Wisetechie Blog : Ctrl your Tech Life

A few months ago i had posted about how Sony India was refusing to honour its warranty clause on a memory stick and how one of their employees Ms. __ (the company officials know her name as i had written it in my email to them) had behaved rudely. When i let her know that her tone was not appreciated she refused to help me and honour my request.

Anyway i wrote a strong letter to their online dept. (4-5 letters actually), and pretty soon a Sony India employee called me and told me to take his name at the service centre and my memory stick shall be replaced. It was amazing to see the affect of his name on the service centre people. Suddenly the service centre people who didn’t have means to test Memory Stick Pro devices now had a card reader which could test them. Funny the same employee who had told me this had a memory stick pro with himself. Anyway they reluctantly accepted my memory stick and warned me about a long wait time. Suddenly instead of shooing me like a beggar, the guy there was chatting with me.

Last Tuesday i got a call from them informing me that my memory stick was now available, woohooooooooooo to that !

But that joy was shortlived. On going to their Lajpat Nagar service centre i was shocked to see the replacement was of a memory stick duo and not the model i had given. The service centre receptionist rudely told me that the model i gave is not  made anymore (which is a blatant lie). He also asked me to purchase an adaptor myself, if Sony gives a pro adaptor with new duo memory sticks why didnt it give me an adaptor with my replacement for a pro memory stick, perhaps they want me to spend more money. What was more shocking though was the fact that i was told the only way to seek redressal is via emails, there is no feedback form or telephone system. In short the service centre is invincible. There is absolutely no way to write feedback at Sony India’s main service centre in the capital of India (thats what i was told). Even dhakkan companies who import Chinese stuff have feedback mechanisms at service centres.

I have written another email to them, but it seems like a dead end. It seems that their concern for the customers is only till you have the money to buy the product. The minute you buy their product, they dont care less. I saw so many Vaios today at the service centre that it sort of validated my decision to buy a DELL.

On a better note, i will be writing about Dell’s Next Day onsite Warranty service which is AWESOME ! Sony could learn a thing or two.

The HTC Dream which will be manufactured by High Tech Computer Corporation is going to be the first Android phone to be marketed and released. Android as some of you may be knowing is Google’s mobile platform. The Dream will cost $179 when purchased along with a T-Mobile plan. The good news is that HTC has a very strong base in India and might launch the phone pretty early in India at a very competitive price.

The Android platform is designed to take on the likes of Windows Mobile, Symbian and other generic and specific mobile phone OS manufacturers. However this particular phone is intended to compete head on with the Apple Iphone. The Apple Iphone has been a moderate success in the US and a complete failure in India.

The HTC Dream features a capacitive touchscreen interface, GPs, 3.1 MP camera, Accelerometer and a Qualcomm 528MHz processor. Its interesting to note we dont even know the processor used by Apple.

On the software front too, the phone is pretty good. As you can see in the video, it has built in Gmail, Youtube player. It features multiple desktops like most Linux systems and allows drag and drop for icons (How cool is that). The menu is brought up with swipes.

It also has a full QWERTY keyboard, gotta say looks pretty promising.

Amitabh Bachan started blogging on Bidadda and one fine day he releases some of his blog stats. Around 37000 visitors in the first 6 days of September, takes us the whole month to reach that number.

BigAdda also must be laughing all the way to the bank, great work from them too. So here is the thing if you are an actor/actress, start blogging. Not only will it dispell the whole thing about actors being dumb , it will also help you earn some money if you bomb at the box office (not that Mr. Amitabh Bachan is). For actors blogs may also act as bridges between fans and themselves.

I remember quite a few CEO blogs, CEO blogs inspire confidence in the company and give a platform to customers to share vital feedback with the company’s top management, something which might be prevented by corrupt mid level management. I personally am very impressed with people who hold big positions and still take out time to blog, the biggest example being Matt Cutts from Google. Others include some sportspersons and prominent journalists.

The obvious advantage to blogging if you are famous is that you dont have to go through the initial hiccup stages, a new site when started needs a lot of intellectual capital. A new site needs 100s of articles before its even notices. Wisetechie.com itself took a lot of time to get where it is today. And thanks to all our readers for their support

This is sort of a repeat post, i was chatting with my friend yesterday and he was really clueless about sending free sms to people. One thing which i dont get is, why is it shameful to use a free SMS service ?

I mean, am i cooler if i pay 1 rupee to Airtel for each message i send. So, when you are at home, save some money and use free SMS services to send SMSes to friends. It works with almost all Indian operators and is free, what have you got to lose ? I use the service by Mginger.

Also you do get the option to receive ads and be paid for the same, again the money there aint great but occasionally you get discount coupons which have to be shown in shops on your cell screen, although i must confess i have never tried them.

So sign up here to start sending free SMSes

Fans of Apple in India arent happy, well the majority arent, i admit Bhaichung Bhutia looked happy with his Iphone. Apple’s announcement of the Iphone in India turned out to be a huge whimper due to the exhortative pricing strategy employed by Apple with Airtel and Vodafone. Lets admit it, we knew the price wasnt going to be the US price os $199 or 8000 rupees. We were pegging it at 13k-18k rupees which would sort of even justify some of the hype but what was the result is truly a gameplan lost.

