Back in November I purchased a Sony Ericsson Xperia Mini Pro Android phone as my daughter’s Christmas present. O2 had a limited offer on it at the time where you got an additional £20 voucher with it, so I snapped it up.

When I received it, I took the phone out of the box, put the SIM card in and generally checked that all seemed fine. There’s nothing worse than being given something expensive as a present only to find it a “lemon” on the day! I also took the opportunity to upgrade the phone’s firmware as well to the latest (if that goes wrong it could “brick” the phone, so doing this straight away seemed the sensible thing to me). This went well, so I packaged the phone back up.

Come Christmas, my daughter was very happy with her phone. Unfortunately, after a few hours, things turned sour. Whenever she left the phone it would lock (as it’s supposed to) but then turn itself off. A quick Google found that other users had experienced the same problem but I couldn’t find a solution. The PC software that you can use with the phone comes with a “repair” option but that refused to work (see screenshot to the right). A system reset didn’t solve the problem either. However, I did find that it didn’t turn off if the phone was charging.

Anyway, Christmas being Christmas (relatives to visit, etc) I wasn’t able to call O2 until Wednesday 29th. I rang Customer Services and they were very pleasant and happy to help. When they realised that there was nothing they could do and the phone would need changing, they put me through to their “exchange and repair” department. That’s where it went wrong. The new lady I spoke to was short with her responses, unhelpful and, unfortunately, speaking on a bad line which made the whole conversation even more difficult.

When she looked up my details she realised that I’d had the phone over a month. Therefore, it would need returning to be “repaired”. I explained that it was a Christmas present, so she said she’d speak to a manager. This seemed to take a while and when she returned she said that it was policy to wave the usual month limit in this situation¹.

Next, she told me that the phone was out of stock. Funny, they were selling it on their website. At this point they managed to find stock.

Finally, she gave me the details of where to send the phone and told me they wouldn’t send the new one until they’d received it – this may take up to 2 weeks. I sent the phone that day. The next day the new one turned up².

This phone works fine but, oddly, came with a more recent version of the firmware than the original had shipped with. None-the-less, it didn’t have the latest. BUT, I haven’t updated – I don’t know whether it was this update that caused the original issue or not. Unfortunately, I never noted the original phones initial firmware level but, for interest, the replacement phone (sans power issue) is on 4.0.2.A.0.42. The latest level is 4.0.2.A.0.58.

A return to form from O2 on their poor customer service. Meantime, I have contacted Sony Ericsson to see if they can shed any light on this problem.

1. question – if this is standard policy, why did she not say anything about this first, but speak to a manager instead? [↩]
2. obviously inept in multiple ways [↩]

At only an alpha release BlueStacks is a way to run Android Apps on Windows 7.

Simply download their software and, once installed, an Android logo will appear on your desktop as a gadget. Click on this to show a number of pre-installed gadgets. More, but not a huge selection, are also available on the BlueStacks website. The best way of getting additional apps is to install their matching Marketplace App onto your phone or tablet – from that you can transfer your existing apps to your desktop.

I didn’t try anything too taxing – a Pro version is to made available soon with more functionality – but those I did try worked really well. They all appear full screen (to an extent – depends on the size and orientation of the App) – I’d like to be able to run these in a more realistic sized window on the desktop. Maybe this is a future option.

For the time being, BlueStacks looks promising and I look forward to seeing how it develops. If you’re an Android App developer I can certainly see a great advantage in having this available.

For those that haven’t come across Usenet before, it’s a discussion and sharing system that’s been around since the 1980′s. As you can imagine, quite a lot of content has built over that time and so a product named Binverse has come along to help you easily find what you’re looking for.

It’s a commercial product costing nearly $30 a month. What you get for that, though is, their desktop client allowing quick access to particular categories of search or download. They also provide no bandwidth capping, allowing you to download as much as you can and as quickly as you can. Finally, the whole thing is totally secure, with encrypted data and no longs held by Binverse.

However, where my review is likely to go a bit differently to others is that I’m now not going to go any further into the quality of the speed or search. Instead, I’m going to concentrate on what this product is for. Illegal downloading.

I’m sure Binverse will dispute this, but I can’t see any other reason. Their categories are such as software, music, videos, etc. Bringing up the most popular results for each gives pages upon pages of pirated content. Yes, you can do a text search but this merely opens up a Google Groups search window and shows the results of that – I don’t need premium software to do that.

If you were using this to find ad-hoc unique, free software you’d probably go to the website. You’d certainly not be bothered by bandwidth and security. In fact, it’s the “no logs held by Binverse” bit that really strikes me as truly highlighting what this software is all about. If this was intended to legitimate reasons they’d be no need for this as an option.

I deplore illegal media distribution in all its forms – software, video and music piracy is wrong. If you can’t afford to buy it either don’t buy it or save up for it until you can. It’s theft and no different to stealing from the shelves of your local supermarket.

Binverse also offered me 10 free licences to offer as competition prizes on my site. Unlike other websites who should really know better, such as Windows Guides, I won’t take them up on this offer.

When I did put my issues to Binverse their answer was…

..there is plenty of legitimate content on Usenet.  And we don’t approve of nor encourage the use of Binverse for any illegal activity.

You may not approve, but you provide it and charge users for premium options to make it easier too.

Summary of Binverse

A premium desktop equivalent to Pirate Bay but with added bells and whistles. Illegal and immoral.

Reviewed by David Artiss on 8th October 2011.