Of Treos, Printers and AT&T Assbags
Man, I’ve been busy. Lots going on lately, but I won’t bore you with the majority of it. Couple of fun tech things, though.
I finally got my Treo 650! WOO! I got one through Sprint and am thus far very pleased with my purchase. A number of people warned me off Sprint saying, “Oh, their service sucks. Lots of dropped calls. Data service sucks. Blah blah blah I like to hear myself talk blah blah blah.” I opted to go with Sprint for two reasons – their calling plans and data plan pricing is the best in the business, plus they don’t require you to have a data plan if you don’t want one (both AT&T and Verizon require it and their rate plans are outrageously overpriced). So far I’ve not had a single dropped call and the service has been great – hell, I could even browse the Internet and download my e-mail on the Treo while underground at my data center the other night. Bad service? Not in my experience.
That same week I got the phone, my old Epson 740 inkjet printer died. After printing out a good 200 or so invoices, map directions and other bull crap for the last maybe 10 years, it said, “Fuck you, I’m done printing your Yahoo! Maps – get a Thomas Guide, will you? ” Time to buy a new printer and rush off to fifth level of hell, otherwise known as Fry’s Electronics.. I was trying to choose between two different models – an HP LaserJet and a Canon Laser Printer that was on sale. Both had similar features, but the Canon was a good $80 cheaper. So, I pulled out the Treo out, typed the model names into Google and read reviews of both printers in the store. The Canon got some very good marks for speed and print quality, so I went with it. The sale price was $169 on the printer, but I had $120 in left-over gift certificates from Christmas, making the price of this beast a paltry $49. Gotta love that, plus the Treo showed me just how useful it can be.
In other tech related subjects, earlier this week my DSL service, provided by those fucks at AT&T/SBC, went down for four hours in the middle of the day. Four Fucking Hours. For people like myself who make their living online, that was a nightmare. After it was finally fixed, I decided it would be a good time to argue with them about my DSL package. Currently I pay $64.95 a month for 1.5 Mbps down/384 Kbps up with five static IP address. I really don’t need the five static IP addresses anymore and I saw AT&T has a number of much better DSL offers with higher upload and download speeds for $15 a month cheaper. Long story short, I called them up, argued with two different sales people about getting a better package, and all they could say was “Well, those deals are for new customers only. We could extend one of those deals to you, say the $49.95 a month one, but you’d be required to get call-waiting and two additional calling features for your phone.” Getting those additional features – which I don’t need – would cost me an additional $10, effectively negating any savings. As I pointed out how retarded that is, all the brain damaged AT&T spokesperson could say was, “Sorry, I understand your frustrations, but I have no control over what marketing has to say.” Even when I said I would be canceling my service with them if I couldn’t get a better rate, they’d do nothing. Clearly, all phone companies have no interest in customer retention.
Today I called Adelphia and ordered cable modem service. The plan I got will give me 6 Mbps down, 768 Kbps up for a total of $59.95 a month. That’s download speeds four times as fast and upload speeds twice as fast as I had with AT&T, yet it’s $5 cheaper a month – and it’s not AT&T! Adios, AT&T, you bunch of lobotomized assbags.
OK, just had to get that rant off my chest. What’s going on with you?
