Readers' Comments

Reader Comments on Aardvark Daily 5 November 2001
Note: the comments below are the unabridged submissions of readers and do
not necessarily reflect the opinions of the publisher.
From: Alan Waller
For : The Editor (for publication)
Subj: dsl pricing

Whatever happened to the consumer guarantees act in the
case of a residental DSL connection if it is proven that
telecom is ripping off consumers, where are the Bureaucrats
from the commerce commision to bring telecom back into line.




From: Allister
For : The Editor (for publication)
Subj: Telecom charter

So, Telecom are being accused of money-grabbing with DSL.
Let's not lose sight of the fact that this is just their
*latest* method of money-grabbing.

I am of the firm belief that Telecom set out to rip people
off with most of their products.  Only market pressure ever
seems to bring them into line with reality.

My *personal* experience with Telecom has shown me that they
are (a) very clever about ways of fleecing the unwitting
public, and (b) don't really care too much if you complain
about it.  Our politicians could do a lot worse than to
employ the same spin-doctors.

Remember, this is the "Kiwi" company who put domestic
telephone rental up the same year they announced a profit of
NZD$800 million.

To me, Telecom is NZ's answer to Microsoft.  They should
combine forces and offer a new slogan: "How can we rip you
off today (with 99.999% surety we'll be better off than
you)?




From: Brodie Davis
For : The Editor (for publication)
Subj: Windows XP

My computer is not "flying free" as the M$ adds suggest.
I upgraded from windows 2000 to xp to take advantage of
the "increased stability" and I have to say it has been
anything but.  Now I know I shouldn't have been supprised
having run windows from the early 3.0 versions. But I have
to say I can't remember windows 3.1 ever crashing.  I may
have just been a lucky one with my 386SX25 with 4mb of
ram.  But one would expect a P3 733 with 512MB of ram to
be able to run XP fairly stably.  But over the past 4 days
I have had to reboot approx 14 times to get software back
up.  I am not running a exotic blend of software just my
standard build since 1999 (winamp and ICQ) but those two
programs seem to the be s/w that has the most problems
(you decide on how coincidental that is).  But it also
whiped out the TWAIN drivers for my digital camera.  The
standard methods of aquiring the pictures failed and I now
have to use the m$ supplied software (admittedly its not a
bad bit of software but I will miss being able to import
directly into photoshop).

It now also has a very noticable I/O bottleneck.
Everything seems to require access to the harddisk.  A
quite common occurance for me is having to copy large
files onto the network or off the network.  I used to be
able to copy and work in my spreadsheets/word documents
but that is not the case anymore.  The system becomes
unresponsive while copying (even on the same harddisk) so
I have to wait the 30 odd minutes for it to finish before
I can continue with my work.  It has basicly taken what
was bad about windows 2000 and expanded on it.

If you do get sent a eval copy of XP burn it before you
pollute your computer.  I know I will be moving back to
Windows 2000 when I get a spare half day.

Aardvark responds: Bill Keesing suggested this URL which
appears to suggest that this reader's experiences are not
unique: Waiting for Windows XP (Infoworld)




From: Tanya
For : The Editor (for publication)
Subj: Microsoft Wimps Out?

Could it be that *gasp* Microsoft doesn't actually bother
to read Aardvark, and therefore is blissfully unaware of
the challenge?
Now Have Your Say