I must admit my move to tmobile was because I was ready to move to the android platform, and at the time... at&t's offerings were all but non-existant. I was honestly worried about reception and customer service (and the fact that there wasn't any actual corporate stores around...).
This is only the beginning of my story, and probably the least significant part of it. What I've really come to realize is that I've honestly had less dropped calls, and less call quality problems. Data services werent as widely implemented (no 3g everywhere), however where I did get 3g service, it worked much better than on my iphone 3gs.
As for my plan, I don't feel like I get any more minutes than at&t, and no rollover minutes, however I do have unlimited text and unlimited data at least for the time being. (services that are significantly more expensive, or unavailable at all on at&t).
Recent happenings...
I lost my nexus one on a day trip, and had to figure out how to move forward. I actually had my phone insured through a third party, who was more than gracious to take care of the claim for me... however this problem brought more things to my attention.
If I hadn't had insurance, I could order a new phone online and have the cost tossed onto my next bill, or split across the next three bills. This is something I feel is huge for people in this unfortunate situation with no insurance.
All in all, its sad to hear about all the negative speculation and negative publicity people are TRYING to give tmobile... because this is honestly the first carrier I've been with that I don't feel is going to try and violate me at its earliest convenience.
To me, tmobile has been a very pleasant surprise, and hopefully other carriers will take some notes here, and realize the big corporate bullying probably wont work forever.
Friday, August 6, 2010
Monday, March 15, 2010
Times... they are a changing
I suppose I guess you could say you pay to play when it comes to bleeding edge of hardware and/or software... and Googles latest offering - the Nexus One phone is no exception.
It took a good month of bugging my wife, and trying to justify why I should cancel my existing att plan and change over to t-mobile. Eventually she gave in and was really quite supportive of the whole thing. I received my phone next day which was exceptional... but all was not what it seemed.
I noticed the keyboard took a lot more effort to type on... not that the buttons were too small, but it seemed unless you put your finger at exactly the center of each key and barely tapped, you'd get literally random results. In my case... I'd sometimes hit t and get a space, sometimes I'd tap the url window at the top of the browser and launch stuff at the bottom of the screen, sometimes in writing an email, I'd hit space and it'd abandon the email.
I've worked around electronics enough to know to restart it and try again, and I did... and sure enough the keyboard was flawless.... well for about an hour. After looking up information about the problem, it became immediately apparent that its a huge problem, and that TONS of people are experiencing the same thing. For me, the problem seems to have gotten worse in the sense the time after reboot/softreboot/lock and unlock has gone down to like 5min.
I contacted support simply asking if they knew if a fix was in the works, or if they thought it was hardware or what (not wanting to wait too long, end up with my grace period going away and being stuck with a 500 brick.). The customer service person was very professional and courteous but acted as if she'd never even heard of the problem and assured that nobody else was having such problems.
I'm not questioning her knowledge on the subject, but several people have pleaded with google, and have been through 5 replacements and still have the same problems, and google hasnt actually officially stated it was a problem.
So when did it become ok to just ignore problems? Not say they are looking at it, not say they have a fix underway, not say they have it reproduced and are working on a fix. I work in the software industry and know how that can go (never quote a deadline, if there are any wildcards). I have a premium phone that cant do the simplest things.
Welcome to business 2.0
It took a good month of bugging my wife, and trying to justify why I should cancel my existing att plan and change over to t-mobile. Eventually she gave in and was really quite supportive of the whole thing. I received my phone next day which was exceptional... but all was not what it seemed.
I noticed the keyboard took a lot more effort to type on... not that the buttons were too small, but it seemed unless you put your finger at exactly the center of each key and barely tapped, you'd get literally random results. In my case... I'd sometimes hit t and get a space, sometimes I'd tap the url window at the top of the browser and launch stuff at the bottom of the screen, sometimes in writing an email, I'd hit space and it'd abandon the email.
I've worked around electronics enough to know to restart it and try again, and I did... and sure enough the keyboard was flawless.... well for about an hour. After looking up information about the problem, it became immediately apparent that its a huge problem, and that TONS of people are experiencing the same thing. For me, the problem seems to have gotten worse in the sense the time after reboot/softreboot/lock and unlock has gone down to like 5min.
I contacted support simply asking if they knew if a fix was in the works, or if they thought it was hardware or what (not wanting to wait too long, end up with my grace period going away and being stuck with a 500 brick.). The customer service person was very professional and courteous but acted as if she'd never even heard of the problem and assured that nobody else was having such problems.
I'm not questioning her knowledge on the subject, but several people have pleaded with google, and have been through 5 replacements and still have the same problems, and google hasnt actually officially stated it was a problem.
So when did it become ok to just ignore problems? Not say they are looking at it, not say they have a fix underway, not say they have it reproduced and are working on a fix. I work in the software industry and know how that can go (never quote a deadline, if there are any wildcards). I have a premium phone that cant do the simplest things.
