Comments on: Windows Vista Hardware from AMD & Microsoft: Here’s My Story

By: The Personal Blog of Jason Dunn » Blog Archive » Another Sad Dell Monitor Story

Mon, 15 Jan 2007 17:18:47 +0000

[...] Dell, you continue to disappoint me, but I keep coming back for more. Perhaps it’s because I know that when you do get it right, you really get it right. Remember those three 24″ wide screen monitors I ordered? They arrived on the 27th, the same day as the Velocity Micro MCE system, and late in the afternoon (after I swallowed the bitter disappointment of the busted-up computer), I thought I’d cheer myself up by setting up the new Dell monitors. With Ashley’s help unpacking, I set up the first one and braced myself, fearful of seeing the colour banding problem again. I ran the colour spectrum test and it came up clean - no banding at all. I was elated…uh, wait a second, what’s what? A stuck pixel. I ran a few more solid colour tests, and sure enough, there was one stuck pixel. Ok, scratch that monitor - what made it more complex was that I couldn’t return just one monitor as part of Dell’s 15 day “no questions asked” return policy. I thought I’d figure it out later. Then I hooked up the next one - another stuck pixel. Wow. Ashley unpacked the third one, and said something was strange - it was missing the manual and looked like it had been re-packed. Sure enough, the screen had fingerprints on it. And the LCD panel looked a bit odd. I powered it up and ran the colour spectrum test…and here’s what I saw: [...]

By: Adamantium

Adamantium — Fri, 05 Jan 2007 23:24:58 +0000

I’m amazed how upset by the subject that some people got. plain and simple they said “My recommendation is that you give the machines away as a prize for your site, but you are welcome to keep them or return them to me as well.” also on Joel’s site it specifically is typed in his own words quoting Edelman “Full disclosure - while I hope you will blog about your experience with the pc, you don’t have to.” OK OK, all the cutting and pasting done, does it make any sense for him to be upset if first you can do or not do whatever you want with the packages upon arrival. Which includes but is not limited to say starting a smashthevelocitymicro dot com website and hosting the video on youtube or somethin. how is it a bribe if they give you the choice of what to do with it? no shackle were mentioned or a contractual aggreement to lie and BS about how good it is. It’s plain and simple PR as you have pointed out. It sound like Joel is upset he said he didn’t want one or is even more upset that there was no offer to receive anything.

By: The Personal Blog of Jason Dunn » Blog Archive » SWAGWATCH: Oakley Laptop Bag from AMD

Fri, 05 Jan 2007 00:29:30 +0000

[...] Given how sensitive some people are in the blogosphere, I thought it might be a fun experiment to keep track of all the swag, review gear, and other assorted sundries that come my way over the next couple of months. It might be enlightening for some people if they saw how much, and what sort of things, come the way of an online reviewer type such as myself. [...]

By: Ilium Software Blog » Blog Archive » Giving Stuff Away

Ilium Software Blog » Blog Archive » Giving Stuff Away — Tue, 02 Jan 2007 16:08:05 +0000

[...] I Started Something Jason Dunn Ed Bott Joel on Software [...]

By: The Personal Blog of Jason Dunn » Blog Archive » When It Rains It Pours: More Technology Dysfunction

Tue, 02 Jan 2007 06:46:38 +0000

[...] As the saying goes, when it rains it pours. In the past 45 days, I’ve had one hard drive fail, had a trashed computer show up at my door, and had three defective Dell monitors come my way. Those three things are irritating, but not show-stoppers, because they didn’t impact the technology I currently have in place. Yesterday, something else happened that really made the other things seem insignificant. Sunday afternoon I put in the DVD for Titan’s Quest to play an online game with my friend Tim who’s out in London, Ontario. The game booted up, I created a game, then started checking the game quests since I hadn’t played in a couple of weeks. My cursor suddenly froze and the game locked up - I raised an eyebrow, wiggled the mouse a bit to confirm that it was locked up, then waited. It didn’t un-freeze, so I was thinking a video driver crash. I pressed ALT+F4 to kill the game. Nothing happened. I pressed CONTROL+ALT+DELETE to bring up the Task Manager. Nothing happened. I waited another 30 seconds to see if the CPU was going to acknowledge the keystrokes, then punched the reset button on the Shuttle SD11G5. Nothing happened. At this point my other eyebrow raised, because now I was seeing a hardware malfunction. I press and held the power button - again, nothing. Getting a bit more concerned, I pulled the power cable from the back of the unit. I waited about 10 seconds, plugged it back in, then booted up the machine. I breathed a sigh of relief when the machine booted up, but when I saw that the BIOS boot text was partially purple, I knew something was very wrong. [...]

By: dragonus

dragonus — Mon, 01 Jan 2007 07:31:41 +0000

I am appauled by the apparent ability of the human race to jump to conclusions about other people. Businesses give away stuff to hopefully promote their product. As a small business owner, I give away free quotes on jobs and computers so that they can make the right decision for them, even if they do not choose my product in the end because even if they dont choose my product, they will at least remember that I was the one that gave them the advice on what to do, and will more then likely come back to do more business with me. It seems to work pretty well for me cause my products and services that I preform are of high caliber and are of the hgihest quality and they make me money. Anyways, these companies give away this free stuff so that people like you will be able to review them because a bad review is better then no reviews. If you get a bad review, you can normally change something to make it better, but if you have no reviews, then that means that no one is buying your product, and that is worse then them not buying it for a reason and you not knowing what it is to change that reason. The corporations do this so that they can not only possibly get good reviews and sell more of the products, but also so that they can find the flaws in it. I am sure that the company you got the MCPC is going to review their case design to make it better and more able to handle josseling now. As for the ethics thing, if people want to try and prove that you were not fair in your judgement of anything, let them. As far as I can prove, any reviews that you write are just, fair, and unbiast even if they sent you the product.

By: Jason Dunn

Jason Dunn — Sat, 30 Dec 2006 06:43:35 +0000

Some other articles on the subject that have been popping up:

http://laughingsquid.com/windows-vista-laptop-on-ebay-proceeds-going-to-eff/

http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2006/12/28.html

http://thomashawk.com/2006/12/want-to-buy-ferrari-for-20000-no-silly.html

I personally think Joel is out to lunch regarding the ethics of the whole thing, but that’s a post for another day…I want to talk about the differences between bloggers and journalists, and why it’s a good thing they’re not the same thing.