These things they're a mystery to me too
Aug. 10th, 2004 10:15 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ventaIn a somewhat bathetic ending, the crashing epic saga of my attempts to get my laptop repaired (part 1 and part 2) has drawn to a close.
Saga Part the Third isn't terribly exciting reading - they picked up the notebook when they said they would, fixed it properly, delivered it back in five days.
However, because I'm a grumpy old git, I'll still be writing to complain to them about the service I had. What can I reasonably grumble about, though ?
The time it took them, obviously. They had my laptop for 2 months when they promised 7-10 days. They never once contacted me to update me on what was going on, I had to chase them up every couple of weeks.
One of the reasons given for the delay was the ordering of the new motherboard - yet I think they actually repaired the old one, not replaced it. The other reason was that they were dealing with red tape from their own insurance company: I need to work out a polite way of saying "I don't see why this should be made to be my problem".
When it was first returned to me, it was obvious that no one had bothered to check it, since the volume wheel they'd replaced didn't actually work.
They didn't warn me that they'd completely wipe my hard drive and reinstall Windows - as I said before, I'm not particularly surprised at this, I just feel they should warn people. And, incidentally, to those who suggested that perhaps they'd ghosted on an up-to-date version of Windows: when I first went on line... 53 critical updates.
Hmm. Anything else ? If I'm going to get my green crayon out to write a letter, I might as well have a really good go at them :)
And now, of course, I get to play the exciting game of trying to set all the right options to get XP to behave sensibly, and look nice. And the other game of downloading everything, ever, and setting it all up.
So... While my laptop was away, I changed email addresses, and the mail provider I now use (http://fastmail.fm) provides IMAP. I followed Fastmail's remarkably comprehensive instructions for setting Eudora up, and... well, it kind if works.
But:
I can't seem to send mail from Eudora and have it place itself properly into the IMAP mailbox. I have only one personality (<Dominant>) set up, which is instructed to send mail via Fastmail's SMTP server, and pick it up via IMAP. If I send mail from Eudora, it just ends up in the ordinary "Out" folder, instead of in the <Dominant> Mailbox's "Sent". If I log into Fastmail via their web interface, the mail I sent doesn't show up there either (I wouldn't expect it to, since it hasn't been stored in the right mailbox.)
Also, sending mail seems to send it straight away, not queue it in the Outbox to be sent later, which is not how I'm used to Eudora behaving. I don't know if this is a feature of using IMAP, or just a random quirk/unchecked option somewhere.
I have Eudora set up to poll for new mail every ten minutes when I'm online. However, in order to get it to "see" new mail which has arrived in my IMAP mailbox, I have to manually ask it to resynchronise the mailbox. Again, is this a feature of IMAP, or can I get it to behave more sensibly ? I'd like it to treat my IMAP mailbox as if it were a standard POP mailbox, and just show me any new mail that's arrived in the last ten minutes.
Lastly - and this is most annoying, since I'd expect it to be trivial to fix - my "Sent" folder displays for each mail therein a "Who" field. In all other mailboxes the Who field shows the mail's sender, which is what you want. In "Sent", though, I know who the sender is - me - and I'd like to be shown the recipient instead. (Please only answer this question if you know about Eudora - things like "well, you do it like this" in OE aren't helpful :) I know how to do it in OE.)
And I don't like the iconset in Eudora 6.1 - it's much more garish and ugly than the last version of Eudora I had (6.0, I think). I'm not expecting anyone to do anything about this, though :)
Saga Part the Third isn't terribly exciting reading - they picked up the notebook when they said they would, fixed it properly, delivered it back in five days.
However, because I'm a grumpy old git, I'll still be writing to complain to them about the service I had. What can I reasonably grumble about, though ?
The time it took them, obviously. They had my laptop for 2 months when they promised 7-10 days. They never once contacted me to update me on what was going on, I had to chase them up every couple of weeks.
One of the reasons given for the delay was the ordering of the new motherboard - yet I think they actually repaired the old one, not replaced it. The other reason was that they were dealing with red tape from their own insurance company: I need to work out a polite way of saying "I don't see why this should be made to be my problem".
When it was first returned to me, it was obvious that no one had bothered to check it, since the volume wheel they'd replaced didn't actually work.
They didn't warn me that they'd completely wipe my hard drive and reinstall Windows - as I said before, I'm not particularly surprised at this, I just feel they should warn people. And, incidentally, to those who suggested that perhaps they'd ghosted on an up-to-date version of Windows: when I first went on line... 53 critical updates.
Hmm. Anything else ? If I'm going to get my green crayon out to write a letter, I might as well have a really good go at them :)
And now, of course, I get to play the exciting game of trying to set all the right options to get XP to behave sensibly, and look nice. And the other game of downloading everything, ever, and setting it all up.
