Rants
Boost Mobile Blackberry Curve 8330 Review
Jun 20th
Recently I have decided that I wanted to get a better phone and service than what I’ve been using for a long time, and after doing some research and trying to avoid high rates and expensive phones with contracts, I decided to take a stab at the new offering from Boost Mobile, the Blackberry Curve 8330. I was quite excited to get this phone, as I was a fan of my old CrackBerry, and wanted to have a legit BlackBerry on the service, particularly since Boost offers unlimited 3G data with a $60 per month plan. This is my review of the Blackberry Curve 8330 for Boost Mobile after trying the phone out.
The Good
The phone is stylish, and smaller than my old smart phone, the Samsung Code. I chose the BlackBerry for the plethora of apps available, at least for the things I needed. Purchasing the phone is painless, save for the price, you just pay for it and take it home, where you activate it yourself. After the phone was activated, several apps I thought I would have to hunt down on my own started getting pushed to my phone, or rather direct links to them. All the basics were there, such as AIM, Google Talk, Windows Live Messenger, Facebook, MySpace, Flickr, etc. This made it pretty simple getting setup.
I liked that messages from all my apps and services were pushed into a consolidated inbox, which did simplify things. Unfortunately, this is where the good stopped.
The Bad
After activating my phone, and paying my first month of service, the phone was still not working. No calls, no text, no internet. I had to call Boost Mobile customer support and wait for about 20 minutes, just for a rep to walk me through a process on the phone that was simple enough that it should have been included in the directions, but it wasn’t. The apps being pushed to the device was a handy feature, but it lagged the phone badly, and made it impossible to do anything else.
Reception Quality
I’ve owned a Boost Mobile phone before, and was extremely impressed at the signal quality, and the voice quality. This was not the case with the BlackBerry, as it runs on the old Sprint CDMA network. I was barely able to get a signal in my house at all, most often having 1 bar or less of reception. The ironic thing of this is that I live within a mile of the Daytona International Speedway, which is Sprint sponsored, and has Sprint towers at that location. I didn’t drop a call, but it was just a matter of time.
Internet Connection
I am probably the most irate about this feature. A main feature advertised on this phone is the ability to use Sprints 3G network for internet. Not once did this feature work. Even in major metropolitan areas, with full signal, it took several minutes to download a file that was less than half a megabyte in size. The kicker? Sprint has total 3G coverage of the entire area I live, so there is no excuse for this not working for me.
Battery Performance
The battery on this device performs extremely poorly, not even able to make it through a single day of idle use with email and AIM only running in the background. This is piss poor given that this is advertised as having over a week of stand by time. My Metro PCS Samsung Code has a constant email connection, AIM, and Facebook constantly running at all times, and after a full day of heavy use, it is rare to even see one bar drop off my battery. Impressive for a phone that costs the same and runs on a smaller network. Sadly my “3G” connection was no faster than the edge connection on my Metro PCS phone.
The Ugly
Thankfully, Best Buy lived up to their word, and they accepted a return of the phone with no restocking fee, as promised, so I can not fault them here for anything. The worst part though, is when I call Boost Mobile to cancel my account and demand a refund because I did not receive the service as I was promised, and they refused. No way, no how, even though the phone was activated less than 48 hours previous to the cancellation, would they give even a partial refund.
Bottom line? If you want to pay premium prices for a shitty phone with even shittier service, and the worst customer service experience on the planet, get this phone.
No, really, it’s horrible. Worst phone and service ever, with the exception of Sprint about 10 years ago, which is still technically the same thing, when text messages take up to a day to arrive. I can’t recommend this phone or Boost Mobile to anyone now, because I feel burned.
I’m hoping the new Sprint network is better. I have decided to wait another 10 days until Best Buy can get some more stock, and I am going to buy an HTC EVO 4G. I’ll have a contract, but it will be a working 4G phone that acts as a WiFi hotspot and runs Android.
Been burned by Boost Mobile? Want to know more? Leave a comment below.
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Is Piracy Really Killing The Music Industry? No!
