So, a few days ago (Monday to be more precise), I contacted Seagate Customer Service to ask if there was anything I could do about replacing the hard drive in my Maxtor SSII NAS. Today, I received an answer…

Thank you for sending your Seagate E-mail inquiry.

The device what you have a linux software on the drive.So you can not replace the drive with a other drive it will not work.

Seagate have a new Network device Where you can replace the drive if it go bad. The device is Called BlackArmor NAS
hire is the link for the device
http://www.seagate.com/www/en-gb/products/external/blackarmor/

If you have any additional questions, let me know.

Actually, I do have a question. How can a customer service response, including trying to sell me a replacement, be so badly written? Seriously?

At least it makes my decision easier. ZyXEL here I come…

In the past I’ve bought new phones and then purchased the ubiquitous case and various other accessories, only to end up not using them. Therefore, for my HTC Hero, I’ve been more careful.

Here’s what I’ve found.

Case

You can get some lovely leather, opening cases for the Hero but I had something similar for my N95 and the inconvenience of having to keep opening and closing a flag that needs securing each time was, well, not worth it. And you look stupid when taking a call.

Having got a cheap, rubber “skin” case for my daughters Tocco Lite, I thought I’d get something similar. I bought a colour-coded (well, transparent but with a blackish hue)  “gel” case from eBay for the grand total of £2.90 (including postage). And it’s.. ok. It’s not like the more rubbery case of my daughters (with that it covers the buttons and you press them through the case, hence why it needs to be quite flexible) but it a harder material. It protects well but collects dust and crumbs quite easily.

Click the thumbnail to the right to see it a little clearer.

Screen Protectors

Again, I bought some screen protectors for my daughters phone. I got 10 and they were cheap from eBay. What I found was that your finger doesn’t glide over them as well as they did over the screen. Over time it gets better (probably as the grease from your finger penetrates the plastic).

However, it did mean that I made the decision to get some better quality ones for my Hero. HTC make “official” screen protectors, named the “SP P260″. Play.com sell them for £4.99 for 2. The price is high but it fitted well and felt good under the finger in use (in fact it’s difficult to tell that I’ve got one fitted). A definite recommendation.

Memory Card

The HTC Hero takes SD/SDHC Micro cards. It actually comes with a Sandisk 2GB card which, I believe, is class 2 (the slowest type of card). Now, what speed card you need seems to be a bit of an unknown quantity – some people on forums it makes a speed difference, others say different. Certainly, it seems likely that when Android can run applications from the SD card, then this will make a difference.

Looking at prices, 8GB is the best current price-point – you pay quite a premium to buy 16GB.

Initially I purchased a card from 7dayshop, who have been reliable in the past. Unfortunately, after 1.5 weeks they still hadn’t despatched my order. I contacted them and they said..

your order has been processed and will be dispatched shortly. Unfortunatly we are very busy at this time. Apologies for any inconvenience

Busy? What’s higher on their “to do list” than processing customer orders? Poor.

After waiting another half a week I contacted them and asked them to cancel my order. They did but I’m still awaiting my refund.

I did some further searching and came across ZoomBits (formerly MemoryBits). From them I purchased a Transcend 8GB Micro SDHC Class 6 card for £16.05. It was despatched the next day.

Car Charger

Although the USB connector on the HTC Hero looks to be specific to the device it is, in fact, a standard micro USB connection. Therefore any USB cable can be used for charging, and a search on eBay will show many USB chargers that plug into a car cigarette lighter – all you need to do is provide the requisite cable.

And, to be honest, you may already have one – my TomTom uses the same USB connector so I can charger my Hero with the car charger for that.

Docking Cradle

A docking cradle can be an ideal way to neatly charge and syncronise your phone. There appears to be 2 types available – an “official” HTC version (which is a flat black panel on which the phone sits vertically – very stylish but expensive) and a small, cheap one (eBay is a good place to look).

The latter appears to be in 2 different (but subtle designs) – one seems to rely on the USB connector to keep the phone vertical, whereas another has clear plastic “mounts” to hold it into place – the latter appears to me to be the best but is harder to get hold of.

I decided against any. The battery in the Hero is, let’s be honest, rubbish and so it needs a charge each night – I just use the mains charger to do this. During the day, at work, it sits next to me at my desk. It doesn’t need charging and, for security reasons, I can’t connect it to my PC to synchronise (not that I use the software).

Besides, would they work with the case fitted?

After a mild rant back in December about some of the support queries I get (with regard to my WordPress plugins), I’m happy to say that I’ve had the pleasure to work with someone who has actually been helpful, responsive and, more importantly, replied to his emails

A Dutch gentleman named Bas de Meijer reported a couple of problems via a comment on one of my plugin pages. One I was able to resolve quite quickly and update the relevant plugin, the other was, erm, more difficult to pin down. This was related to another plugin and turned out to be due to me using a PHP command that didn’t work in PHP 4 (which he was using). As far as I know this command is the only one of this type that I’d used and it was a simple job to modify it to something else and get the compatibility. However, to actually work out what it was I had to send Bas a number of different versions of my plugin, each with more and more debug output being added.

The result was the two plugin releases announced last night – indeed, even adding Technorati to Simple Social Bookmarks was his idea. Thanks Bas. But, then again, he seemed to enjoy the experience just as much….

