Garden’s Club edm

I recently got an email (26th July) from gardens (the shopping mall) club and it didnt seem quite right….

ok...where is the email content?

so i scrolled down and guess what i see?

yeah….the alignment is totally off. A big boo boo from gardens BUT WAIT! this is not the end of the story! 1 day later, i got the SAME email resent again by Gardens

yeah...this is how its supposed to look like!

good stuff guys. 1 day turnaround to fix the edm problem!

celcom underpar

So i got the reply from celcom regarding my complain : see below

Note that i sent the original complaint on 26th and the reply came in on 28th. The reply came in exactly in 48hours, probably their standard timeline to reply to customers. I think in their haste, they dont even bother to understand the nature of the complain from the customer.

what do you think?

I dont know about you but i asked for their boss to talk to me and i am probably going to decide if i will switch telco based on their reply. will keep you posted.

What the ?

i came across this strange ad on the local portal call gua.com.my today :

what type of ad is this?

isnt the ad strange? no brand? no tagline…. i wonder who owns this campaign in the market

btw, once you mouseover the ad, it plays a short clip….very peculiar ad to say the least. if you want to see the ad, go to www.gua.com.my and click refresh a few times because the ad doesnt appear all the time….

if you have seen the ad : let me know what you think on what it is about or what is it trying to sell me on?

Plastic Markings and their meanings

in case you always wondered what those markings mean on those plastic bottles….read on….

road taxer

yeah…i came across this in 1U not too long ago …

is it just me or more malaysians are using this method to put up their road tax

i really do think that the JPJ need to relook into this whole car road tax sticker business. even on my 3m car tint, i can see too many leftovers from all my previous road tax stickers. maybe i should do the same,,,,,

Not Celcom Again!

I received a sms from Celcom yesterday :

Due to Technical Issues, pymt by cr card fr 6-12/7/10 via online cust svc cannot be processed. Pls arrange pymt for continuous svc. Sorry for the inconvenience.

WTF!?

Due to this damn problem from Celcom, i have had my line BARRED 4 (FOUR) times just last week, despite my payment made on their online service/payment portal. During my heated and painful call with them last week, they keep insisting that me, their customer, was at fault for not making payment despite showing them PROOF (AND GUESS WHAT? I just logged into Celcom online service portal and they just REMOVED all the old payment logs from 6-12th July)

This is really unacceptable Celcom.

As a customer, i had to go through 4 painful calls to prove that i have made payment and now all you do is just send a sms telling me to pay up again. thats all. This has gotta be the worst way to deal with a issue.

Also, i cant find any information regarding this payment notice on their website or even online payment portal

i am going to complain on this matter and let you guys know the outcome. stay tune.

Ma xiswhat?

I was browsing through maxis’ website recently and i came through this interesting page ..

Hmnn…interesting….. noticed how the blackberry phone is wrapped in bubble wrap? how precious are our phones today…. it got me interested and then i wanted to see if my blackberry is supported under this new maxis mobile security… and guess what…

blackberry ...where ? its not on the list!

What the hell ? blackberry is not on the list?! then why do they use a blackberry phone on the banner?! dont the creative person designing this have half a brain to notice that?

What a rookie mistake …. obviously a lot of people dont know – BlackBerry phones is a CLOSED and PROPRIETARY operating system. Blackberry phones dont need antivirus and it also has its own security system where a user can just send a command to its phone to wipe and lock all the data on the phone.

ok la maxis….i give you free publicity : CLICK HERE

Samsung S2 portable hard disk review

Man…. samsung have one of the priciest 2.5inch portable hard disk out there in the market. I picked up a samsung s2 500gb recently for RM 269 so here is a short review of it :

Packaging

very.....clinical packaging

lots of colour options to choose from

One of the striking feature of the hard disk is the appearance of the disk itself. the casing is so BEAUTIFUL, really… you will not want to scratch this baby at all!

So what do you get out of the box?  a point to note : the white “box” holding the hard disk in place is actually a soft rubbery material and not paper box material! very nice touch samsung…..

whats this? a seperate accessories box? nice....

instruction manual, usb cable and leather pouch!

Very nice of samsung to include the pouch. indeed, they do understand that customers would want to protect the shiny surface of this lovely designed hard disk casing! One thing to note is that if you DO carry your hard disk with the pouch, people will MISTAKE it for a blackberry as the size is and pouch is very similar!

The drive performed very well during transfer tests :

very fast!

CONCLUSION

PRO : Fast and very beautiful colourful designed hard disk casing

Cons : Price (Street price of RM260 for a 500GB)

This is a great 2.5inch hard drive for people who not only want to have functionality but also a trendy and cool looking piece of hardware.

Thanks to samsung malaysia for providing me with a review unit.

Toasted goodness

As more and more people buy hard disk as if they were consumables, it was a becoming increasingly difficult to manage and transfer large data pools between hard disks and PC/Notebooks- if you are one of those geeks like me , you should probably consider getting a hard disk dock. I have here a review of Toaster hard disk dock that takes both 2.5inch and 3.5inch hard disks

There really isnt much for me to tell you about this unit . All you need to do is , plug in your hard disk vertically into it  and you have an option of using either USB 2.0 connection or eSATA (which is my preferred method!) .  During my testing, the unit performed well without any errors on eSATA but on USB, i always get errors while transferring large files ( more than 800GB) which really annoys the shit out of me.

With hard disks retailing for less than RM200 for 1TB capacity (3.5inch), more and more people will buy hard disk by the bulk and hard disk docks will become more important. Get it now, it should retail for less than RM100 street price.

