Six Months with a EeePC
Back in June, I purchased an EeePC 701 4G Surf off of Amazon for about $300. The goal of it was to replace my aging Compaq laptop that had been dropped, beaten, overwritten, broken and was doing good if it could turn on without flashing an error screen.
I had been doing a lot of traveling and I wanted the EeePC to be my go-to laptop for all my getting around. I already had one trip out of the country planned and had almost half a dozen other conferences lined up. I needed something light, portable and simple. The EeePC seemed to fit the bill.
When I purchased it, I wasn’t looking for anything that would replace my home PC, just something that had enough power to “get me by” while I was on the road. I had no plans to be editing podcasts or making movies. I just wanted to write a few blog posts, touch up a few PowerPoints and check my email.
Now, after six months, two overseas trips, about ten presentations and countless hours of use, I’m finally ready to offer some of my thoughts on how well it has held up and what others might expect from the line should they buy one. Read more
AT&T: Another Terrible Telephone
Today’s post was originally supposed to be about going to the bank and how multi-billion dollar institutions can’t spare a few thousand bucks to make the customer experience even remotely palatable. However, that post has been, well, postponed. The reason being that an altercation with AT&T, the provider of Web and phone access at my office, has consumed my brain cycles for the day and, if this blog is to double as therapy (without the hourly expense), then this is where I start.
Before BellSouth was purchased by AT&T, they provided a pretty good product. Sure, their prices were higher and their service was slower, but they had a good customer service reputation and this really shined in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, when BellSouth connections were online weeks before Cox, the cable company, even got on the ground.
Plenty of people were happy to pay more for BellSouth, simply because they had reliable service and didn’t screw over their customers. However, once the big guys came into town and bought out the company, things changed quickly. AT&T shifted much of the focus to selling bundles and trying to own every aspect of their customer’s digital life. Where BellSouth was a phone and Internet company primarily, AT&T is a phone, Internet, cable, cell phone and wireless company. You get the feeling that they would sell Wacky Waving Inflatable Arm Flailing Tube Men if they could find a way to bundle it with your phone access.
The problem is that the cable companies tried this and service went downhill (not that it had much lower to go) and the same is happening now to AT&T. But AT&T is spread across more markets and is stretched even thinner than the cable companies. The result: Stories like mine. Read more