So... While my laptop was away, I changed email addresses, and the mail provider I now use (http://fastmail.fm) provides IMAP. I followed Fastmail's remarkably comprehensive instructions for setting Eudora up, and... well, it kind if works.
But:
I can't seem to send mail from Eudora and have it place itself properly into the IMAP mailbox. I have only one personality (<Dominant>) set up, which is instructed to send mail via Fastmail's SMTP server, and pick it up via IMAP. If I send mail from Eudora, it just ends up in the ordinary "Out" folder, instead of in the <Dominant> Mailbox's "Sent". If I log into Fastmail via their web interface, the mail I sent doesn't show up there either (I wouldn't expect it to, since it hasn't been stored in the right mailbox.)
Also, sending mail seems to send it straight away, not queue it in the Outbox to be sent later, which is not how I'm used to Eudora behaving. I don't know if this is a feature of using IMAP, or just a random quirk/unchecked option somewhere.
I have Eudora set up to poll for new mail every ten minutes when I'm online. However, in order to get it to "see" new mail which has arrived in my IMAP mailbox, I have to manually ask it to resynchronise the mailbox. Again, is this a feature of IMAP, or can I get it to behave more sensibly ? I'd like it to treat my IMAP mailbox as if it were a standard POP mailbox, and just show me any new mail that's arrived in the last ten minutes.
Lastly - and this is most annoying, since I'd expect it to be trivial to fix - my "Sent" folder displays for each mail therein a "Who" field. In all other mailboxes the Who field shows the mail's sender, which is what you want. In "Sent", though, I know who the sender is - me - and I'd like to be shown the recipient instead. (Please only answer this question if you know about Eudora - things like "well, you do it like this" in OE aren't helpful :) I know how to do it in OE.)
And I don't like the iconset in Eudora 6.1 - it's much more garish and ugly than the last version of Eudora I had (6.0, I think). I'm not expecting anyone to do anything about this, though :)
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2004-08-10 07:16 am (UTC)"Preinstalled" would mean, um, installed previously. Your copy of Windows that arrived with the machine would qualify. Microsoft refers to a "preinstalled" copy as an OEM (Original Equipment Manufacturer) copy. It could also concievably mean corporate copies which all use the same license key, and are simply copied/imaged onto identical machines by the hundreds. Similar end result (on first boot, Windows is already there installed) but slightly different licensing.
The difference is just a licensing one. Well, it was until Windows XP, which has some fun Product Activation which ties teh hardware to the license key.
Speaking of license keys, they're stored in the registry. And the OEM ones tend to have "OEM" in them somewhere (well, they did last time I had a look - back in the Windows 2000 days) - so that's a bit of a giveaway. You could find out if the copy of Windows had changed by just reading the correct registry key and comparing it with a copy of the key you took when you installed.
Whilst this doesn't tell you if this is the "Nth" install, it does tell you if someone re-installed with a different copy of Windows - which would be the point of such copy protection.
For extra belts and braces, they could report this back to some kind of central server - storing the license number of this copy of the software along with a hash of your Windows license key. If you move to a different version of Windows, BANG! - The software stops working. So you would absolutely have to re-install the correct version with the correct license key.
Whilst this approach wouild arguably work, it is equally arguable that it's a big pile of toss that no company with a care for its customers would even consider. People do upgrade their operating systems, after all...
no subject
Date: 2004-08-10 07:25 am (UTC)In this case, then, had I had such a pernickety mp3/minidisc player, I would have been in trouble.
The first time my laptop was returned I had to do that funky XP activation thing, and it failed because the product key had changed. I had to press even more buttons in their crazy phone system to get given a new product key.
You're right, though, it does seem a little unreasonable to demand that someone never ungrades their OS.
no subject
Date: 2004-08-10 07:51 am (UTC)Especially if the software making this demand is only there to make smiorgian's minidisc player work - anyone using it must have paid for a minidisc player somewhere along the line.
no subject
Date: 2004-08-10 03:48 pm (UTC)However, I'd bet that I know what happened. Having invested a lot of money in their own proprietary audio encoding system for MiniDisc (ATRAC, if I recall correctly) the company was probably reluctant to let just anyone use it to encode music.
So they applied some draconian protection, thinking that this was better.
It almost makes sense from that perspective.
If you completely forget the customer, and focus only on your own intellactual property problems, that is... :-(
no subject
Date: 2004-08-10 03:46 pm (UTC)Grr. Sorry - this sort of slapdash work makes IT administrators like me angry!
(Oh, and I'm drunk. Which probably does't help.)
I'd say that they cocked up. Silly damned fools. *grumbles*
Definitely something to ask about in that letter... ;-)