Posts tagged "bad"

Bye bye 012 (Smile), hello 013 (NetVision)!

I’ve been using a troublesome ISP for over 6 years. Now, after so many technical issues, so much frustration and a couple months of some new issues, like failed connections and having certain ports blocked, I’ve finally moved to the best ISP (Internet Service Provider) around: 013 NetVision.

My parents are divorced (and it’s perfectly fine) and each use a different ISP: my mom uses 012 Smile and my dad uses 013 NetVision. Using both ISPs over the years made me see how one works very well while the other does not. For as far as I can remember, I’ve used NetVision without any issues at all and don’t recall making any calls to their technical support line. (There was one last week, but that turned out to be the server’s fault - it was busy - and my own, not opening certain ports after reconfiguring my router) However, I do recall making countless calls to 012 and Bezeq (my infrastructure company) to solve technical issues, only calling Bezeq because 012 simply didn’t fix it and I thought it may not be their issue. This made me realize we should switch, and after postponing it for so long - I realized this almost 2 years ago - I finally did it, after new problems popped up with 012. Many connections just failed or froze, mainly on Google. Yes, Google. It took me loads of stops and reloads to get just one search done, which defeated the purpose of Google: Speedy searches. After that, I finally snapped and switched.

Long story short, I’ve had various deals offered to me and ended up picking this one: a combined plan consisting of internet service at 10Mbit/s (1.25MB/s)and getting the infrastructure at the same speed through the same ISP, for just ₪150/month. (Though, my infrastructure provider would still be Bezeq. However, that’s just fine.) Seeing as the infrastructure alone was offered for ₪100/month through Bezeq, and the other deals cost about ₪65-75/month, I figured it was the best one.

And now, after finishing it up and configuring my network, I’ve finally left that bad, old ISP and my connection is already better. Raptr, which was for some reason blocked on 012, now works flawlessly and server connections no longer fail. So now, I’m happy. :-)

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Me VS Virus: Progress Report

I recently handed in my PC for a disc drive repair, and it ended up that one of their USB pen-drives, which was used on my computer, was infected with a autorun.inf virus. They also apparently disabled my antivirus’ behavioral scanner, which enabled the unknown virus to act. So far the only thing it has appeared to do is spread by making an autorun.inf file on every USB stick, and I’ve managed to track it down to a Services group in Windows. To investigate, I disabled all but the basic and antivirus services and am now scanning with various other ones (Mine, BitDefender Antivirus 2009, couldn’t find it even then.). I may even contact BitDefender support for help and attach the infecting file for them to investigate, but it seems I may need to format and reinstall. Fortunately, I only set it up 9 months ago and clearly know what I need to backup and what I can simply redownload.

My mom and I already decided we will buy our future computers from a known OEM like HP when the time comes again, because of the amount of times we’ve been burnt by their bad parts and lousy support. As of now, I’ve replaced my old PC’s motherboard about 3 to 4 times, changed the power supply twice, and on my new PC that is only 9 months old, I changed the power supply 4 times and replaced the disc drive once (now). And my mom’s new PC’s disc drive is defective and can’t read any discs’ last sectors.

Given the new development, once my mom comes home from Beijing (she’s on a trip to Beijing and Tibet) we’re going to send a letter to the CEO of Ivory Computers, only ship the parts we know are bad to Ivory requesting a replacement according to our warranty agreement and if necessary, take the computer to a different branch for repair, since my uncle uses Ivory PCs and has not come across an issue like ours.

I’m sick and tired of these troubles that I didn’t even have anything to do with. I just want to use a normal, working computer. If this continues I’m sure my mom will agree to buy new HP PCs already and reuse the graphics card if the troubles continue. Trust me, the gas used to drive there all the time may actually cost the same.

This is doing wonders to my ongoing depression.

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Ivory should use the opposite of Apple’s slogan: “It Just Doesn’t Work.”

Time to celebrate! (Sorry for the bad quality, had to use an online photo editor.)About a month after I got my new PC I noticed something: the power supplier was acting odd. Sometimes, out-of-the-blue it would just restart (no Windows BSOD pun intended). About 2 months later (I couldn’t find the time earlier - go figure!) I went to my PC parts supplier and assembler and asked them to replace the power supplier. They did, but then it was another odd-acting one. This time? Whenever a component needed massive power (mainly the graphics card), it would just crash electrically and will not turn back on until I switched off the power supplier, took out the power cable, put it back in, switched it on again and pressed the power button. So I went over there again. On the spot, they replaced it with another weird one. That one would not supply enough power, so whenever I tried to play a game it would run amazingly slow. And they forgot to plug the DVD drive back in when switching the cables all over the place. So this time they sent a tech to me to make it up to me and he installed a new power supplier, this time a GOOD one, (Good as in not faulty, not as in the scale: “bad-ok-good-perfect”.) and connected the drive again. Then it was all good.

Until now.

So, guess what just happened? I’m betting you’re now thinking “Is the power supplier broken again?”. Well, no. But close enough: My DVD drive just broke. It still works electrically but will not read any CDs or DVDs. (Yes, it’s a hardware problem. I ran some tests.)

So now, I have to go all the way to their nearest store, wait in line, give them the PC and do it all over a few days later when it’s replaced. Why? Because they “have to check everything” before they replace something! Right, if you would’ve done that properly, I wouldn’t be here bitching.

If one more thing breaks, I will seriously consider suing them and getting a branded PC (E.g.: HP) or a Mac. Paying more for a computer is a lot better in the long run if I don’t have to take it in for repair every few months!

(P.S.: I had the same problems as with the power supplier but with the motherboard on my previous PC (at the start), which was also from them. It fried in 3 days, then was replaced but with one that wasn’t my previous model, then replaced with a good one that was the correct model.)

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