lummie.co.uk

I have started having a play with Erlang, a functional language that is very scalable and allows for distributed applications in it’s design. It is certainly interesting, have a look at http://www.erlang.org/ for more information on the language.

I found a netbeans based IDE for erlang called Erlybird, see http://blogtrader.net/page/dcaoyuan

As it did not seem to have an icon for the ide shortcut, I created my own, feel free to use it.  Download it here in SVG format

I have been having problems with synergy client (synergyc) since upgrading to hardy. The mouse and keyboard stutter, at what seems random intervals. There is a bug filed, and the current work around is to run synergyc as root.

I normally have an icon short cut to synergyc on my toolbar. I changed this to run sudo synergyc, not forgetting to change the run type from Application to Application in Terminal so you can enter the root password when prompted. The terminal window disappears after entering the password so it’s not a very irritating workaround.

I had a bit of a data transfer mayhem last week, I bought a new laptop for her in doors, that was running vista, her old dell laptop was running xp. My laptop (running ubuntu) had been for repair and I had borrowed a mac book off a friend in the meantime. So on one particular night I was transferring data from the dell to the new acer, and from the mac to the ubuntu laptop. Took a step back and thought you don’t see that very often….

I finally got the laptop back from acer on friday 9th May. 24 whole elapsed form the time I rang support. They did however, whilst having the laptop back the second time, replace all the rubber feet on the bottom. As of today there are now 2 missing… Better adhesive is required I think.
However, service levels aside, the laptop now runs a lot cooler, I’m guessing it was pretty bunged up with a couple of years of dust, and overheating problems were causing the instabilities.
The end result is I am happy with the laptop repairs, but boy was it a bit of a journey. Acer’s customer service has improved in the last two years, there was no long waiting for someone to answer like before, but the procedures and the technicians have room for improvement. I would have thought they would keep at least a small level of stock, instead of ordering on demand and the fact that the screen came back scratched (I am convinced purposely, maybe they were reading my blog ) is just not acceptable in my opinion.

So, yes I got the laptop back. …. With a 3 inch scratch across the screen. I am sure it was the repair guy who wouldn’t give my the damn rubber feet. So I rang on Monday and the said they send to send it back for a screen replacement. Acer received it today, so I rang for an ETA. I now have to wait 5 days for a new screen to be ordered, before the damn thing will even be repaired. It’s really starting to piss me off now….

I’m starting to have Ferrari deja vu..

Finally got my Acer back, which was an 8 day turn around which including the day for dhl to mess up wasn’t too bad. It was meant to be 5 days however, but the inter-departmental arguments between customer services and the repairs department over me having to pay for some new rubber feet for the bottom of the laptop delayed matters. Repairs, wanted me to pay for 4 little rubber feet, and said it was not included in the full 3 year warranty with accidental damage. Customer Services said I didn’t have to pay. After they could not come to an agreement Customer Services informed me they would have to send some through the post and I’d have to fit them my self. They could not however ship them with the PC that was being returned that day !

Overall, no where near as bad as last time, at least they didn’t loose my pc. Customer Services, i.e. the phone answerers, were consistently quick at answering the phone and polite and helpful. The repairs lot, being techies seemed to have no social skills at all and what they did have was more abundant than their common-sense.

Had fun yesterday, rang Acer to get an update on the progress. They have “fixed” all the problems, but didn’t have any record of my warranty details, despite being told all the details when I opened the support call. I eventually managed to get it sorted, someone had typed the serial number on the warranty policy incorrectl.y

Today, I rang again today to see how it was progressing and told it was on hold as tomorrow they have to have a meeting to see if they are going to charge me for the new rubber feet to go on the bottom of the laptop !

If they try, I am going to argue that either they have fallen off as the glue was defective and therefore it’s covered as a defective part, or they must have accidentally fell off, in which case the accidental damage covers it. I don’t think I’ll sleep tonight with the anticipation….

I’m quite please so far… DHL honoured picking up the laptop yesterday and at about 10 am I got an email from Acer saying that the laptop had been received I can track it’s repair progress on-line. The online tracking said simply “under repair” and that was it, but at least it is some communication and feedback….

Two years 5 months ago, I purchased an Acer laptop. I wanted a high spec laptop capable of playing games as well as I don’t own a desktop machine. I bought an Acer Ferrari 8000, but within a month had problems with it refusing to start up sometimes. So I sent it off for repair to Acer. Acer support were appalling, it was in excess of 30 minutes before you got to talk to someone, then it was someone in India, who never seem to understand my accent. They picked the laptop up for repair.

Having waited a couple of weeks and there was no news, I rand Acer to find out they could not find my laptop. After another two weeks of hassled calls and nagging, they finally admitted that they had a receipt for delivery but still could not find it. They gave me my money back, and I purchased a Travelmate 8204 WMLI instead. (I know the support was bad, but I am technically minded and can sort out anything but hardware problems myself. So although the support was awful, the probability of me needing it was a lot lower than the average user. A small price to pay for the cost savings at the time)

I’ve been having a few problems with the laptop recently, something floating about inside when you tilt the laptop left to right is probably a good bet for the cause, but it has completely shut down a few times for no reason, and then wont boot for like a minute or so. The web cam started going a bit dickey a few months ago, failing to initialize sometimes. This could be solved by spinning it on its access a bit so I deemed it not worth sending back at the time.

So, on the 15th April, I gave them a ring. The phone rang ONCE !!!!! before someone answered it (must have been a quite time of the day). I explained the problems to someone that understood me (not in India) he asked for my warranty details, he couldn’t find them on his system which was a bit annoying so I finally admitted I’d have to ring back.

I found the details and again, Acer support answered the phone before I could start counting the number of rings ! The took the details and sent me an email detailing how to organise pick up and packaging. Excellent, I rang the courier (DHL) booked a pick up for the next day, wiped the hard drive, packed it all up and waited.

16th April

DHL failed to pick up the laptop, rang them and they said it would definately be picked up to day.

For the last two years I have been saying to people the Acer laptops are reasonably reliable, are an excellent price, but the support is really, really bad, so I have not passed on recommendation to anyone who cannot handle software problems themselves.

So, DHL aside, I have so far been impressed with Acer support. Will this continue ? Have Acer taken the bull by the horns and addressed their customer service issues ? Do they now provide an professional excellent support service to match their excellent range of laptops?

Only time will tell. Specifically the next couple of weeks…….

As well as providing an online web based chat mechanism in Assembla, you can also use any jabber/XMPP client to talk with the project chat room. This is very useful when you are coding and awaiting some input from another project member. Instead of having to check the web page for updates, register your pidgin client and get the nice new message notifications you are used to, whilst not having to install yet another IM Client. Simply add your details as per the attached picture (changing username to your registered user name).

I left the advanced settings as default, and had no problems connecting.