Thanks again for the great job you have done. Not only by designing the plugin, but also by spending a lot of time to debug it with me. It is much easier to say ‘it should work, so you must be doing something right’ or ‘well, upgrade your system’. But you really wanted to make it work. That suites you.

It was a pleasure helping you. I know from myself that I rather would solve the problem, than to switch to something else.

So come on, those who have a problem, report it, but never respond back to me – I don’t bite!

Early December, I came across a company that was hand knitting and supplying Harry Hill Knitted Characters. I thought it would be ideal for my 7 month year old daughter.

Sadly, although I paid for a guaranteed “before Christmas” delivery, it never turned up.

Unfortunately, and you only find out when this situation arises, the only way to contact “BMG Burp” is via an email address. But I did and received no response to my enquiry. I emailed them again and, this time, my email bounced with an error.

Their website is still taking orders and, indeed, they’ve updated the site today with their latest “testimonials”.

And I’m not the only one – there’s a blog and Twitter account for those people who haven’t received theirs yet. The author ordered theirs the same day, but appears to have had a bit more of a response from the company than myself.

Now, I’m not reporting this to stop people buying – I don’t think the company is dodgy. My older daughter received one from them, and it was ordered the same day. However, when ordering online, it’s always worth checking the process for if problems do occur – just an email address is not sufficient. I’ve tried “Googling” for a phone number, but I can’t find one.

All I’m left with now is to attempt, via Google Checkout, to get a refund.

Update #1: Google Checkout contacted BMG Burp and they immediately updated my order status to say it had now been despatched. I wonder how I now go about getting a refund on the “guaranteed for Xmas” postage?

Update #2: I got home a few hours after writing the above to find it had been delivered. Strange that the status had only been set to “despatched” after it had turned up. None-the-less, and if you read the comments for this post, you’ll find that it was not send until the 31st December and the postage was a lot LESS than what I paid. I, and many others, have been taken for a ride!

Yea, I’ve been AWOL over Christmas and New Year. Who can blame me though? Spending some time with my family, only occasionally catching up on email.

But, now it’s 2010 and it’s time to get back to some work.

First off, some resolutions. No, not those “get fit” type of resolutions that don’t survive January. In this case, it’s my resolutions for what you’ll find coming up from this site in the coming year….

1. Less personal rants, unless it’s about customer service.

I think I’m a pretty fair minded person, and I think I’m not overly harsh with those who give bad customer service. None-the-less, more news-worthy rants (political, etc.) are going to reduce. Why? Well, take a look on any forum discussing similar subjects these days and you’ll find a plethora of ignorant views being spouted by people who think they know better than anyone else. And I don’t want to end up sounding like one of those people.

For example, I don’t wish to get into the recent announcement that people paying fines are going to pay £15 to subsidise support for victims of crime. Don’t get me wrong, I believe victims of crime should be supported and helped all they can. The thing is, people recieving fines rather than going to court are generally not those leaving behind victims. If I speed a little and get caught on a camera I’ll end up paying. If I speed and run someone over, I’ll end up in court and not have to pay. But which one involved a victim? Another well thought out piece of legislation.

Equally, I’m not going to rant about driving north up the M1 last Tuesday at 11am and finding that during the 20+ miles of 50mph restricted motorway there was not ONE workman present. Just some skips and temporary huts.

But I will rant, for example, about Phones4U who attempted to sell me a new mobile phone, claiming to buy out my existing contract and all for a fee no different to my current monthly cost. Only to find out later that they wanted to clobber me for a ridiculous amount each month in insurance.

I’ll also rant about Carphone Warehouse and Marks & Spencer, both of whom have not responded to customer service emails that I sent, oh, about 2 months ago.

That kind of thing.

2. More Android

Well, I still plan to get an Android phone next month, so expect lots of reviews and suggestions for accessories and software – the kind of thing I did when I got my Netbook.

I was thinking of turning my hand to Android apps, but I believe that they’re written in Java so I’ve suddenly gone off the idea.

3. More WordPress Plugins

Yes, they will continue and will come as a 2-prong attack.

First, I’ll be continueing to update and maintain the existing plugins – this will include planned updates to Simple Feed List, Simple Readbag List and Simple TTIW List (mainly around caching). I’m sure I’ll also be adding more shortening services to Simple URL Shortener as well.

Second, I’ll be releasing some new plugins.

At the moment I’m working on one to assist with embedding YouTube videos into your blog. Yes, yes, I know there are loads available. Indeed I have one installed for this site. However, all those I’ve come across are either way too complex for simple video embedding OR are nice and simple but have certain limitations (for example, playing HQ video).

And this plugin will not be part of the “Simple” range as it will include, amonst other things, an options screen.

There are a few of my existing plugins that would benefit from an options screen – if I add one, though, they will become a new plugin, developed side-by-side with the existing version.

I’ve also had a few calls for a personal plugin that I use to be made available. If you look in the sidebar (not sure which side, I keep changing it!) you should see a section named “Find me online”. Under that is a number of icons for social sites – click on these to display my profile for that site. I’ll (again) add an options screen and a lot more sites.

If anyone has any requests for any of these, let me know.

4. Updating the Online Tools

That online tools section of my site is currently a little under-utilised. I’d like to fix that, so I’ll be looking to add some more pages. I’ll also be updating those already there, especially the CSS compressor, after a recent review.

5. Arsing around with this blog’s layout

I’ve done it throughout 2009, so I may as well be upfront now