Buyer beware

Posted on By Mark Wilson

I’m sure that the vast majority of people who sell products via Amazon/eBay/insert-web-shopfront-of-your-choice are honest. Many people, myself included, have sold items that they no longer need and are keen to retain high customer ratings/feedback so will do whatever they can to ensure that everything runs smoothly. Of course, from time-to-time things can go wrong. I recently sold a book to someone via Amazon and thought the Royal Mail had lost it (because I’d sent it using the Recorded Signed For service but for some reason the tracking code didn’t work) – thankfully when I e-mailed the buyer, they were honest and told me that they had received the book already. That’s the basis of many web transactions – mutual trust.

It’s because of this that I was furious when a recent third-party purchase from Amazon turned out not to be as described. I’d bought a product from a merchant called “pixmania-uk”. Everything looked good, the price was fine, the order was confirmed, and then I received a strange e-mail that suggested my item was going to be a French specification (I live in the UK):

“Important information about your order from our Pixmania Marketplace:

[…]

Please read the following information carefully. If you have any question, thank you to contact us.

  • Your parcel will include at least one product which will come with an adapter plug free of charge.Be assured that this product will have the same specifications as a UK model.
  • If your product is not supplied with a hard copy of the manual in English; we would like inform to you that a PDF format of the manual is available. Please contact us in order we sent to you the PFD file.

[…]

Now, the whole point about the European Union (EU) is free trade between member states and I have no problem with a continental European product but I want a UK power supply – not a French one with an adapter! I also expect instructions to either be multi-lingual (as most are), or in English (because that’s what we speak here). I contacted Pixmania and asked to cancel my order. Too late – already shipped. Their advice was to refuse delivery once it turned up here.

Having refused delivery, I had to wait for over 2 weeks before my refund was processed and then Pixmania only refunded the item cost – not the £6.95 shipping charge. So I contacted Pixmania again and received this response:

“Dear Mark Wilson,
Thank you for your feedback, Unfortunately your request was refused by our accounts department.

In the case you missed our seller information on Amazon.co.uk, I would like to kindly inform you that; Pixmania warehouses are based in Paris France manufacturers here in France do not supply us with the UK power cable, an adapter plug should have been provided, this is stated on the Amazon website under the “sellers” information for Pixmania, please use the following link to see this information; http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/help/seller/home.html?ie=UTF8&isAmazonFulfilled=&orderID=&asin=B0007UATDG&marketplaceSeller=&seller=ACRTI4YR8LRR0

We apologise for the inconvenience and if you have any further questions, please contact us at amazon_uk@pixmania.com

Best regards,

Team Pixmania”

Luckily, third party orders paid for through Amazon are covered by Amazon’s A to Z Guarantee and they refunded the shipping cost. If that hadn’t worked then I still had the protection of having used my credit card for payment.

Now, turning my attention to the link that Pixmania had sent me. Did they really clearly state that this was a French product before I bought it? Well, yes, but only if I clicked through a few pages to find the information. First I would have needed to notice that the seller ID was “pixmania-uk” (suggesting they might be based in the UK…). If I clicked through on that, I would have seen their UK storefront (which uses a tiny font) and only then, if I clicked on a link at the bottom-right corner of the page would I have seen a Note for French spec. products.

Part of Pixmania-UK Amazon storefront showing feedback

Actually, before I got to any note about the products being shipped from France I should have seen that their shipping rates are not as advertised (how does £4 per shipment plus £0.50 per kg add up to £6.95?) but more obviously that their feedback is appalling. At the time of writing there have been over 70,000 shipments with an 89% satisfaction rate. 4% of customers (i.e. almost 3000 people) gave a neutral response and 7% (almost 5000 people) gave a negative one – mostly complaining about French products. 4 and a half stars may be fine if you are a tiny vendor with 10 sales and one complaint but when 11% of your customers are hot happy, that’s not good. (And why is Amazon doing anything about it? It’s their reputation too!)

All I can say is be careful who you are buying from when you shop at Amazon. Avoid Pixmania. And buyer beware.

USB flash drives can be washed at 30 degrees

Posted on By Mark Wilson

As I emptied the laundry from the washing machine this morning I noticed something small and brightly coloured wedged against the rubber seal by the door and realised with horror that it was the USB flash drive that had been in the pocket of my jeans. USB flash drive with 30 degree wash symbol“Oops”, I thought (or something similar that can’t be repeated in front of the kids), “I didn’t mean to do that…”.

Well, after a few hours in my pocket, making sure that it stayed warm and dry, I decided to try and use the device and it seems everything is fine. Probably not recommended though.

Why Microsoft must kill 32-bit Windows

Posted on By Mark Wilson

After writing about what a great client operating system Windows Server 2008 can be, I’ve just spent 2 days fighting to get everything working on my 64-bit installation. It’s not a problem with Windows but with original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) and independant software vendors (ISVs) who provide patchy support for 64-bit operating systems and it is stifling the adoption of 64-bit computing.