Welcome to business 2.0
Thursday, March 11, 2010
Toyota shunned? Why not BMW?
I'll regress to one of my 3 passions here and that is cars...
Take for example the BMW N54 engine. Award winning with its great torque, lack of turbo lag (due to the use of two dinky turbochargers), great fuel economy thanks to a high pressure direct injection system... and finally smooth as silk because of the natural balance characteristics of the inline 6 motor.
The BMW n54 engine is installed in the BMW 135i, 335i, 535i and I believe the little z4 35i, and has won acclaim everywhere it's been presented. I happen to be well versed in this subject as I am the "torn" owner of a 135i (I'll elaborate on that in just a bit).
WHEN the car is running well, it's just plain fantastic, an absolute pleasure to drive. Unfortunately the n54 is plagued with a problem the engineers have not been able to solve in the 3yr the n54 has been in production. The problem I speak of is the high pressure fuel pump. The high pressure fuel pump (HPFP) takes fuel from the low pressure fuel pump and causes the fuel to build a LOT more pressure into the tens of thousands of psi.
The HPFP's thus far will absolutely fail... no doubt about it. Delivered terminally ill since day one, the HPFP failures are a huge disaster. Symptoms of the failure are long cranking before starts, reduced power, increased lag, and potentially check engine lights or even falling into reduced power or safe mode. My first fuel pump was the first generation, and was replaced after lots of long cranks etc. It was replaced with a second generation fuel pump, which is now failing. BMW service has me jumping through hoops... "...the car must throw codes, otherwise BMW will absolutely not replace the pump again..." and now "...unless a check engine light comes on, all they are going to do is update software...". Really? Software is supposed to fix failed hardware? BMW has issued a statement in which they announced the fuel pumps would receive an extended warranty to 100k miles.
BMW has demonstrated they don't have the engineering abilities to solve this problem, the pumps will fail on every car in probably what will amount to 10kmi. My car has personally been affected by a failing pump for more of its life than it hasn't. Apparently your car running at reduced power, and taking forever to start in the morning is acceptable and if those symptoms exist even though the car doesn't pick up the codes... you are just out of luck.
So I guess the question here is... while this problem doesn't necessarily pose a direct safety risk, why is toyota getting so much heat? If you own one of the selected models, you have likely already had this problem, or are experiencing the symptoms as I write this... and yet we are pushed to continue driving until its a complete catastrophic failure. Where is our recourse? You buy a car because you enjoy driving it, but then a good 80% of its life it drove nowhere like it did when you bought.
Moral of this story is... BMW isn't exactly known for reliability, but their handling of this situation has been completely irresponsible. Don't buy a turbo BMW at the moment period. IMO this doesn't pose all the danger of the run away acceleration, but I suspect this problem is WAY WAY WAY more widespread with confirmed cases than the sudden acceleration.
Wednesday, February 24, 2010
the bottom line
Do you and/or your company strive to provide a good service or product to your clients, and are your customers generally happy with those products/services?
Why do I get two very different vibes from two very different companies operating in many of the same sectors? Case in point Apple and Google.
Apple - I'm a long running apple fan, and have way more hardware than I care to admit... but that "loving feeling" is fading quickly. Why, might you ask? I cant blame a company for embracing capitalism or for being in "the business to make money", but what I can do is criticize them for their anti-competitive practices, and dictator like control of the many products they offer.
Google - Obviously google is not without flaw, its painfully clear that many are afraid of having that much personal information aggregated in one place is a bad idea, and terrible for privacy. Google is clearly in the business to make money as well... and yet at least I get a refreshing feel from Google's business model. Google strives to deliver a quality product for a reasonable price. They embrace openness and giving the consumer choices... and appear to try and fix the many things that are broke in todays technology world.
Is it more important to have customer satisfaction and new customer growth because of word of mouth, and a good solid product, or to make an extra penny here and there and potentially sacrifice customer satisfaction.
Why do I get two very different vibes from two very different companies operating in many of the same sectors? Case in point Apple and Google.
Apple - I'm a long running apple fan, and have way more hardware than I care to admit... but that "loving feeling" is fading quickly. Why, might you ask? I cant blame a company for embracing capitalism or for being in "the business to make money", but what I can do is criticize them for their anti-competitive practices, and dictator like control of the many products they offer.
Google - Obviously google is not without flaw, its painfully clear that many are afraid of having that much personal information aggregated in one place is a bad idea, and terrible for privacy. Google is clearly in the business to make money as well... and yet at least I get a refreshing feel from Google's business model. Google strives to deliver a quality product for a reasonable price. They embrace openness and giving the consumer choices... and appear to try and fix the many things that are broke in todays technology world.
Is it more important to have customer satisfaction and new customer growth because of word of mouth, and a good solid product, or to make an extra penny here and there and potentially sacrifice customer satisfaction.
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