Jon Kunze’s Blog

When all else fails, offer your competitors product!

I thought this story was hilarious, and just goes to show you that calling Microsoft Technical Support can result in a really good outcome! My good friend Danny wrote it for the news website newsvine.com. Unfortunately, Newsvine is still in beta, so I had to cut and paste the article here instead of linking to it. If you’d like an invite, I have about 20 left, so just leave a comment with your email address and I’ll send one to you, first come, first serve. Enjoy!

When all else fails, offer your competitor’s product!

Mon Jan 30, 2006 5:32 PM EST

dannywsu

I have a friend that has been battling with a Internet Explorer issue for weeks now. For some reason, he can’t view any webpages through the browser.

He has been on the phone with Microsoft Tech Support for several hours each business day for the last two weeks, each time talking to a different person who attempted to help him fix the problem. Today, Microsoft Tech Support came to a resolution.

There resolution was to download and install Mozilla Firefox! Tech Support said they didn’t know what the problem was or how to fix it, but they said that since Firefox isn’t as popular, it doesn’t get attacked by malware as much as Internet Explorer and they suspect my friend’s problem has to do with malware taking over or modifying his Internet Explorer settings.

I personally would’ve taken my backup files, formatted the hard drive and reinstalled Windows two weeks ago, but my friend didn’t want to go through the pain of restoring all of his settings and information. But leave it to Microsoft to offer up their competition as a fix for a security problem within their software.

Finally got my Xbox 360 — Thanks Digg.com!

Yesterday, I finally managed to get my hands on an Xbox 360, and it’s mostly thanks to Digg.com.

I decided a while back that I wanted to get an Xbox 360, but I didn’t want to go to the extremes of some people by waiting over night or more outside of retailers. So I began making calls every few days to my local Wal-Mart to try to locate a unit for sale. This just never seemed to pay off, because my local Wal-Mart was only get 5-6 units with each shipment. Then I found this article on digg.com.

I started checking all of the Best Buy locations nearby, and many times they had them in stock. I would then call them, and find out that they only had a few units, and I couldn’t justify leaving work early and probably not making it to Best Buy in time. That all changed yesterday.

I got on the web site, and noticed that a Best Buy location that is about 40 miles away from where I work had them in stock. I gave them a call, expecting to either be told that it was an error on their site, or to be told that they had 1-2 units left, and know that there was no way I could make it in time. When I finally managed to get someone on the phone, he told me that they had 9 units left, all premium units. I thanked him, and sat at my computer thinking about whether it was worth it to chance it to leave. My subconscious must have kicked in, because I looked up at my computer screen, and realized that I had already hit the shutdown button on Windows. I then made a bee line to my car.

I punched in the address on my navigation unit, and it estimated the time to travel was about 50 minutes. I decided that if I was going to give this a shot, then I needed to bend the rules a little bit. So I decided to run a little bit faster on the highway that I usually would (actually, quite a bit faster). I made it to the store in 32 minutes flat.

As I was walking into the store, I asked the Loss Prevention person at the door if they still had any units. He was most informative, basically telling me to head to the games section and check with them, because he had no clue. I walked back, and noticed that the one department worker was surrounded by about 5 people. I grabbed him while he was talking to these other people, and asked him if they still had any units in stock. I told me that they still had 5 units in stock. I politely told him to give me one of those damn things! He went back to get my unit, and started in on the Product Replacement Plan pressure. Surprisingly though, all he said was here’s what it is, and if you want it, get it, and if you don’t, don’t. I was very happy with the treatment that I got from this gentleman. He then escorted me to the cashier, and thanks to a new Best Buy card, I was able to get the unit and a second controller with a no interest plan. That was just icing on the cake

I took it home, got it all hooked up, and got to play some Madden ’06, as well as checked out the X3 and Mission Impossible 3 trailers in 720p (Very nice!).

Again, a big thanks to Digg.com, and the Digg community for all their great posts to tracking sites. I wouldn’t have this unit if this article hadn’t been posted.

I’ve attached a few pics of the unit all setup and working (Tera was playing Hexic HD at the time:

Skype and House Shopping

This weekend was a fun weekend. While I continue to procrastinate getting my new website up and running, I did manage to try out a program called Skype.

Skype was recently bought by Ebay, and basically lets you make phone calls over the internet. If you want to call someone else on skype, then it is totally free. If you want to call pretty much any phone number anywhere in the world it’s about 1.7¢ per minute.