The operating system installed flawlessly and all the major components had x64 driver support, but then there were the minor things, like memory card readers, hotkeys, a smart card reader, Bluetooth, etc. which needed specialist drivers that took some tracking down. I got precious little help from my system’s OEM but a colleague tracked down the drivers I needed from another company’s website. Then I started on the applications. Error message from attempt to install Cisco VPN client on a 64-bit version of WindowsAgain, no problem for the major applications – 32-bit versions of Office 2007 and even the Vodafone Mobile Connect software installed without issue on a 64-bit platform. The problem came with the more specialist applications – for example the Cisco VPN client, which flatly refused to install on a 64-bit OS.

It’s not Microsoft’s fault. They provide 32-bit and 64-bit versions of their operating systems to respond to customer demand and then get caught in a vicious circle where vendors are reluctant to invest in updating their product to work with a 64-bit version of Windows and customers will not deploy the a 64-bit operating system unless their hardware works and their application software requirements can be met. I will caveat this though – there is an elephant in the room – Microsoft ISA Server 2006 is, inexcusably, a 32-bit only application.

Microsoft needs to cut itself free from some of the legacy features in Windows – including 32-bit releases. The problem is that Windows has such a broad reach that even the most minor issues become big news. If Apple decides to discontinue support for legacy features (e.g. Mac OS Classic application support) then no-one is really bothered but for Microsoft even the most obscure legacy technologies are still in used by many people – take a look at the post I wrote a few years ago about a customer having problems with FoxPro for MS-DOS on Windows XP and people are still leaving “me too” comments there! For another example, consider the criticsm that Microsoft took for Vista “breaking” applications or for hardware not working with the new operating system – they’d been warning OEMs and ISVs for years about the changes that they were making and some of them still don’t support Windows Vista – fifteen months after it was released.

Who needs a 64-bit operating system anyway? Well, I do. And, over the next few years, so will everyone. When Windows 2000 Workstation was new, I recommended that everyone who bought a new PC made sure they had at least 512MB of RAM so that they had enough to run the applications of the day but also to move to the next operating system release without needing upgrade their hardware. A few years later, Windows XP Professional would run comfortably with 256MB of RAM but it was probably best to buy a gig. With falling memory prices and higher application demands, for Windows Vista Enterprise I reckon 2GB is about right but if you want to run some virtual machines too, then you should be looking at about 4GB… and that’s the problem. 32-bits are only enough to address 4GB of RAM and 32-bit Windows operating systems will let you access about 3GB of that. By installing a 64-bit edition of Windows I can use all 4GB in my notebook, or all 8GB on my server (and much more if I had sufficient physical memory installed).

The need to access ever-more memory is not just a Windows issue either – I have 4GB of RAM in my MacBook because the photo and video editing that I do needs not just a fast processor but a decent amount of memory. And whilst Linux can run in a small footprint, if I want to do the same sort of things that I do under Windows or on the Mac, then I’ll need a decent amount of memory there too.

As for processors, anyone who has bought a PC in the last couple of years already has a 64-bit CPU. And anybody who is using older hardware is probably already weighing up their options for Windows Vista and shouldn’t be thinking about running the next version of Windows – managed diversity may be better in the short term with new hardware later.

64-bit computing is here. Right now. Microsoft should make Windows Vista the last 32-bit Windows release and it’s time for OEMs and ISVs to get with the programme.

Ctrl+Alt+arrow keys

Posted on By Mark Wilson

My new notebook PC has an Intel X3100 integrated graphics chipset and it seems that Intel graphics drivers include a feature whereby holding down the Ctrl and Alt keys together with a directional arrow key will rotate the display:

Ctrl+Alt+left = rotate display to lie down to the left (270° position)
Ctrl+Alt+right = rotate display to lie down to the right (90° position)
Ctrl+Alt+down = flip display upside down (180° position)
Ctrl+Alt+up = rotate display to normal position (0° position)

I’ve never come across this before but it’s a real pain as the Hyper-V Virtual Machine Connection also uses Ctrl+Alt+left by default to release the mouse when integration components are not installed. Luckily Alt+Tab will also break out of the VM and the hotkey can be changed in the Hyper-V settings.

Windows Server 2008 and wireless networking

Posted on By Mark Wilson

Last week I wrote about how Windows Server 2008 can be used as a great workstation OS too… then I realised that I didn’t have any wireless networking capabilities. Although Device Manager reported that my device was working properly, there were no networks available for connection. I wondered if that was because my Intel 4965AGN card was one of the devices that won’t play nicely with Windows Vista SP1 (and hence possibly not Windows Server 2008 either) but it turns out to be a little simpler than that – as Ambrish Verma highlights on a TechNet Forum post, the Wireless LAN service is not enabled by default on Windows Server 2008. After adding this feature in Server Manager, I could browse the available wireless networks and connect successfully.