CONCLUSION

PRO : GREAT TOOL FOR QUICKLY ACCESSING DRIVES, 2.5 OR 3.5

CON : USB CONNECTION IS NOT STABLE.

Western Digital WDTV Live! Review

Who still watches TV nowadays really? almost everyone i know today watches content from the internet such as youtube and fan subs J dramas/K dramas/Anime..etc..etc.. You will be pretty confused if you are in the hunt for a HD (High Def) player today – just a quick google and trip to your local store – there are probably 15-30 different brands to choose from! I am going to make your life easier – - – i will tell you what you REALLY want to know….not a PC MAG style geeky style review of HD players so lets begin!

SIZE

This is the ONE thing that i really didnt get from reading all the online and magazine review – WDTV is REALLY SMALL! This is one major factor to me as you my living room is small and the entertainment space is already cluttered enough… check out the pics below to see how small the unit really is!

Side by side comparison with 3.5inch Hard disk.

just slightly taller ..

Still not convinced? see this then…

WDTV Live vs AC Ryan mini and TVIX mini..... WDTV Live is still smaller!

SETUP

Veeeeeeeeery simply. Really just 1,2,3! plug in the power, plug in the hdmi cable to your lcd/plasma tv and connect your hard disk! i was up and running in less than 5 min! The retail box comes with Composite and Component Cables. Now if you wanted to get the 110% out of the WDTV LIVE,  all you have to do is purchase a HDMI cable and THROW away the cables that came with the box   .

NOTE : Dont be a FOOL and pay RM XXX for a HDMI cable. They all work the same, no matter the size,brand or price. I suggest you pay NO MORE than RM60 HDMI cable ok! you can get it at jusco or even lower at those electronic shops.

PERFORMANCE

I am very very happy with WDTV Live – it ATE UP all the files i threw at it and played them flawlessly! The ONLY (and only) file type that WDTV Live cant play is RMVB (Real Media) files, which frankly i dont give a horse shit about because 99.9% of all RMVB files out on the interweb is of crapshit quality and the only country left where people still use those file format is china.

Whats so great about WDTV Live #1 -SUBTITLES!

If you go to techie forums, you will find that one of the top questions asked about WDTV Live is – Can it handle subtitles properly? This is because a lot of people got burned buying cheaper no brand players only to find that it doesnt handle subtitles very well!

I can safely say that WDTV Live plays all subtitles without any problem. One nifty feature is that you can actually move subtitles up and down during playback!  This is pretty nifty ! I always hated shows where the subs are right in the middle of the screen sometimes. With WDTV Live…you can just press the down arrow button during playback and it will shift the subtitle down bit by bit till you happy with it! (See Below)

This is how the sub for AVATAR appears during the movie. as you can see, the sub is quite high up, almost middle of the screen

just by pushing the down button on the remote, i can push the subs all the way down on the screen! great!

WDTV Live even managed to display subtitles proper when it didnt play back on my PC ! i have tried soft sub (seperate subtitle files from the video such as .srt files)  and also hard sub files (subtitles encoded into the video)  and they all worked perfectly

see? on WDTV Live the subs appear correctly!

Image from PC. As you can see, the chinese subtitles appears as squares.WDTV Live plays the same file with proper chinese subs!

Whats so great about WDTV Live #2 – Downmix AC3 to Stereo

Some of you will buy this for your folks (good on ya! ) , where the LCD/Plasma TV is the only source for Audio and Video. Since LCD/Plasma TV can only output sound in stereo, it is important to get HD Player that can support downmix digital/5.1/dts/true hd audio to stereo automatically!

Whats so great about WDTV Live #3 –  User Interace/Experience

Right, first of , I have seen quite a few HD player User Interface/Menu before…and they are….downright bland.

WDTV Live User Interface is really simple. Its not perfect but its really simple to operate and its easy to view your files (movies, songs, photos) in either List, thumbnail and even preview format! Granted, there is a sliiiiiiiight lag (around .3millisecond) that most people will not notice and its not really that a big deal really.

Whats so great about WDTV Live #4 – Dim Lights…

One of the most under rated feature of WDTV Live : taking a cue from high end AV equipment in minimizing the lighting effect of the unit. WDTV Live only has two minimal lights – Power ON light and USB connection light. Both icons are small and dim enough that you cant even notice it when watching your movie which is great! My other HD player (AC Ryan Mini) has this blinding BLUE and RED light that is terribly bright – really annoying when you are trying to watch a movie with dim light setting. So why dont i just turn it 45 degrees you say? well, if you do that, you will have a hard time controlling the HD Player as the remote is an infrared type that needs to have direct path without anything blocking its way. so there.

Cant see the light? GOOD! You wont get distracted from your movie!

Whats so great about WDTV Live #5 – Easy to use remote!

This sounds like ass kissing but its not. WDTV Live have one of the easiest to use remote ever.

Dont believe me? check out the comparison between the AC Ryan remote and WDTV Live :

simple, clutter free.

try finding the play button...

Yeah, go figure. While i appeciate that the AC Ryan remote has a lot of commonly used button on the remote, i didnt find myself using them! and when i did, i always struggle to understand why they made the commonly use button (PLAY) and volume as one of the SMALLEST BUTTON on the remote. yeah….go figure…really…

Pros : A very versatile player with great functions, easy to use, frequent updates and great after sales service (hey, this is Western Digital after all!)

Cons : no HDMI cable included.

Summary : WDTV Live street price keeps getting cheaper by the day (RM390 as we speak) and you will be kicking yourself in your nards if you pay the same price for a lesser known brand product!

Rating : 8.5/10

a big thanks to WD in providing a unit for review.