a PC but well worth it.

I upgrade the internal drive with a Seagate 320Gig 7200 rpm drive. Much more roomy and also a bit quicker. Highly recommended. The 2.0GHz processor is getting a little slow, but I am hanging on for the release of Macbooks with the new Core i7 mobile processor.

Servers
Windows Server

I currently use a HP Proliant ML110 server to run Windows Home Server which backs up all my machines and also stores a lot of my media. I upgraded it to 4Gigs of ECC RAM, and 750 GB storage, but this will keep growing. I find a Windows Home Server very powerful and I really hope the next version will be even better.

Gaming

I use Xbox 360 Pro for gaming and media. I use only about 10 percent of the time for games, and use it as a media player connected a nice large 1TB hard drive which has all my media.. I am actually quite disappointed by the hardware quality and I am currently on my 4th Xbox. The last one gave up the ghost after 2 weeks. Luckily they swap them out for free, but it is always a 3 week long ordeal to get it done, thanks to MI Digital’s poor service.
I use a lovely Acer 24 inch 1920 x 1200 pixel screen which makes games look great using a VGA cable. I also connect the Xbox to a nice big 1TB Seagate FreeAgent drive. To be honest I use Xbox much more as a media player than games. Blame high prices of games. I am looking forward to using Windows Home Server with the Xbox.

Portable devices

I have had too many iPods to count. I used to buy a new one each year, and then sell the old model. But I always hang on to my iPod 5G 30Gig which is still my favourite iPod, regardless of model. I keep it in my car or AV dock connected to Logitech Z2300 speakers (which are 4 years old and still work great).
My phone is a iPhone 3GS which is a great device to have with you at all times. Despite its small flaws I still cant switch back to my old Symbian devices. The speed of the new 3GS is great and the current collection of applications are without peer. The apps I cant do without I listed here.

Software I use:
Operating system

I use both Mac OS X and Windows, but I will always have a softspot for Windows Vista. Despite all the marketing hype I am still not completely sold on Mac OS X. Snow Leopard has improved this somewhat. Yes, it is stable and fast, but I miss the tinkering with Vista. I am pretty excited about Windows 7, and now run it fulltime on my Thinkpad. I avoid using Windows XP. Its old and needs to be taken out back and put down.

Digital media
Jukebox: I primarily use iTunes, because I use a iPhone and iPods. I think it is a great music management tool and I stopped using WinAmp the day iTunes came out for Windows. I use smart playlists and rating a lot I am obsessive about things like album art and lyrics.

Online services: Because of a lack of digital music stores in South Africa, I cannot use any legal download services. So I am pretty much forced to buy CD’s.

Digital photos: I use Picasa 3 as a photo manager. Yes, iPhoto is nice, but is not close to Picasa. Why would I want to store my photos in a proprietary giant multi gigabyte file? Let me use standard folders please. I don’t backup my photos online, but I do use Facebook for sharing.

DVD: I rarely use anything other than VLC for playing DVD’s. For backing up DVD’s I use Handbrake (which is way better on Mac than Windows for some reason) which does the job admirably. This makes it easy to take movies with me on my iPhone or iPod.

Digital movies: I don’t really create movies but I must say Apple’s iLife suite has some pretty cool tools. iDVD and iMovie works great, even though it is kind of time consuming to do.

Internet: I always use Mozilla Firefox, and never Internet Explorer. However, some sites don’t display correctly on Firefox, in which case I use Google Chrome. I will give IE8 a chance once its beta releases become more stable, and the web isn’t broken while using it. Safari is a joke, regardless of OS.

Office productivity: I use Microsoft Office 2007 on my PC (and Mac using VMWare). It is actually a great release of Office and I recommend it. Office for Mac 2008 is an absolute joke. It interface is poor and some complex documents and spreadsheets lose functionality. Even though I still have it installed, I would not recommend it.

My primary email is a Gmail account which I use in its standard free guise. I use its IMAP and forwarding abilities to forward to my work email addresses which save me lots of time. Why anyone would pay for a ISP email address these days is beyond me. I use Outlook 2007 and Thunderbird for email management.

My main social networking service is Facebook which I prefer for its uncluttered design. Also, the Facebook app on the iPhone is simply stunning, and should be a yardstick for all mobile apps. I have also recently started using twitter more and more. (@mpieters)

I use Outlook 2007 and iCal to manage my schedule. To keep the two in sync I use a great tool called Plaxo. Plaxo also syncs your address books, so that all your computers and PIM apps are up to date. Great service, I really hope they don’t start charging me to use it.

Security: I find Vista and Windows 7 pretty secure, so I always keep my UAC on, even though it can be irritating. I use AVG Free Antivirus 8, and Windows Defender. On my Mac I don’t use any security software, which I really appreciate. I am curently testing Microsoft’s new free antivirus suite, and I will switch to it eventually I guess. So far I still believe AVG Free is the best option.

Utilities: On my Mac I use VMware fusion daily (this is a Windows world, despite what Apple might tell you). I use Adium and Skype as my IM gateways. uTorrent is by far the best torrent manager, but I also do like Transmission on the Mac.

On Windows I wholeheartedly recommend a good defragmenter like Diskeeper or Defraggler. Defragler is free, quick and does the job. I don’t use a defragmenter for Mac because of the HFS filesystem which does not need it.

I always install Adobe Reader because I need to work with complex PDF files often. I use BurnerXP to burn discs and create disc images. Its free and does the job.

Hewlett Packard South Africa Crap Service

Recently my girlfriend’s HP Pavilion notebook decided to give up the ghost – the machine started overheating by just playing a DVD. My logical conclusion was that the system suffered from one of Nvidia’s faulty GPUs. So I took it back to Game in Somerset West, and they sent it to Incredible Solutions.

Here the first snag hit – Incredible Solutions in Cape Town lost track of where the notebook was, and three weeks later (on its ETA to me) they called to inform me that they unfortunately never sent it out to Axiz for repair. It was just sitting there in their warehouse.

Then they sent it to Axiz, who did not have any success with the machine. Then Axiz sent it to HP for evaluation who kept the machine and waited for a new mainboard and heatsink. I could never get a status update from HP on my machine, and only after completely losing my cool they started showing better service – but still crap none the less.

(Here is my post to hellopeter.com after 5 weeks)

After waiting EIGHT weeks for a repair (crazy right?), it arrived back at Game, where I picked it up. I popped in a DVD and the problem was not fixed, at all… Supposedly they replaced the system mainboard and heatsink but I am not so sure. To be honest I will stay away from HP laptops in South Africa. Their machine quality and service is absolutely shocking.

You may call this slander, I call it the truth. Luckily Game gave me back the money for the machine, which I appreciate. I will always buy from game whenever possible, their after sales service is perhaps the only respectable one in South Africa.