But that’s not all… the best part is you can hold teleconferences with more than 2 people. Myself, Danny, and Rodney spent the better part of an hour talking on Saturday, and it was awesome. I definately recommend you check it out, it’s well worth the download.

Also, I spent most of the day Sunday looking at houses around Logan County. This is in addition to the builder that I talked to last week. I think I’m going to try to meet with some banks this week and start the ball rolling on a home loan approval. Hopefully in a few months I’ll be able to write a blog entry about my new house

Until next time!

The Joy of Pay Day

Friday’s are nice, but pay day Fridays are all the better.

I think this weekend I’ll be migrating this server to another host, as there are hopefully some new things coming on this server. Time will tell, but keep checking here for any announcements about this new venture.

Great News for Future Dual Booters (Such as Myself)

Apple is not going to do anything to thwart users from installing Windows on their new Intel based line of computers. I cannot wait to be running OSX and Windows in the same machine
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10794396/from/RS.3/

Even Better Than Expected

Like I said in my earlier posting, I was excited to see Intel Powered iBooks, but I was really waiting on a desktop model. Well, without further ado, here it is (a live script of Steve Jobs’ Keynote from MacWorld Expo on engadget.com):

1:07 PM - “The biggest news this year, of course, is we announced that we were going to shift to using Intel processors in Macs.  We announced that by June of ’06 we would be shipping … ”

1:09 PM - “I wanted to give you an update today – how are we doing?”

1:10 PM - An Intel clean-room-suit guy walks out of a cloud of smog with a 12″ silicon wafer and says, “Steve I want to report that Intel’s ready. “  Takes off his his helmet — it’s Paul Otellini Intel CEO.

1:10 PM - Steve: “Well, I can report that Apple’s ready too”

1:11 PM - “We’ve worked nights, weekends to make this happen in record time. [to Paul] I want to thank you…”

1:12 PM - Boilerplate keynote act here except for when Paul quotes Bob Noyes, the forgotten Intel cofounder, “Don’t be encumbered by history.” They shake hands. We’ve got the camera locked and loaded.

1:12 PM -  ”So … today we are gonna roll out the first Mac with an Intel processor.”

1:13 PM -  ”Without any more fanfare, it is the iMac” It looks the same as it does now.

1:14 PM -  He’s recapping how great the iMac is. He’s quoting future Engadget writer Walt Mossberg, “It’s the gold standard of desktop PCs. We;re going to put an Intel processor inside an iMac.”

1:14 PM -  ”We’re going to offer it in the same sizes, 17 and 20-inch.  We’re going to offer it in the same award winning design.  We’re going to offer it with the same features. We’re going to offer it for the same prices. So what’s different?”

1:14 PM - ”We are building in … the new Intel Core Duo. Each of these processors is faster than the G5, and there’s two of ‘em.”

1:16 PM -Chart of specs: SPECint_rate2000 of 32.6, that’s 3.2x faster than old iMac. SPECfp_rate2000: 27.1 for a 2.1x boost. Every iMac has now got dual processors.

I can’t wait to get one of these and dual boot that bad boy

EDIT

I spoke too soon, they’re going to be shipping the power books too!

1:28 PM - “You know, there’s been this pesky little problem with PowerBooks…”

1:29 PM - “We’ve been trying to shoehorn a G5 into a powerbook.  We’ve tried everyting.  We’ve consulted every [slide of the pope, huge laughs] …” Steve’s going to explain the enigmatic Performance per Watt metric.1:30 PM - PowerPC: 0.23 rating.  Core Duo: 1.05. “Today we are introducing … the MacBook Pro”

Holy shit, this is awesome.

MacWorld Expo 2006

Today kicks off the anual MacWorld Expo in San Francisco, and it’s probably the first year I’ve ever been excited for it. Rumor has it, Apple will be introducing new Power Books that run on Intel Dual Core processors, finally! While I don’t know for sure that I’ll buy one of these Power Book, this is exciting to see Apple moving forward with this advancement.

It is especially exciting, as Intel Desktops will be coming soon as well. I can’t wait for these to hit, so that the final specifications will be set, and I can build a new desktop and install OSX on it natively

Very exciting times ahead for us Über geeks!

I also think they’ll be debuting some sort of new iPod. I doubt it will be a huge announcement, but I’m sure it will be worthwhile. Maybe a built-in FM tuner? Or maybe a redesigned Shuffle? Maybe both? Only time will tell!