Having recieved my first iMac last week I can honestly say I’ll never look back. This my unbiased review of my iMac and OSX.

I wish I made the decision to switch to using a Mac years ago. I’ve been using Windows for the last 10 years and OSX has managed to undo any ties I’ve had to that OS in less than a week.
Read on »

Just got my new 24″ iMac. It arrived here in the office a short time ago and I am soooo impressed right now. Apple really know how to do style, even just the packaging of the whole thing.

From using pc’s all my life I’ve never really understood that it truly is possible to take this machine out of the box, plug it in and start doing whatever it is that I want to do.

Two words…Vista who?

I ordered my new iMac yesterday. They said it’ll be 3 days before it’s shipped because I wanted the gpu boosted to the 256mb model instead of the 128mb one. After that it should be on it’s way. I’d say I’ll have it by next wednesday at the latest.

I just can’t wait. I’ve always hated waiting for stuff that I’ve ordered online. I want my new toy now dammit

I stumbled across Google’s calculator, unit and currency conversion features tonight by pure accident.
I never knew they existed, some of you might not be aware either so I thought I’d share my little discovery.

Google’s search can do simple math, unit and currency conversions. No frills, just quick answers. I like it.

Have a look here for more information on these features.

I’m going to go off topic for a moment. I’m allowed to. It’s my blog.

I was just watching American Idol there with my girlfriend. I’ll watch The X-Factor when it kicks off in the UK soon aswell it’s a good show.

However, I’d like to propose a change in format to the show because it is kind of drawn out. People don’t like to admit it but Simon Cowell is usually right . He knows what he is talking about. The other two judges on either the UK or US show are just there to fill seats. More often than not they dont have the guts to make any really honest criticism.

So… I think the judging panel should be reduced to just two judges, Simon Cowell and Jack Bauer and let the entire show run it’s course in 24 hours.

No bullshit.

—End of Rant—

I’ve had my gripes with Vista before. Still I came to the conclusion at that point that I could live with Vista’s shortcomings because the interface is pretty. I know that’s kind of juvenile but still. Now I’m changing my mind. I’m slow close to switching back to XP now. Just copying files is ridiculous.

Vista takes an age to do even some of the smallest file copy operations.

I thought it was just my own machine at first, it has a few years under it’s belt but I know for certain copying files was faster on my home pc under XP than it is now with Vista. I mentioned it to a friend of mine during the week who has Vista running on a brand spanking new laptop with a really hot spec. He still noticed the same problem. Also after a little digging I’ve found loads of people have the same problem but there’s no sign of an explanation let alone a solution.

If anyone knows anything about this I’d love to hear from you, because this has me stumped. And very annoyed.

Update:
Many people have reported good results from disabling Remote Differential Compression. To do this go to Control Panel / Add Remove Programs / Turn off Windows features -> Untick Remote Differential Compression.
Thanks to Tarique Naseem for the tip.

Although Windows Vista is recommended by various PC users, some of them are not happy with the file copying speed offered by the software. Undoubtedly, Microsoft computers software has been regarded as the outstanding in every field and its web server software has always been stable on Windows based computers. However, it can not be guaranteed as to which complex module of the commerce software such as tax software can go well with the specialized needs of some users because of the huge number of variables involved as is the case with almost every piece of finance software. With the incredible potential of the Internet, it is exceedingly easy to download software which has made it a must to have an updated copy of norton antivirus to remain up and running all the time and sufficient software patents to be in place.

Via Tom Raftery

Just found this article about providing Remarkable Customer Service through Tom Raftery’s blog and I wanted to help push it around.

Before my current job, I worked for AOL UK Member Services. I learned, over my 4 years there, how to deal with almost any kind of customer (there’s always one that stumps you though). A lot of it came fairly naturally to me, I rarely met an irate customer whose satisfaction and inner calm couldn’t be restored. I never really thought about what it was about the way I dealt with customers that made me a good customer service agent but having read Joel Spolsky’s recent post, Seven steps to remarkable customer service, I recognise a lot of familiar concepts.

If you deal with customers in any facet of your job I recommend that you read his article, take it all in, and apply what you’ve learned to your daily work. It will honestly make your day go more smoothly and your customers will rave about you and your service.

I wrote about a problem with accessing certain areas of the Vodafone.ie website recently.

Well the problem is fixed now only 3 weeks (smell the sarcasm) from when I initially noticed the issue. I’ve been in contact with their customer services over the last two weeks and finally a girl I spoke to yesterday seemed to be able to light a fire under somebody to get this sorted. Thank you kind customer care agent whose name I can’t recall.

I was impressed with the courtesy and professionalism of all Vodafone Ireland’s customer care staff that I dealt with however I do think that their background processes need to be reviewed, where online tech issues are concerned at least. Three weeks to escalate the problem to the right people just doesn’t cut it.

I signed up for a Tradedoubler Pull account last week, as bloggers do It’d be nice to make a few Euros on the side.

This blog was accepted for the Dell IE program today so I set about what I thought would be the very simple task of selecting what size ads I wanted to display, pick a few keywords perhaps and choose a style or two, then copy the code into my site. Wrong.

Tradedoubler’s Ad Management feature is in no way intuitive. I figured it out in the end but in fairness I’m a web designer, if I didn’t eventually get it then there’s no hope for the average user. I will say that once you do figure it out the process of creating an ad unit is fairly straightforward, sort of, but you shouldn’t have to go through all this head scratching just to publish a few ads in your blog.

So this is my problem with Tradedoubler. Did they put their Ad Management tool through any sort of a usability test before letting people at it. If they did, did those users have some sort of Divine Inspiration™ plugin for Firefox that I haven’t heard about yet?

The whole process is begging to be broken down into short fool-proof steps. I understand that a lot of bloggers are very computer literate and will probably get there in the end, but I’d be willing to bet that a large number of people sign in once, shriek and then leave, never to return again. Some simple changes to the workflow and user interface could vastly improve Tradedoublers user experience. A bit of effort is all that’s needed and it bothers me when I see a half assed attempt from people who really do have the money to throw at usability testing.

I’d also like to add that Dell aren’t helping the situation either by providing a fairly useless bunch of graphical ads. Come on, if you want people to advertise for you, at least give us some formats that we can use! I have heard that Apple’s ad program is much better and provides nice ads in all sorts of useable sizes.

The only thing consistent about Vodafone.ie recently seems to be its broken self service. For a week now I’ve been trying to access their self service area to upgrade my pricing plan and get a new handset.

Vodafone, call me insane, but I’ve been trying surprisingly hard to give you some more of my money for the last week and you’re not making it very easy for me.

I’d like to thank you for the very informative MM-UP-01 and PP-CPP-01 error messages that I’ve been getting for the last week.

As helpful as they may be to your developers and admins, would it hurt that much to have a user friendly error message and dare I say it, an ETR perhaps?

I’d like to point out at this point that Vodafone’s customer care staff have been as helpful as they possibly can. But they can only help so much with limited information. Somewhere up the line somebody knows there is a problem; tell your agents what it is and when it’ll be fixed, it makes the inconvenience that much more bearable when they can confidently deal with your problem and reassure you that the problem will be fixed within a given timeframe. It makes the agents life so much easier too.

I know 100% uptime just isn’t possible, problems will always find a way to crop up. What keeps customers happy is how quickly you handle those problems and that you dont keep us in the dark while you do it.