Apr 26th
For more than a decade the music industry has claimed that digital piracy is the main cause for the gradual decline in revenues. However, looking at the sales data of the music industry itself shows that the disappointing income might be better explained by a third factor that is systematically ignored.
After music cassettes were introduced in the mid-70s the number of sales saw a gradual increase, until the late 80s when the CD took over in popularity. Cassettes were eventually phased out as CD sales continued to skyrocket. In music industry vocabulary one could argue that CDs killed cassettes.
Interestingly enough, this format shift was nothing new for the music industry. The exact same pattern also applied to the LP/cassette battle, with cassettes eventually taking over from LPs in the early 80s. Now, three decades after cassettes started to dominate the music business, the CD is losing ground.
This time around there is a new enemy in town, digital piracy. For nearly a decade the U.S. music industry has seen a decline in sales of physical CDs and all this time it has put the blame on digital piracy. By doing so, the labels conveniently ignore the most drastic format shift music has ever seen – the digital revolution.
With the growing popularity of the Internet, computers and most importantly MP3-players, music fans have started to trade in their CDs for MP3s and other digital files. Initially, the public had to convert CDs themselves, but in 2003 the iTunes store opened, selling over a million tracks in the first week.
With this shift from physical to digital, another important change hit the industry, one that may in part explain why the labels’ revenues in the U.S. continued to decline. With the introduction of paid downloads, consumers no longer had to buy a full album if they were only interested in two or three songs. This new freedom for consumers has dramatically changed the music sales landscape.
According to statistics taken from the RIAA shipment database, between 2004 and 2008 the number of single tracks sold in the U.S. increased by 669 percent while the number of album sales dropped 42 percent. Consequently, the income of the big labels suffered since single track sales are less profitable than full albums. As can be seen in the chart below, the number of music ‘units’ sold continues to grow rapidly nonetheless.
Music ‘units’ shipped in the United States
So where does piracy fit into this picture? Truth is, we just don’t know.
File-sharing is obviously a by-product of the digital revolution in music, but its effect on revenues has been much overstated. In every annual report that comes out, the music industry blames piracy for its troubles, even though digital sales are booming and even though these are directly competing with piracy.
We believe that the format shift from physical to digital music, and the change in buying habits that came along with it, may explain the decline in revenue more than piracy can. To back this up we’ve compared the labels’ revenues in two countries on opposite ends of the digital / physical rift, the U.S. and Germany.
Although piracy is rampant in both of these countries, the local music consumption habits are very different according to data published by IFPI. In Germany physical CDs are still very popular, with digital sales representing less than 25% of all music ‘units’ sold. In the U.S. on the other hand, digital outsells physical with 70% of all sales.
If the theory that the shift towards digital music is negatively impacting revenues holds up, then the German record labels should do much better. Indeed, between 2004 and 2008 the net revenue (in dollars) of the U.S record companies fell more than 30%, compared to less than 5% in Germany.
If the data above is not convincing enough, there is also another unexplained anomaly in the sales data.
If digital piracy is such a problem one would expect that it will mostly hurt digital sales, but these are booming instead. Many younger people don’t even own a CD-player anymore, yet the music industry sees digital piracy as the main reason for the decline in physical sales. Strange, because digital piracy would be most likely to cannibalize digital sales. This anomaly also refutes the excuse that the U.S industry could be hit more by piracy than the German.
So what does the music industry have to say about this all? TorrentFreak asked the RIAA to comment on our findings and they released the following statement.
“We’ve always said there are multiple reasons for the decline of the industry during the past ten years: Competition for the entertainment dollar. Diversification of music consumption and access. But we also think people being able to steal music online is the primary reason. Not the only, but the primary.”
We obviously have to differ with the RIAA here. The digital revolution in music has changed the entire industry by altering the consumption habits of music fans. Although piracy could also be a factor, the data we’ve seen thus far suggests that it plays only a minor role, if it has any effect at all.
Source: http://torrentfreak.com/is-piracy-really-killing-the-music-industry-no-100418/
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Gateway LT2104u Netbook and Windows 7 Starter Edition – A Review by Apoc
Feb 17th
It’s not often I find myself writing reviews for products, but every now and then, something comes along that just screams for my attention.
