Ali Kuru

Remember my complaint about how slow is DealExtreme? I wrote in a post that it would probably take more than hundred days for them to deliver my item, and I think I owe them an apology now. I forgot to mention that my item has been arrived last Saturday, 2^nd of April to be exact, which means the DealExtreme were able to deliver my item in exactly 100 days, not more :)

Congratulations to them for sucking a little less than I expected.

I’m using Firefox for almost 6 years now – since the v1.0 – and consider myself a fan but, after the 4th stable, I’m thinking that it may be the time for me to migrate to a better browser, like Chrome. Actually this is not the first time I’m thinking to switch to Chrome, which attracted my attention even from it’s initial release. Only thing preventing me is its lack of native proxy management, particularly SOCKS support. Hope they implement that future soon and save me from Firefox.

Anyway, here are the problems I’m encountering with Firefox 4 so far:

• It is slow.
  I read everywhere how fast Firefox 4 is, beats this on X test, smokes that on Y etc. Unfortunately, this is not the case for me. In my experience, Firefox 4 is a memory hungry piece of junk. I don’t care how fast is its new javascript engine or how effective its fancy hardware acceleration techniques, if it needs to consume more than half of the installed memory on my system to do that. I’m getting hard time to understand how a software, which drives the system to a swapping death, can be considered “fast”?
  I know, Firefox may seem slower to me because of my old PC and the plugins I’m using, but I’m not going to accept these as excuses. If I’m able to use the latest version of Chrome (+plugins) without any problems on the same computer and was satisfied with the performance of the previous version of Firefox, it’s the Mozilla to blame, not my PC.
• It fails to render Helvetica fonts correctly.
  Although it has been a known issue in the beta releases, looks like Mozilla didn’t care to fix it in the stable. Annoying.
• F6 is not working.
  I like using keyboard shortcuts and F6 was one of my favorites. It’s function was ( and still is on other major browsers like Safari, Chrome and Opera) to highlight the address bar for input. Now it only selects the current tab. Useless and annoying.

DealExtreme is one of those Hong Kong online retailers which you can find a lot of goodies at no price with free shipping. I’ve bought a lot of things from them in the past and, although their service was little bit slower than usual when considered to local sources, I was overall happy with their service. Their support were able respond you in a couple of days and they always returned with a reasonable solution.

Unfortunately, they appear to left those good days far behind.
(more…)

You’ve got yourself a copy of Wheelman, installed on your PC, but couldn’t make the game pass the grey start menu? Well, then you’ve probably have a PC with ATI graphics card and installed latest ATI drivers, as it’s been suggested at Wheelman readme.txt.

Bad news is Wheelman hangs on the start menu screen with the latest ATI drivers. Good news is downgrading your graphic cards drivers to previous versions can solve your problem.

I had ATI Catalyst v9.8 installed on my PC, which has a Sapphire ATI 4850, when I installed Wheelman, and it failed. Than I’ve tried the latest v9.9 (as of 11th of September, 2009), and it failed too. After that, I digged into Google and found a guy with the same problem, who told on the Ubisoft forums that downgrading the driver worked for him. I have uninstalled the latest drivers and installed v9.2, as he suggested, and game started working fine :)

You can download old drivers from AMD website here, if you are having the same problem.

This is kind of late reporting and I’m sorry about it. I was really busy at work and couldn’t create much time for an update. Anyway, it is always better late than never, right? So, here is the rest of the story;

A week after I blogged about the Philips customer service’s approach to my problem with my Philips earphones, a friend advised that “Why don’t you file a dispute at the local commission of consumer problems arbitrators at the district governorship? It’s a much more effective way than writing on about your problem on your web, just let the officials deal with them”. And I thought “Why not?”. (more…)

I like Philips, and I’ve never thought twice while buying their goods. Not only I trust their quality, I also recommend their products to everyone around me. But the company officials severed my trust to Philips last week. Here is the story;

I’ve bought a pair of Philips earphones (SHE 3600) 6 months ago and, because they use a weak adhesive material putting it on while manufacturing, the rubber cover of the left earphone dropped last week. Since it is impossible to wear the naked earphone because of the uncovered sharp edges after the rubber cover dropped, I’ve decided to call Philips for help. I thought that 2 years warranty Philips offered is still valid, why not use it?

I called the toll free number written on the warranty and they gave me the number of the local service center.

I told my problem to the Philips representative at the local service center. She told me that “because the dropped part is an accessory, Philips doesn’t produce any replacements for it”. After a few seconds of shock, I told her back; “How could this part is considered as an accessory? It’s impossible to use the earphone without it because of the underlying sharp edges. If it is preventing my usage with its absence, then it is obviously a necessary part for the functioning of the earphone!”. Then I told her that if they are not producing spares for this part, they should replace the earphones. She told me that they can’t replace the earphones unless the sound is problematic or there is no sound coming.

After I felt the dead end, I left the service center and called the Philips customer care again, and told them her response to my problem. The lady on the line approved their approach to my problem and told me pretty much the same things. I told her that it’s written on the warranty that the “whole product, including all parts, is under warranty of Philips”. She told me that the warranty only covers “malfunctions”. Meaning; only sound complaints about the Phillips earphones are considered worth giving repairs or replacements under the warranty, according to Philips.

Well, that sucks.

I always believe that there are little or no differences between products of competing well-known consumer electronics brands and what makes a company “big” in its league is the customer support.

I can understand not producing spares for a product which itself retails between $15-20. But, if you are offering 2 years warranty to that cheap-labored product, you must at least show the courtesy of offering new one instead of lowering your reputation, which doesn’t come easy.

Yesterday Disqus commenting system has launched an update, and previously reported Facebook Connect caused messy statistics issue showed itself again with upgraded WordPress plugin. Since workaround offered at Disqus blog is not working anymore, I’ve tried to fix things manually.

Disqus plugin tells Facebook Connect to look for the xd_receiver.htm at the Disqus plugin directory with the variable facebookXdReceiverPath. Problem is, Disqus plugin doesn’t ship with the xd_receiver.htm, and that’s why Facebook Connect’s attempts to reach this file are returning with errors, and causing statistics mess.

Here is my solution;

1. Remove the previous workaround code, if you’re still using it.
2. Download the xd_receiver.html file here (right click and save as) and change its extension from “.html” to “.htm”.
3. Upload the renamed file to your Disqus WordPress plugin directory (to /wp-content/plugins/disqus-comment-system).
4. You’re done.

Hope you find it useful.

Update: Disqus team repacked the plugin with the previously missing xd_receiver.htm. Just update the plugin and your problem will be solved.