It's been a while since I felt I could wholeheartedly recommend a computer supplier, since the "good old days" of Carrera, Evesham and the heydays of Mesh, there's been a distinct absence of companies who offer excellent hardware at competitive prices, and back it up with good customer support. However, I'm glad to announce that "PCSpecialist" (www.pcspecialist.co.uk) have ticked all the right boxes for me. Their website lets you configure each system to your heart's content, offering a massive range of options on every aspect of a desktop or laptop system.
Of course the proof of the pudding is in the eating, etc., and two friends have recently purchased systems from PCSpecialist. My friend Mat bought a high-end desktop system for his web company, and had nothing but praise for the daily build progress emails he received, and for the fast and good-looking PC which they delivered on time.
I went round to set up my friend Alison's new PCSpecialist system today, a beefy AMD box with 4GB of ram, 640GB hard drive, Windows 7 and all the trimmings. It was neatly pacacked, everything where you'd expect it to be, and all the paperwork clearly laid out. To my amazement though, the PC didn't work when we switched it on. It "blue-screened" and rebooted at every attempt, before Windows had a chance to load. I tried all the usual things, but to no avail, so I ended up ringing PCSpecialist's technical support helpline. What service! A friendly engineer stayed on the phone for half an hour while he talked me through various fixes, and we finally settled on a re-installation of Windows 7, which didn't take long at all. Unlike many suppliers, PCSpecialist provide a copy of your chosen operating system on a DVD-ROM, in case of any problems. The engineer apologised profusely for the system error, but no harm was done - the whole system was up and running sweetly in no time. It looked fantastic, with a well-made black and silver case, and everything inside all neatly cable-tied, with no sharp edges. The specification of the system is so good that it ought to withstand at least six years of everyday use, which doesn't happen often these days.
So, well done PCSpecialist. Keep up the very, very good work.
Saturday, 27 November 2010
Friday, 20 August 2010
o2, or 'how not to run a company'
My regular readers will remember that some years ago, I had all sorts of problems as a customer of o2, the mobile phone company. Two written complaints were escalated all the way to their CEO, who got in touch personally to apologise, after I was left £700 out of pocket and with no connection after a string of lies and failed promises on their part.
These days I'm a much happer mobile user, thanks to those fine chaps at Vodafone, who really do offer outstanding customer service, the best coverage in the UK, and low prices. I'm not being paid by them (honest!), but I do like to see a good job well done, and they do it day in, day out.
Today I had the misfortune of encountering o2, and they really haven't changed. My technologically bewildered father has been with them for about nine years, he pays about £120 up front every year, for which he gets 12 month of very limited mobile usage, and a reasonably smart Nokia handset every year. Yesterday he received a letter from o2's "Customer services" division, informing him curtly that "Your annual tarrif is being withdrawn, and we are moving you automatically to a matching pay-monthly tarrif", costing £18 a month, so a whopping annual total of £216, or a price rise for him of 80%. As a pensioner living on modest means, this is totally unacceptable, not to mention rude, as no reason was given for the decision from o2.
I advised him that this was a golden opportunity to get away from o2, and sign up with a proper company. He reluncantly agreed, and we've just sat down to ring o2, and guess what - they're up their old tricks. Six minutes on hold, listening to the most awful "musack" imaginable, with an intermittend voice promising an actual human to speak to. Finally a pleasant lady called Katie answered, and Dad outlined the situation clearly, said he wasn't happy, and asked what course of action they would suggest. Cue Katie's chance to shine: "Hello? Hello? Are you there?" she asked, before trailing off, and leaving Dad announcing "Hello, yes I'm here, where are you?". Where indeed. The line wasn't dead - background office noise could still be heard - but clearly this was a conversation that Katie didn't fancy at 8pm on a Friday evening. How utterly pathetic can you get. In my experience the o2 customer service staff are the worst kind of scum, constantly failing to do anything to assist you, and taking money from your account at every opportunity. They're up there with traffic wardens and estate agents, and are about as much use as a pair of water-wings in the Gobi desert.
Thankfully, the old-fashioned methods of communication still exist. If you can't get in touch with a phone company over the phone, then go in person - Dad will be paying a visit to the local o2 "store" in the next few days, telling them exactly what he thinks of them, and asking for directions to the Vodafone shop on his way out. There's simply no place for bad customer service in this day and age.
