off.Root

You want to make sure that a company’s going to have your back. Right?

So I’m trying my luck with eVGA right now. I’ve recently determined that that loud grinding noise coming from my computer is coming from my video card fan (why exactly my video card has a fan, I’m not sure). I figure this blog could use some content, so I’ll document the support process here.

Here’s what I already don’t like:

• You can’t put in a simple support request without registering your product with them. And registering also entails disclosing a fair bit of personal information that one, I should think, has no need to disclose to get a question answered. I don’t know where else I’ve needed to register to get a question answered (most support sites ask for some personal information necessary to contact you and maybe a serial number, but I’ve never been compelled to give it out).
• If you’re lucky enough to get a defective product (as I would think I have), to quote eVGA’s site: “EVGA does not do cross-shipping.” Nice. Kingston does cross-shipping. When I had to RMA my memory card they offered me a cross-shipping service. A memory card. eVGA sold me a video card, which I need in order to use my computer. I guess they’re confident enough in their products that they don’t see any reason to “do” cross-shipping.

I’m hoping this can change. Hopefully soon, as in when I get a prompt response from a tech (though they say they want 48 hours, so I wouldn’t hold my breath).

Anyway, I’m kind of relieved that I managed to at least diagnose the problem. Displeased that Media Center won’t be working as long as I’ve disabled hardware acceleration, so so much for recording House or anything like that tonight.

Update 9:07PM EDT: got a reply less than an hour after I sent my question in. Apparently they’re sending a replacement fan to my nonexistent address. Hmm. Well, I updated the information at least. We’ll see if the fan comes in.

Let’s play a game. Name all the user interface issues you can see below:

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Do you read blogs? Do you pay attention to what your customers are saying — not just to you directly, but everywhere else? On the Internet? Hope so.

Recently I’ve been thinking a bit on the impact that forms of mass-communication have been having — or, perhaps, should have been having — on big business.

Isn’t it word-of-mouth that’s the ever-so-desirable form of spreading the word on a product? Isn’t that the same thing that often helps those in the know to shy away from an offering that doesn’t deliver? Blogs are an amplification of word-of-mouth, where one user can have a water-cooler type conversation with thousands of other ones — so why aren’t more people paying attention?

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Normally I’m not tempted to check out the contents of spam messages as they make their way to my inbox, but a couple caught my eye the other day:

Most helpful PayPal Phisher I’ve ever seen.

Abandon it after about two months.

Not that I’ve abandoned this, yet. I have other writings in the works, they’ve just taken a backseat to more important and, moreover, time consuming matters. But this is why they invented RSS.

I couldn’t get Debian to work without hanging, so I tossed it. Instead I downloaded Slackware 10.1 and set that up, it was relatively painless actually. Now typing this from Firefox, using GNOME. Shocked that it’s not slower. Oh, also very happy that my wireless card no longer drops connections periodically, but I would like a battery indicator that wasn’t stuck on 0%.

Another note, Samba for some reason works better on this (i.e. it sees a Windows laptop) than it does on my desktop running Fedora. Hmm.

Next up? Testing suspend mode, getting Samba to work correctly, and figuring out how to best use this as a server and usable laptop.

For the curious, I decided to name this deberon.skidde.net, as in misspelled preterite form of “deber,” Spanish for “should.” There’s some meaning in there somewhere.