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

Toyota shunned? Why not BMW?

I'll regress to one of my 3 passions here and that is cars... 

In doing research I was unable to come up with the total number of confirmed cases of sudden acceleration in toyota cars... it's clear it was a safety concern and I don't mean to make light of that in any way shape or form... BUT, why is toyota getting railed for this? Because they have a history of building great, reliable cars and these aren't so much?

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.