These days I'm a much happer mobile user, thanks to those fine chaps at Vodafone, who really do offer outstanding customer service, the best coverage in the UK, and low prices. I'm not being paid by them (honest!), but I do like to see a good job well done, and they do it day in, day out.
Today I had the misfortune of encountering o2, and they really haven't changed. My technologically bewildered father has been with them for about nine years, he pays about £120 up front every year, for which he gets 12 month of very limited mobile usage, and a reasonably smart Nokia handset every year. Yesterday he received a letter from o2's "Customer services" division, informing him curtly that "Your annual tarrif is being withdrawn, and we are moving you automatically to a matching pay-monthly tarrif", costing £18 a month, so a whopping annual total of £216, or a price rise for him of 80%. As a pensioner living on modest means, this is totally unacceptable, not to mention rude, as no reason was given for the decision from o2.
I advised him that this was a golden opportunity to get away from o2, and sign up with a proper company. He reluncantly agreed, and we've just sat down to ring o2, and guess what - they're up their old tricks. Six minutes on hold, listening to the most awful "musack" imaginable, with an intermittend voice promising an actual human to speak to. Finally a pleasant lady called Katie answered, and Dad outlined the situation clearly, said he wasn't happy, and asked what course of action they would suggest. Cue Katie's chance to shine: "Hello? Hello? Are you there?" she asked, before trailing off, and leaving Dad announcing "Hello, yes I'm here, where are you?". Where indeed. The line wasn't dead - background office noise could still be heard - but clearly this was a conversation that Katie didn't fancy at 8pm on a Friday evening. How utterly pathetic can you get. In my experience the o2 customer service staff are the worst kind of scum, constantly failing to do anything to assist you, and taking money from your account at every opportunity. They're up there with traffic wardens and estate agents, and are about as much use as a pair of water-wings in the Gobi desert.
Thankfully, the old-fashioned methods of communication still exist. If you can't get in touch with a phone company over the phone, then go in person - Dad will be paying a visit to the local o2 "store" in the next few days, telling them exactly what he thinks of them, and asking for directions to the Vodafone shop on his way out. There's simply no place for bad customer service in this day and age.
Tuesday, 13 July 2010
Respect for Jamie Oliver
Like every other member of the British public, I usually find Jamie Oliver to be irritating. Extremely irritating. However, having watched his food lecture on "TED", I have a new-found respect for the man. He knows his stuff, and is working hard to improve food standards and dietary awareness, and not just in this country. This is a dynamic 21-minute lecture, stuffed full of gob-smacking facts and insights into the appalling modern Western diet, and its link with obesity. You owe it to yourself, and particularly your childen (if you have any), to watch this. It's made me want to go home and cook something basic and nutritious.
Friday, 9 July 2010
A bit of ColdFusion confusion
We recently got a shiny new cloud server from those nice chaps at Sagari, a rather juicy beat with 8GB of RAM and twin Xeon processors. I downloaded ColdFusion 8 from the Adobe website and installed it, but the darn thing refused to work in any way, shape or form. After some digging I finally twigged that ColdFusion needs to be installed under the root (admin) account in order to work properly. So, uninstall, changed login, re-install, and all was well, except now our serial number wasn't accepted. Perplexed, I phoned Adobe, who pinged me around a few different people, finally I ended up speaking to an American chap in the Philippines, who said they'd have a look into it and get back to us. I'm never comfortable with "we'll get back to you" in business speak, as 9 times out of 10 it means "go away and stop bothering us".
True to their word though, a very pleasant Adobe technician from Mumbai phoned us, and explained that we have a serial number that's only good for the 'standard' ColdFusion 8 server, and as we're running Windows 2008 Data Centre edition, it's expecting a 64-bit key. Two solutions are available - we could either liaise with Adobe and swap our 32-bit key for a 64-bit one, or we could re-download the full CF8 product from the Adobe download manager, which is slightly different to the generic download offered on their public-facing site. I opted for the second solution, a 380mb download, and our key was immediately approved, and the 32-bit version installed correctly. All I had to do then was to put IIS7 into 32-bit mode (advanced settings - enable 32-bit = true), and it worked perfectly. It's a slightly odd problem, but understandable, as CF8 is a few years old now and operating systems are changing on a regular basis.
