Last Christmas I bought my eldest daughter a Samsung Tocco Lite mobile phone. I bought it from Phones4U, as they were also providing a free Samsung 8GB Micro SD card.

4 months of use later and the card has failed. And I don’t mean the data has gone – it appears the controller has stopped working and, hence, the card is totally inaccessible. Unfortunately, my daughter didn’t backup her myriad of photos, videos and music.

But… seriously? 4 months?

I’ve contacted Phones4u and, with no quibble, said they’d send out a replacement card.

I thought I’d also contact Samsung to see if there’s anything they can do about recovering the data. Or at least query why their card lasted so little amount of time. Unfortunately, Samsung UK only offer support via phone or post – no twitter or email support. I tried the phone option but it appears to be an Indian-based Helpdesk and I gave up.

I’ll try sending a letter and see how that goes – Phones4u haven’t asked for the faulty card back so I can hold onto that in case Samsung are able to do anything about the contents.

There are companies that will remove the memory chip and recover the contents, but it’s an expensive process.

So, top marks to Phones4u and a wooden spoon to Samsung. So far. Can they redeem themselves?

Since getting my HTC Hero (sorry, T-Mobile G2 Touch), I’ve been plagued with poor reception problems at home. T-Mobiles map shows a very good signal strength for my area, but I’m often without ANY reception when indoors (and it’s a 70′s build semi, not a Victorian terrace with thick walls).

It was never bad enough an issue (I don’t get many calls at home!) that it was worth returning the phone, but I contacted T-Mobile.

First of all, there was their description of what the signal map meant…

it looks like the coverage is ‘good’ the description of ‘good’ explains outdoor only guaranteed.

Now, maybe it’s just me, but not being able to get a signal when inside your house does not indicate “good” to me. That’s poor.I’m not talking about the 3G signal either – there isn’t one. This is the basic 2G/able to make a phone call signal.

When pushed a little further, their response was…

ahh, sadly there’s nothing we can do re the network. another phone may have better radio reception, failing that we have to accept it

Nice.

Maybe the merger of T-Mobile and Orange will mean that they’ll start sharing transmitters – my wife is on Orange and has no such signal problems. Indeed, I never had problems with my previous phone, which was on O2 and my SatNav, which uses Vodafone, is fine. My Three broadband dongle has no signal though, so they’re also best avoided by me.

I love my Hero, but there are lots of good looking Android phones appearing on the market at the moment. Come my contract renewal in 15 months time, I’ll be seriously looking elsewhere.

Signal strength is a big issue when buying mobile phones, as few networks will do anything if you get home with your shiny new phone and find you have no signal.

I was therefore quite intrigued to hear of Vodafone’s solution to this – their Mobile Phone Signal Booster. This connects to your home broadband and provides a Vodafone 3G network in your home.

Their network maps show me as having an excellent 2G signal (so I can at least receive phone calls when at home) and a reasonable 3G signal, possibly only working outside. So a single payment of £50 will get me their Signal Booster, ensuring I get a strong 3G signal, even at home. If they have the phone I’m after next year, it may be a winner for me!

To create a whole random number in Excel, place the following into the equation line :

=INT((RAND()*max)+min)

Where min and max are the minimum and maximum values. For example…

=INT((RAND()*10)+1)

This will generate a number between (and including) 1 and 10.

This will be recalculated every time the spreadsheet is opened. Alternatively, press F9 to update the number.

If you don’t want the numbers to change every time the cell is calculated, you can enter the equation into the formula bar and then press F9 to change the formula to a fixed random number.

All of the above works with OpenOffice, with the exception of using F9 in the formula bar to fix the result.