This Valentines day, I was fortunate enough to have a loving gift of a netbook bestowed upon me by my beloved fiancee. In fact, I was even able to pick out my own, along with a RAM upgrade. Sweet deal!
My first impressions over the first couple of days were mixed. I never had to deal with it being really bad on speed because when we picked out our netbooks from Best Buy, we were smart enough to pick up 2GB of ram each, which was installed the second I opened this thing.
I picked this one out of the bunch at the store, because after spending an hour tinkering around with all the netbooks on display, this one was determined to have the best Windows Experience Index, which strangely enough, did not improve after doubling the ram. Oh well, yet I digress.
The speed is acceptable for a netbook, and works just fine most of the time. It tends to run cool most of the time, and the battery life is more than acceptable. It comes with 802.11n wifi, which makes surfing the net quite a pleasant experience, as should be expected from a NETbook. I only had one real gripe from the beginning… the complete lack of Windows XP.
Instead, all the new netbooks at Best Buy now come with Windows 7 Starter preinstalled. This is why I am writing this review. I must warn the general public, and speak my outrage. Listen carefully now.
Windows 7 starter SUCKS.
It is horrible. I can’t even call it an operating system. Seriously, Microsoft, fuck you.
Why on Gods green earth would you make it a limitation on Windows 7 starter that you CAN NOT change the wallpaper of all things? What the FUCK? Seriously? If I could give a grade lower than F for an operating system, this one would win it. I’m serious. It is that bad.
Unfortunately, things get worse from there. After spending roughly 14 hours trying to figure out how to get a Windows XP install onto a usb thumb drive and making it boot, I finally got Windows XP pro on this thing. Only problem was, it was missing the drivers for video and sound. That kind of tends to be a big deal, so I logged into the support site for Gateway computers to download new drivers, and what do you think I found? They only provided drivers for Windows 7. For a laptop that I knew for a fact ran XP up until about a month or so ago.
I contacted Gateway customer support via email, and 6 hours later, the only response I had was a support representative asking me where I acquired my windows xp disk from.
I was pretty upset at this point (no, fuck upset, I was raging) and responded to the rep that my source of windows xp was completely irrelevant to them sending me a link to download some drivers for the laptop I JUST bought from them. A couple hours later I heard back and they basically refused to provide me with drivers, even after I told them if I didn’t get them I was going to return the netbook for a refund.
I will not be buying from Gateway again. The worst part of the experience? The preinstalled recovery partition is corrupt and doesn’t work, so I’m pretty much on my own there.
I don’t recommend purchasing this netbook for anyone who isn’t very tech savvy, and very patient. It will drive them nuts. But I suppose if someone is willing to just accept the limitations of windows 7 starter, and just use it as-is, it’s a fine product.
Read between the lines: The hardware is good, but the operating system and the customer support are horrible.
So this one gets a big middle finger to both Microsoft (especially them) and Gateway. Learn the lesson. Don’t put such hefty restrictions on an already expensive product, and if somebody asks you for help with the $300+ product you just bought 2 days ago, GIVE IT TO THEM.
Fortunately for me, I am tech savvy, and I did have the patience, and I finally did manage to track down windows xp drivers from, of all places, the hardware manufacturer’s web sites, Gateway, how hard would it have been to just send me there?
Note: I will be posting another article later explaining just HOW to get Windows XP on a thumb drive, get it installed on your netbook, and will provide the drivers needed for this one on my web site, just so all of you don’t have to spend hours hunting it all down too. Unfortunately, tools like PeToUSB did not work for me, and I expect many others to encounter the same problems.
UPDATE! Tutorial for installing Windows XP on this laptop
Ok, so this turned out to be a rather popular article, if the page hits and comments are any indication! Now for me to make good on my word and provide a step-by-step for everyone else to follow.
Step 1
You need a copy of Windows XP, and I recommend searching torrent sites for a Windows XP Black Edition release, since they are well put together and clean, and is what I used for this netbook. They are basically an n-Lite version prepackaged with some good freeware utilities.