We did have a slight issue getting the SQL Express JDBC drivers working, after downloading them and unsuccessfully trying to use the default "sqljdbc.jar" file, I tried changing to the "sqljdbc4.jar" file, with no joy. It turns out that ColdFusion had cached and locked an older version of this file, the only solution was to stop the CF8 service, remove the old file and re-copy the new one, then start it again. I guess this will be true of all the JAR files in use by CF, changing any of them will require a service re-start, and caching is always on the cards.
All fairly minor problems, but together they've added up to a few days of extra faffing around, and delays to the project, and reminded me that paying a bit more for a managed server from dedicated ColdFusion host might not be such a daft idea after all.
True to their word though, a very pleasant Adobe technician from Mumbai phoned us, and explained that we have a serial number that's only good for the 'standard' ColdFusion 8 server, and as we're running Windows 2008 Data Centre edition, it's expecting a 64-bit key. Two solutions are available - we could either liaise with Adobe and swap our 32-bit key for a 64-bit one, or we could re-download the full CF8 product from the Adobe download manager, which is slightly different to the generic download offered on their public-facing site. I opted for the second solution, a 380mb download, and our key was immediately approved, and the 32-bit version installed correctly. All I had to do then was to put IIS7 into 32-bit mode (advanced settings - enable 32-bit = true), and it worked perfectly. It's a slightly odd problem, but understandable, as CF8 is a few years old now and operating systems are changing on a regular basis.
We did have a slight issue getting the SQL Express JDBC drivers working, after downloading them and unsuccessfully trying to use the default "sqljdbc.jar" file, I tried changing to the "sqljdbc4.jar" file, with no joy. It turns out that ColdFusion had cached and locked an older version of this file, the only solution was to stop the CF8 service, remove the old file and re-copy the new one, then start it again. I guess this will be true of all the JAR files in use by CF, changing any of them will require a service re-start, and caching is always on the cards.
All fairly minor problems, but together they've added up to a few days of extra faffing around, and delays to the project, and reminded me that paying a bit more for a managed server from dedicated ColdFusion host might not be such a daft idea after all.
Wednesday, 7 July 2010
Well done Sky!
Without wanting this to read like an advert, or trying to sound sycophantic, there are a few companies who always seem to "get it right" without appearing to try, and Sky is one of them. They called me the other day, and asked if I'd like to abandon my BT landline, and switch to "Sky Talk", which basically means renting a phone line and getting my phone calls from Sky, and not BT. They're £5 a month cheaper than BT, and if you sign up, they knock £5 a month off your Sky Broadband bill (assuming you have one). I thought what the heck... why not?
In true Sky style, all the paperwork came through within a few days, and even BT got their act together with a "sorry you're leaving us" letter. I did express a concern about keeping the 1571 "Call Minder" service, but Sky reckoned they had the same thing, only better.
When I got home from work yesterday, I could tell that they'd switched me from BT to Sky during the day. My phone (a standard "BT Decor 1300") was miraculously aware of the correct date and time, and had a little message saying "3 missed calls, 3 new numbers". I've never bothered to program my phone before, so I'm impressed that it now knows the date and time, and as for Sky's 1571 service, it makes BT's look pretty clumsy. Whereas the painfully slow automated voice on the BT 1571 is clearly designed for the severely dim, or hard of hearing: "Welcome... to... BT... you've... one... new... message....", the Sky voice is much faster and more natural, taking you straight to your messages without faffing around. Even the basic 1471 readout is an improvement over BT's effort. The call quality has somehow improved too, when I made a couple of calls in the evening they were both crystal clear, whereas with BT I'd had crackling and distortion on the line since day one.
So, a better service, less annoyance, and I'm £120 a year better off. Bravo Sky, well played. More of that, please!
In true Sky style, all the paperwork came through within a few days, and even BT got their act together with a "sorry you're leaving us" letter. I did express a concern about keeping the 1571 "Call Minder" service, but Sky reckoned they had the same thing, only better.
