* Posts by GordonJ

12 publicly visible posts • joined 5 Apr 2013

Sony bosses will return bonuses as firm preps for BILLIONS in losses

GordonJ

No focussing on the customer then?

Last two TVs have been Sony, but get a distinct feeling they can't be arsed with supporting me once they have my cash. Firmware updates should have been feasible to unlock all the net-connected Freeview goodness, but they think I should just buy a new telly.

When I do, it sure as hell won't be a Sony.

Bravia Internet Video also seems to be dying a slow death; maybe a bit more of a customer focus would help, otherwise existing Sony customers won't be buying those shiny new 4k models anyway.

We'd switch mobile networks, but we can't be bothered – survey

GordonJ

I know I'm just being dumb, but...

Can someone explain how Nokia - shown in 8th place in what I must assume is a table of satisfaction (it's not captioned) - "rounding up the top four"?

BSkyB sees first half pre-tax profit tumble as sales climb

GordonJ

Re: if only they would offer

I queried this as there's much cheaper ways to get everything but Sky Sports F1 but, as you say, adding F1 back on is prohibitively expensive and you're best staying with the legacy package and not changing if you want to keep it. Also, it costs £22 a month even if you have got everything else, so I don't rate your chances of getting Sports only for £10 a month. Your best bet will be Now TV which currently does single day passes for the Sport channels, but where I can see a weekly/monthly pass coming along soon.

Three offers free US roaming, confirms stealth 4G rollout

GordonJ

Re: EE? Are they serious?

I've never understood the premium for 4G anyway. It must be in the networks interest to get me on a more efficient protocol, and I don't care, as long as it works. If I had 4G I might use more data and then pay for a bigger data bundle, but I'm not paying just for a delivery technology that benefits the network and doesn't really offer me anything.

I assume they're just milking those that care, with the hope that they can just bump the price of all contracts up by £10 a month, and then it'll be back to being able to use whatever you can receive.

Still, can't see me still being on Orange come the end of my contract - they screwed my account over beyond belief this year by forcing me over to EE and claiming I'd asked for it (so a call centre monkey just did it to get his bonus perhaps..), whilst halving my data. Despite me calling the day I received a SIM I didn't want and saying "DO NOT MIGRATE THIS ACCOUNT", it happened anyway (whilst I was abroad.. which meant I couldn't be put back until back in the UK).

In the migration back, I lost conference calling and my Answer Fax number (neither of which could be put back, apparently) and spent literally hours on the phone trying to get everything back the way it was. This all despite being promised it would be put back, then told it isn't "technically possible" any more.

Yes, I have a nice discount until I choose to leave, but they can fuck right off come renewal time.

Microsoft Surface slabs borked by heat-induced DIM SCREEN OF DEATH

GordonJ

Microsofties at their *best*

They really said "unnecessary dimming event"? Didn't use the words "fault" or "issue", just "event".

If it's a spade, call it a f()c&!ng shovel.

Nooo, anything but BT! Cisco gives 'stay of execution' to Phoenix IT

GordonJ

Customer Power!

There's something karmic about big manufacturer clamping down on grey-imports to preserve their bottom line, and then being pushed around by the customers they're trying to screw. It's a fine-line to tread...

Microsoft, Xamarin give Visual Studio a leg-up for... iOS and Android?

GordonJ

So have Apple signed-on to this and agreed that this middleware can be used? All sounds great until you have an app where apple just say... no.

The cynic might suggest that you build your app that'll work on Apple, Android and Windows devices then when Apple deny it, hey - the MS app store might just gain an extra app over the App Store helping those dreadful app numbers.

Facebook tests sinister CURSOR-TRACKING in hunt for more ad bucks

GordonJ

Waste of time

Does this not just sound like a waste of time? With touch screens, the cursor is just surely where it was last clicked and in a web browser, do people really move the cursor to where they're looking? It seems irrelevant on newer touch devices and destined to provide meaningless data on older ones... Why bother?

OK, so we paid a bill late, but did BT have to do this?

GordonJ

BT has "senior managers responsible for ‘customer experience’"?

Would these BT "senior managers responsible for ‘customer experience’" be the same ones that sent me a letter once saying that if I wanted cheap calls to continue, I'd need to be "loyal" and sign up for a 12 month contract? The same managers that, after 10 years with them, caused me to move everything I could from them?

They wanted loyalty, so I demonstrated the loyalty I *had* had in the what I thought was the best possible way.

They're total asshats - I get they impression they sit in meeting with everyone going "yeah, yeah, yeah..." and no-one actually *thinks* about how it looks from the other side of the message.

MS Office on iOS is OFF the menu, says Fujitsu as it nixes Personal Cloud

GordonJ

Licensing reform will still be a long time coming!

I've been criticising the MS licensing system for years (e.g. http://forums.theregister.co.uk/forum/containing/899048 )!

Since the first time I had to order a MS Windows Server 2003 license for development use and started to get lots of "advisors" who wanted to guide me along the path of ensuring compliance I could feel that pain properly and sympathise with the poor guys that have to deal with this every day.

All of sudden Samba and anything-but-Exchange made perfect sense. I still think the on-premise, open source equivalent of Exchange is still difficult to deliver well (especially if constrained by people insisting on Outlook) but it really is the fact that you're having to pay several times for a single function. Want a user to access their e-mail and some files on a server? That'll be client OS, server OS, client software, server software, and at least a couple of client access licenses... IM too? At least another three sets of licenses...

Is it any wonder Microsoft are running scared of the simpler Google model?

The big interest for me here is that having thought they need to simplify for years, suggesting being able to licence components you need, effectively increasing the options, is something different entirely. I really need to think that one through.

In the meantime, the push to increasing prices via the cloud will continue... at least they're trying something, even if it completely screws people like us. We will indeed just go somewhere else.

Hey, Teflon Ballmer. Look, isn't it time? You know, time to quit?

GordonJ
Flame

Can't agree with this: "...online ads and search, and phone and tablet markets. Yes, these are relatively brand new areas so Microsoft may be forgiven..."

That's just rubbish - Microsoft themselves have been in all those businesses for a while; online ads since 2006, search since 2004, phones since 1983 and even tablets since either 1996 (HP 300LX with PocketPC) or 2002 (WinXP tablet). That's a lot of years of experience in some "brand new areas".

In most cases, they did see these things coming, they've just been utterly dreadful at finding a winning strategy as they're still stuck to the idea that you should be able to charge for stuff, for access to it and for (major) upgrades in the future. That's not so surprising though.

It all goes back to their core Windows/Exchange business; charging for software, CALs and support worked and drove shareholder value. Customers are finding other ways to get round paying for these with other providers with different business models - no need for CALs if all workflows are carried out in a browser, for example. How do you convince MS owners that removing what's left of one of these income streams would be good for them in the long term? You almost certainly can't until it's too late.

MS have never really adapted well to change; why change that - it's worked for years, right?

BSkyB punters drown in MASSIVE MYSTERY Yahoo! mail! migration!

GordonJ

Re: migration notification

Agreed - first notification on 19th December last year, followed by reminders on 12th Feb, 22nd Feb, 20th Mar, 26th Mar...

Having decided we didn't want to migrate and were happy to lose the account, the frustration was not having a "Yup - I'm good, stop sending reminders now" button.