...complaining about unfair charges, no less (yet again!)

BBC: Smartphones drive mobile markets

Highlights include:

• "It was a goodish year," said Bud, clearly forgetting how he had to resign from the board of PhonepayPlus due to a serious conflict in interest
• He makes special mention of the mobile services of Facebook, Bebo and MySpace - all of which are free to use and don't involve exorbitant premium rate charges from the likes of his company
• BBC: Research by Mblox showed a huge discrepancy between the amounts people using different operators in different countries will pay when downloading or browsing the web
• BBC: Few people were willing to risk downloading as they were worried about racking up huge charges. (Psst Bud, people are racking up huge charges because companies like yours don't vet the companies they do business with properly)
• "The price consumers see should be the price they pay," said Mr Bud.

If anyone needs reminding, Andrew Bud runs the company mBlox which is constantly in trouble with the regulator for things like unsolicited charges, hidden charges and other no so sporting things.  People have suffered (and continue to suffer) bill shock because of his company.  Children and pensioners have had to get rid of their PAYG mobiles because of companies like his draining the credit from them as soon as they top up.

Mr Bud, you should really get YOUR house in order before you pretend to be some kind of consumer champion and demonise other companies in the mobile arena.

The 3mobilebuzz guys are perhaps a little disappointed I've not blogged even half as much about the INQ1 they generously loaned me as I did when I received a pair of the original Skypephones last November.  It's not because I don't like the phone and it's not because I haven't been using it... On the contrary, I've been using it almost exclusively since I received it just over two weeks ago.  I'm hardly missing my N95 8GB to be honest.

When something works well you just forget about it, it blends into the background of one's life and that's kinda what it's like using it.  Sure it's not perfect, I'm not a fan of its own browser and the camera isn't all that (it's next to useless in low light so don't rely on it for party snaps) but I'm able to get past that be using Opera Mini and um, not taking pictures!

Anyway, they'll be more on my experiences with it next year and in the meantime check out this random Christmas Day picture...

Xmas day in the playroom was freaking awesome!

My last moan and winge of the year. Yay!  Who gets my New Year's Dishonours?  Why, that'll be fine folk at ASUS, makers of the vastly over-rated Eee line of mini computers, desktops and now TVs...

This really winds me up big time.  My techno-wizardess of a niece hasn't been able to use her Eee PC for the last few weeks and she's really missing it (and what's on it, like school work, projects etc).  Can you blame her?  How would any of us like to have no access to any of our files for a month?  Exactly!

So, what's up with it?  The AC adapter (aka power brick) isn't working so she can't power it from the mains or charge the battery.  Not a huge problem, you'd think.  Straight swap out?  Maybe receive a replacement adapter in a couple of days and be expected to send the faulty one back after?  Yeah, that's what I thought.  I was wrong!  Try navigating to ASUS's UK service/repairs pages and you can see for yourself just how difficult this whole process starts off.

Oh, and it doesn't get any better once you've found it (congratulations by the way if you did as an ASUS employee told me it was hidden!)  Filling in the online RMA form is torture that Saddam (or Dubya for that matter) would've been proud of.  It kept telling me I had made errors even when I clearly hadn't.  Each time I got sent back a page I had to fill in half of it all over again.

Eventually I got an email from them that detailed the returns procedure, it was clearly automated as most of it had little relevance to me.  In it they mentioned how they would send me out a bag to send it back to them in via courier.  It's been a fortnight and still no sign.  Sure there was Christmas in the way but the postie managed to deliver plenty of other things at the last minute alright.

Of course in the UK we have an automatic 12 month guarantee on such products and that is with the shop where you purchased it from but you tend to need the receipt (legally it is not required but it makes things a lot easier).  Guess who misplaced the receipt?  Yep, me!  And now, what with ASUS messing around, the laptop is now outside of the 12 months.  D'oh!  Although now I believe it has been extended to two years under certain circumstances but than can require a lot of hassle with the shop involved.  And, in any case, I'm not sure whether Toys R Us could just replace just the adapter and she can't just swap her laptop with all her stuff on it for another!

Oh well, hopefully my niece will be able to use it sometime in 2009.  C'mon ASUStek, is it really that difficult?

Eee PC power brick: 2008-2008 R.I.P.

I clearly haven't been blogging for nearly two weeks, and for a week before that hadn't blogged much either.  Despite this, and despite the whole Christmas wind-down, my traffic hasn't really dropped all that much.  Interestingly I'm getting hits from all sorts of weird and wonderful places I wouldn't normally be seeing.

That is all.

I've just found out that UK retailer Argos is selling remote-controller replicas of the DeLorean car from the Back to the Future films.  The best bit would appear to be that it is an actual time machine...

Time travel now on sale at Argos

Like it says, it's a fully functional remote control car that is uniquely built for time travel!  Anyone fancy buying one and seeing what happens?  I would, but I don't see much use for a time machine that is too small for me to get inside.

Technology is great but, like women*, it comes with a lot of hassles and sometimes you wonder if it's really worth the effort.  That's where I am right now with this mobile broadband malarky.  Is it 3?  Is it Huawei's E220 modem?  Is it the local cell tower?  Is it this Vista laptop?  I have no idea, much like women, it's a complete mystery to me... way too many variables and hard to pinpoint where to place blame.

So, that's why I've not really posted anything.  Each web page takes forever to load, this is really a trip down memory lane to 1998, although in 1998 there weren't many webpages that clocked in at over a meg!

So much for my 5 gig a month - I doubt I could use up that allowance in a few months at this rate!

*or, if you're a woman or gay, substitute women for men (as appropriate)

I don't really get the whole tech/gadget website unboxing thing, but hey, everyone's doing it so I'll join in...

It really isn't the best video in the world, the picture quality is bad and for some reason YouTube didn't think it was in widescreen.  But if you really want to see it, go ahead... knock yourself out!

Some recent nuggets from mBlox's Andrew Bud...

2009 could be a pivotal year for rich mobile content, but for this to happen, consumers need a transparent pricing mechanism to purchase rich content. Content providers need to be sure that their consumers are treated fairly

Mmm, how about consumers getting to choose whether they want 'rich' content in the first place?  Some of us don't want any so-called 'premium' content that we've not asked for.  Why not concern yourselves with that first, eh, Bud?

Ultimately we believe the price consumers see should be the price they pay. The current system of data pricing is severely restricting the growth of the mobile content market as consumers fear facing frightening bills.

Word of advice - get your own ship in order before babbling on about fairness and transparency elsewhere.

And for the rest of you, check out the following links...

Mblox: Data charging situation still hideous

The Hidden Costs of Mobile Downloads of a Music Track

and while you're at it, how about this excellent article over at Mobile Industry Review :-)

So, I'm staying with my sister for a few days and she's just moved into this lovely new place.  All's well and good except she doesn't have ADSL enabled yet (any day soon!) oh, and no Sky - but I can manage with Freeview for a week.

Anyway back to the broadband... I really do miss my crappy 2 meg at home.  Sure it's slow compared to 98% of the rest of the country, but it sure beats whatever the hell I'm getting from what is supposedly an HSDPA connection right now this minute.

To be fair though, I have a sneaky feeling there's some kind of conflict between my dongle and this Vista laptop as the same sim works fine accessing the same shoutcast streams when in a phone (her DAB reception is, as we say in England, pants).

Oh well, we'll probably be switched on tomorrow.

Yes I was that bored!  Yes it was silly.  Yes I ran out of DSes and dongles...