We have scores of emails from prospective buyers telling Apple to keep the Iphone with themselves, most cant evven think about spending >30k on a mobile device with a shitty 2 MP camera, no video recording and a 3G USP which isnt even functional yet.

Forums are full of people hitting back at the hype, people are telling Airtel agents to goto hell and stop promoting their iBoxes as iPhones. Iphone fanatics who were certain to purchase the phone have dumped it, quite frankly as they cant afford it.

So who would go for a Nokia N96, Nokia N95 instead of the Iphone ? , the smart money says anyone with a decent amount of brain and anyone who isnt a Steve Jobs obsessed fanboy.

So unless you want to show off your Iphone by pinching a photo to zoom in and zoom out, give the Iphone 3G India a HUGE miss. There is a price drop around the corner for this overpriced piece of junk. Or better, get a laptop instead.

Well you got to give it to Bharti Teleservices, they seem to have beaten Vodafone on the launch date, with Vodafone yet to announce a launch date for the Iphone, Airtel has already announced on its website that its going to launch the Iphone on the 22nd of August and pricing information will be available in due time on the site. I have already signed for the prebooking, but am yet to get any information on the launch  price etc. The only information is available on their website and nowhere else.

So called tech sites like Techtree had claimed a lot of inside sources in Vodafone about the launches (LOL !) , we never had any inside source, only followed developments on websites and hence we weren’t wrong.

It is surprising that Vodafone which had got into an agreement with Apple before Airtel wont get to have the first mover advantage for the Iphone. For the Indian Iphone fan : Exciting times ahead

My cousin was in town lately and i got a chance to play with her Acer Aspire 4720 Laptop, only for 4-5 hours, but enough to give me a gist of its pros and cons. The laptop comes with 14.1” LCD Screen, Intel Core2Duo Processor T5450, 160 GB HDD , the laptop has a 4-5 hour battery life.

The Acer utilities were not working on her laptop though. Also when i tried to connect to my Wifi connection, it didnt work. The drivers bundled with the laptop are highly confusing, the WLAN Adaptor had 5 different drivers on the CD which left me confused. Later i was able to figure it out and Wifi worked , this was ofcourse after hitting the switch on the front of the laptop.

The laptop has a 1.3 MP web camera with a Microphone so Skype Videochats are a breeze. The laptop impressed me with its speed and clutter-lessness, ofcourse the laptop comes preinstalled with Linux  so you can use your own Windows key and save on costs if you have a MSDNAA account like me.

Anyway the laptop is sturdy and is giving no problems at the moment. So all in all i see no problems with it. Wifi and integrated bluetooth are premium features included in the laptop.

The 1GB RAM is less by today’s standards, so get it upgraded to 2/3 GB according to your wishes and budget.

In what will directly impact the sales of the Iphone 3G phones, the Indian Government today announced plans to e-auction the 3G spectrum in India. BSNL and MTNL will get the spectrum automatically by paying the highest bid price, private operators will have to bid.

International parties too can bid for a piece of the Indian 3G spectrum slice but with a catch, they will either have to get a license or invest in an existing Indian company to offer 3G services.

The non-availability of 3G services was the biggest drawback as far as the Iphone 3G’s sales in India were concerned. Vodafone and Airtel must be thanking their stars as this announcement is bound to boost both interest and demand for the new Apple Iphone 3Gs in India which is expected to be launched this month.

The 3G or 3rd Generation platform offers download speeds of 14.4 Mbits/second and upload speeds of 5.8 Mbits/sec . These speeds are much more than the present ones offered under 2G. India has a huge range of 3G phones in the market for a long time now, but the services were missing. 3G will allow services like video calling, streaming data and VoIP at a fast and hopefully economical price.

The 3G spectrum offers a much higher bandwidth which ensures faster data transfer as more channels are available and simultaneous transfer of different types of data like Voice, Video and misc. data.

Also announced in MNP or mobile number portability, so people will be able to switch networks without changing their numbers. Idea and Spice users who wish to get the Iphone may choose this route once the MNP is implemented.

Well i used to hate all that Mginger spam i got earlier, but now i am sort of liking the service, their new Mginger messenger allows you to send free SMS to anyone in India, and believe me the messages are sent instantly unlike some other web services which may take hours to send SMSes, so anyway , i am enjoying the free SMS service on Mginger, and hope you do too.

The links are affiliate links because i really recommend this service for the free SMSing :). As far as earning money via SMS ads goes, i have earned a grand total of five rupees from them, but others who were much more proactive in spamming have earned a lot more.

Click here to Join Mginger

Ok so things seem to be heating up as the launch of the Iphone 3G in India nears, Airtel just sent a teaser email which announces the launch of the Iphone 3G on their networks but falls short of giving an exact date on which Apple Iphone 3G will be launched in India. The mail was probably meant to sustain interest in the hyped launch.

The Iphone 3G is seeing an extended wait in India, Vodafone has currently given no news as to the launch date for the Iphone 3G. There are reports that Vodafone’s exact Iphone launch dates are 22-26th August 2008 , these ofcourse are unconfirmed.

Apple has also made an Iphone India seciton on its website, the site lists the Indian operators that will launch the Iphone 3G, Airtel and Vodafone. It also however has no information on the exact Iphone India launch date.