When I got home from work yesterday, I could tell that they'd switched me from BT to Sky during the day. My phone (a standard "BT Decor 1300") was miraculously aware of the correct date and time, and had a little message saying "3 missed calls, 3 new numbers". I've never bothered to program my phone before, so I'm impressed that it now knows the date and time, and as for Sky's 1571 service, it makes BT's look pretty clumsy. Whereas the painfully slow automated voice on the BT 1571 is clearly designed for the severely dim, or hard of hearing: "Welcome... to... BT... you've... one... new... message....", the Sky voice is much faster and more natural, taking you straight to your messages without faffing around. Even the basic 1471 readout is an improvement over BT's effort. The call quality has somehow improved too, when I made a couple of calls in the evening they were both crystal clear, whereas with BT I'd had crackling and distortion on the line since day one.
So, a better service, less annoyance, and I'm £120 a year better off. Bravo Sky, well played. More of that, please!
Monday, 5 July 2010
Back to blogging
Following on from Mat n Kat's example, I have decided to start blogging again. This is an interesting time for many reasons, on a work front all the staff at our company were made redundant on Monday 28th June, which is the predictable conclusion of our trigger-happy "ConDem" government's cost-cutting. All the projects we had lined up have been put on hold indefinitely, and we just can't move fast enough to re-position ourself into the private sector. Charity IT projects are rapidly moving onto crowd-sourced, open source solutions, thereby depriving us of a valuable revenue stream.
The government departments we work for are literally crapping themselves with fear at the prospect of 25-40% budget cuts, and not a penny is being spent at the moment. This will, naturally, mean that towards the end of the financial year, there will be massive amounts of unspent budget up for grabs, and the usual last-minute flurry of tenders, but that's all around 6 months away - no use to us at the moment.
So, I'm now indulging in my least favourite activity: job-hunting. Liaising with IT recuiters. Sending out CVs into the great unknkown, to be read by all and sundry. Hoping that a word-of-mouth recommendation will come through... and knowing that thousands of people are in the same boat. At the back of my mind I've got a nagging desire to set up my own company, producing websites for local businesses and organisations. The most satisfying projects I've ever worked on have been small, shiny, fast turn-around sites. You get a real sense of achievement if your work goes live within a couple of months, rather than dragging on for years and hiding behind a login screen, which happens on most of our projects. I need to get myself in gear and register a small company name... any suggestions?
The government departments we work for are literally crapping themselves with fear at the prospect of 25-40% budget cuts, and not a penny is being spent at the moment. This will, naturally, mean that towards the end of the financial year, there will be massive amounts of unspent budget up for grabs, and the usual last-minute flurry of tenders, but that's all around 6 months away - no use to us at the moment.
So, I'm now indulging in my least favourite activity: job-hunting. Liaising with IT recuiters. Sending out CVs into the great unknkown, to be read by all and sundry. Hoping that a word-of-mouth recommendation will come through... and knowing that thousands of people are in the same boat. At the back of my mind I've got a nagging desire to set up my own company, producing websites for local businesses and organisations. The most satisfying projects I've ever worked on have been small, shiny, fast turn-around sites. You get a real sense of achievement if your work goes live within a couple of months, rather than dragging on for years and hiding behind a login screen, which happens on most of our projects. I need to get myself in gear and register a small company name... any suggestions?
Thursday, 19 November 2009
Random links of interest
Here are a things I've been looking at recently:
Favicon generator:
http://www.dagondesign.com/tools/favicon-generator-tool/
The Daily Mash - satirical news, similar to the Onion, only ruder:
http://www.thedailymash.co.uk/
Statistics on the UK's armed forces:
http://www.dasa.mod.uk/
Statistics on many aspects of British life:
http://www.fti.communities.gov.uk/
Voodoo Sabotage, a Kleptones video mashup:
http://www.vimeo.com/7663931
The temples of Damanhur, the 8th wonder of the World:
http://www.thetemples.org/
Favicon generator:
http://www.dagondesign.com/tools/favicon-generator-tool/
The Daily Mash - satirical news, similar to the Onion, only ruder:
http://www.thedailymash.co.uk/
Statistics on the UK's armed forces:
http://www.dasa.mod.uk/
Statistics on many aspects of British life:
http://www.fti.communities.gov.uk/
Voodoo Sabotage, a Kleptones video mashup:
http://www.vimeo.com/7663931
The temples of Damanhur, the 8th wonder of the World:
http://www.thetemples.org/
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