Category: Uncategorised

When the iPhone 4 was first released in Canada back on July 30th, we were on vacation in Calgary. To be more precise we were driving from Banff back to Calgary on that day. I remembered the night before thinking naively that we could simply visit Rogers resellers along the way to pickup two phones, one for myself and one for my wife. Of course we now know that was an effort in futility. The phones were all sold out. We even went to the Market Mall and found the line up at the Apple Store was stupendously long. We gave up our quest and decided to pursue the phone in Toronto instead.

Back in Toronto the month of August was spent religiously calling Rogers resellers and Rogers store in our neighborhood. My wife even put our names on a waiting list at a Costco stand. When we realized that we have to lineup to get one and Rogers was not going to offer it online, I remember that was just a silly thing for a big company to put their customers through in this day and age of the Internet. In short we gave up.

In September, we went on vacation in the Far East and found the same inventory shortage to be the same in Hong Kong, Taiwan, Japan, Korea, and China. You can buy one in the grey market for $1000+, but why when we can get it back in Canada for $159?

So coming back to Canada in October, thinking that there will certainly be inventory relief by now. Nope! Again my wife intermittently search for the evasive phone at resellers. At this point I was about to give up and just wait for the next version in July. Suddenly last Friday, my wife called from Future Shop that they had two! My wife got a 16GB one without much issue but my number was turned down for the hardware upgrade eligibility program, even when their web site told me that my phone was eligible. Very frustrating. I got on the phone with Rogers customer support. During the call the inventory was out at Future Shop.

To the CSR credit, Virginia helped me to escalate the matter and Philip the manager promised me that one will be mailed out to me at the promotional pricing. My sincere thanks to them for their assistance in the matter.

So this is where I stand now. My wife has one and I’m waiting for one in the mail. I honestly cannot remember when was the last time we tried so hard to buy something. I guess on the plus side, we did not have to lineup for hours. We simply refuse to. After all it is just a phone. Fingers crossed that my phone will get here.

Some how this story is not surprising. http://www.manchester.ac.uk/aboutus/news/display/?id=6243 I guess another theory is that it is now more prevalent because we simply live longer?

Hello Honourable Bryon Wilfert,

I just came back from vacation on a 3 week tour of the Far East, including countries such as China, Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan. As a professional in the high-technology industry, I noticed that telecommunication technologies available to the common consumer at these countries are far superior to those offerings that are available here in Canada.

As an example, a local calling cellphone plan for 880 minutes just cost $88 HKD in Hong Kong. That’s less than $12 CAD (using exchange rates on Oct. 4, 2010). This is a pre-paid commitment free plan. Calling back to Canada cost less than $0.03 CAD per minute. People in South Korea has enough bandwidth to watch TV on the subway. Time and time again, I see these examples throughout my travels. Of course, I am envious of these observations, and would love Canadians to experience and have access to this scale of information freedom. Yesterday on October 3rd, I am reminded of yet another horrible experience dealing with one of our major Internet Providers here in Canada, and felt compelled to write to you, so that I can bring your attention to the disparity that we face with these countries.

If you are not aware already, organizations such as SaveOurNet.ca does an excellent job in communicating the issues at hand. A good summary video can also be found here: http://bit.ly/4G3e3T Thank you for your time and attention, and I hope that you can objectively represent our global position on this matter.

Kang Lu

Arrived at the Hong Kong International Airport at around 1:30pm local time after a 15hrs and somewhat better than expected comfortable ride on an Air Canada AC15 flight. Time on the flight passed quickly as I used it to watch many movies, The A-Team, The Losers, The Last Air Bender, and others. Carol slept, while the kids either enjoyed the on board kids entertainment or their Nintendo DS.

Our arrival was more troubling, as the immigration line was extremely long, and the never ending queueing for luggages, train, and taxi. We didn’t arrive to the place where we are staying until 4pm. We were then greeted by Carol’s cousins who brought some local food, which we snacked or devoured, not sure because at this time I really was not fully awake.