Step 2
There is no need to mount the .iso using Daemon Tools or any other program. Simply use WinRar or any other compatible archiving program to extract the contents of the disc on to your drive.
Step 3
Download WinSetupFromUSB and install it.
Step 4
Run WinSetupFromUSB, and it should look like this:
Step 5
Under Windows 2000/XP/2003 Source, select the folder that your windows install cd (i386, etc) is located in. (The folder you extracted the .iso to)
Step 6
Select the target USB thumb drive. I picked up a PNY 4GB thumb drive from Wal-Mart for about $12, but anything with 2GB or better will work fine. Note: It may or may not be necessary to format the thumb drive as FAT using Windows prior to this. Usually, the RMPrepUSB button will format the thumb drive just fine.
Step 7
Click GO! This process can take a while, depending on your hardware. Do not interrupt it or remove the drive at any time during this process.
Step 8
Enter the BIOS of the netbook, and be sure it is set to boot from USB. Mine was already automatically set to this, so odds are good yours will be too.
Step 9
Insert the thumb drive into your netbook with it powered off, and turned it on. You should see a “press any key to boot from CD” option or something similar.
Step 10
Proceed as normal with XP installation. In some cases, you may not be able to install to the C:\ drive. This is OK and will not impact anything. Sometimes the default restore partition will insist on being the C:\ drive, just create a new partition, and format as NTFS, then install to the new partition.
Step 11
The first part of the XP install will finish, and the computer will reboot. There is no need to press any key on boot this time, but DO NOT REMOVE the thumb drive yet. If you do, you can cause serious problems. Instead you will be presented with a special menu provided by WinSetupFromUSB, providing about 5 or 6 options to pick from. Start at the top option, and press enter. These options are presented because of the variable “accidents” that can happen from this sort of hack. If the first one does not work, reboot again, and select the second, and so forth. The 3rd option worked great for me.
Step 12
Let XP finish it’s install, and then you just need to track down the drivers. Gateway, unfortunately, is no help at all in this department. Simply open device manager, and go to the vendor web sites for the hardware, and download the updates yourself. Windows update might be able to grab some for you too. I recommend grabbing the Intel On-board Video drivers first, since it will make things easier.
DON’T PANIC
Assuming you use this method on the Gateway LT2104u, using the Windows XP Black install, you will have wireless and LAN drivers, and pretty much all the stuff you will need to be able to get the other drivers off the internet. If I can track down where I backed mine up, I will zip them up and post them here for download later.
Step 13
Enjoy Windows XP on your new netbook! It runs much better than Windows 7 Starter does, and can probably run more apps.
Notes: This tutorial is not entirely specific to the Gateway LT2104u, and should work on most computers, as well as desktops. If this is too much for you, your other option is to buy a usb cd drive (I got a cd-r/w drive on ebay for $20 with shipping) and proceed to install Windows as normal.
I hope this helps!
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Dude, Seriously? Fuck Haiti
Jan 21st
I’m not an asshole. Really, I’m not. But I get sick to my stomach when I see Americans make such a big deal over things happening in another country.
Why?
Don’t we have enough of our own problems?
Even after 9/11 we started dropping a mixture of bombs and food packages over Afghanistan, and for what? To help the same people we’re fucking in the ass?
Do you have any idea how much money has been spent helping these other countries when we have the same problems here in the USA?
Kids everywhere are homeless, starving, and dying, and we’re told that the Haitians need the help more than these kids do? I don’t buy it.
The truth is, things haven’t changed that much for Haiti. They’re used to these conditions.
I’m having a hard time feeling sympathetic. Why do people care so much?
And why are we taking these people in?
The last thing we needed was more immigrants here. And now we’re gonna spend more money on them. Not the government, but us.
We will be taxed for it. Why don’t I get a say so in these matters if I have to pay for it?
I know these photos are in poor taste. They’re intended to make light of a serious situation. If you giggled a little bit, even on the inside, I urge you to think deeper. Screw them! Where’s the help for our fellow Americans?
You knew it had to happen.
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