Carol’s cousin went out and purchased some communication necessities, such as local SIM cards and their corresponding prepaid plans. While they made their errands, the kids and I took a little nap. We went out for dinner, making a quiet and early evening, because we were very jet lagged. We all turned in early and were in bed before 11pm.

But here I am writing our first day’s experience wide awake with our new prepaid Internet service via one2free nextG. It is good to be online again. The data rates are so cheap around here. We got a one week unlimited data plan for $200 HKD.

Goldman Sachs Calls BlackBerry Torch Launch ‘Underwhelming’
http://www.streetinsider.com/Analyst+Comments/Goldman+Sachs+Calls+RIMs+(RIMM)+BlackBerry+Torch+Launch+“Underwhelming”/5897446.html

When I switched from my Dell to a MacBook Pro, I knew that I still have to retain some type of Windows capability, especially the product that I develop predominately runs on Windows due to its connectivity with a Windows database, Microsoft SQL Server. There were three options at the time: VMWare Fusion, Parallels, and dual booting with Bootcamp. The last option is really a non-starter, since it is way too cumbersome to reboot when I have to switch OS.

So it boiled down to a choice between the two solutions involving virtual machines. I started out with VMWare Fusion, because our company had experience with VMWare on Windows and we had a few VMWare virtual machines already built. I went ahead and bought version 2.

The best way to sum up my experience with version 2 is that running it made my MacBook feel sluggish. The disk I/O read and write speeds were very slow. I ran some non-scientific benchmarks and they were sometimes five times as slow as native reads and writes from Mac OS X. Since I use the VM for the specific purpose of running a database, this is somewhat problematic. To compound the disk I/O issue, it gets worst after the VM is suspended. It almost seems like the VM never fully wakes up. Restarting the VM from suspension also took a very long time. Due to these irritating characteristics, I ended up shutting down the VM completely, and restarting the VM frequently, countering the convenience that I would have enjoyed with the Mac’s very nicely implemented lid-closing suspend feature. I also do a lot of presentations and demonstrations. Of course during the demonstration, I would plug my MacBook into a projector. All this worked fine, until I unplug the projector. Going from mirrored displays and back to a single display caused VMWare to misbehave. I sometimes get a black LCD screen, or my computer just freezes. Either of these two situation forces me to bounce the power button.

Shared folders in VMWare also caused me endless headaches. Finally, I thought my prayers were answered when VMWare version 3 came out. It got a little better. I/O speeds improved somewhat, but the basic instabilities still existed. I then came across this article and found that Parallels’ I/O performance is significantly better. After downloading a trial version of Parallels Desktop 5, I started by converting my VM. This procedure was effortless and pain free. Sensing good karma already.

When I started the VM with Parallels, I was pleasantly surprised how fast it started up. Disk I/O was fabulous, very close to native speeds. The most enjoyable experience is that I can now close the lid of my MacBook and open it up again without having my computer feel sluggish. Parallels simply does a phenomenal job when it comes to start, suspend, and restarting the VM. It is just a pleasure to work with! No more issues when displays are mirrored with a projector, or viewing the VM in full screen mode, and the other working mode does not bog down my OS X experience. Everything is not rosy though. I did find an issue with copy and paste, but can be quickly remedied by simply quitting Parallels and re-launching again. Given Parallels’ fast performance in stopping and starting VM’s, I rather deal with this one issue discovered in more than 10 days of putting Parallels through its paces, than the litany of issues previously described with VMWare Fusion. In summary, my trial ended yesterday and I bought my Parallels license. Goodbye VMWare Fusion (off of my hard drive for good).

Amazing. Diagnostic medicine with paper! Check out this episode of TEDTalks (video) at George Whitesides: A lab the size of a postage stamp – George Whitesides (2009) – http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TEDTalks_video/~3/sOSnF8DDgrE/760