Trials and Tribulations with Gateway Technical Support

Recently, I upgraded one of our PCs to a Gateway 7330GZ. It's a very nice notebook, so much so that I use it as my main PC now. Unfortunately, I went through a bit of a nightmare in dealing with Gateway technical support trying to figure out what kind of expansion memory it takes (the 7330GZ comes with 512MB RAM by default; I wanted to upgrade it to 1.5GB).

Because it's "too new", there's virtually no technical documentation available for this notebook - the most technical details that came with it were on the side of the box! Anyway, the information on the box, the Gateway website, and the Best Buy website seemed to indicate that I needed the RAM to be PC4200. So, I place an order with the good folks at Newegg and order a PC4200 1GB SODIMM, along with a couple of other things. Two days later, the RAM arrives, and...

...it doesn't fit. The slot in the SODIMM is offset from the tab in the expansion bay.

After some investigation it appears that I may need a PC2700 SODIMM (a slightly older technology; "DDR" rather than "DDR2"). But the few specs I've seen contradict that. So, I contact Gateway technical support. And then the fun begins!

The first response is that the "73330GZ" (their incorrect spelling) doesn't exist, and I should contact them if I need further assistance. I respond by directing them to their webpage for their product to point out that it indeed does exist (OK, technically, it's probably not their product but the product of the American company that has outsourced their support to them, but they're still supposed to be representative of that company). And again I ask what the specs are for the memory expansion slot.

The response is to a page that shows you how to install more memory. Thanks, guys. In their defense, the page did mention in passing that notebooks in the 7000 series use 333 Mhz (PC2700) memory modules. This did seem to answer my question, so I replied asking for verification that that indeed was the case for my notebook - I wanted to make sure that I didn't order another SODIMM I was going to have to send back (and get hit with another restocking fee). I still wasn't comfortable with the fact that BB and Gateway were saying the memory was of one type but the expansion was of another.

The reply to this e-mail confirmed what I asked but when they mentioned my particular notebook, they got the details wrong - like saying it had 256MB internal RAM, not 512MB which was the case. This didn't fill me with confidence that we were talking about the same thing. It also didn't help that, while waiting for e-mail replies, I had spoken with a Gateway tech in a "livechat" and she told me that the 7330GZ would accept the faster, DDR2 RAM - though it would only work if I bought it from Gateway since only proprietary Gateway memory would work in their notebooks.

The response I then got from the e-mail support was "Sorry this issue is giving you trouble; please give us 48 hours to research this more fully. Don't contact us during this time as it will hamper our research." My (unwritten) response to this was "WTF?" All I wanted was some technical specifications for a particular model of computer that was currently being sold and this is going to take 48 hours?

After almost 72 hours and no reply I picked up the phone and called their support line. Finally, I was able to talk to someone that - regardless of whether they did or not - seemed to know what they were talking about and, more importantly, seemed to know what I was talking about. The tech (unfortunately, I don't recall her name) gave me the information I was looking for and I was able to order the RAM I wanted. The lesson - I should have done this in the first place! I also replied to the e-mail I had (since I'd given them the 48 hours they'd asked for), and the response was basically "Sorry, we don't have any information we can give you on that."

So...nice notebook but a nightmare for support. Of course, if I'd called first thing rather than pursue the other forms of support, I'd have no complaints...

(Side note: In case anyone's wondering, my messages to the support people were cordial and courteous, even when expressing frustration and dissatisfaction; I don't want people to think that my experience was my fault due to some sort of written yelling, screaming, and/or bitching. I'm fully aware that that's not a good tactic to use when dealing with people or companies).

Documents-to-Go is a piece of crap

Transferring files to a new PC should not be this big of a pain-in-the-ass. More on this later (including my tribulations with Gateway tech support).

I should not have to tell "Documents-to-Go" the location of every goddamn file I have to re-sync with the Palm. I should be able to do it en masse.

Is there a way to do it? Probably, but it's not intuitive. And people still wonder why the average person is computer illiterate. I'm far from that myself, but I don't relish taking time out of my day to restore everything back the way it was. I have better things to do with my time.

Review of War of the Worlds

As usual, potential spoiler warning. Though I don't consider revealing that bacteria kills the aliens in the end as a spoiler. That's been out there for 107 years.

Anyway, we went to War of the Worlds on Sunday. I had mixed expectations as the previews looked good but the reviews weren't so great. Overall, I liked it, but like Land of the Dead, I wouldn't have missed out greatly if I hadn't seen it. The first half of the movie was quite good and was essentially a horror/sci-fi movie. The second half was rather slow, and the ending was a tad anti-climatic, but the book was like that, too. Speaking of which, unlike the original War of the Worlds movie from 1953, this one was a lot closer to H.G. Wells original book - tripods, a ferry, the red weed, etc. I believe Morgan Freeman's narration at the beginning and end of the movie was taken verbatim from the book. They did leave out the "black smoke", however; I'm not sure why.

A couple scenes that stand out:

• Tom Cruise's character's horror when he realized the powder he was covered with was the ash of the people that had been vaporized near him.
• The scene where Cruise's daughter sees the body floating down the river...and then more bodies and more...

A couple things I have issue with:

• The implication that the tripods had been buried years ago; I found the idea that they'd been launched from Mars (or wherever) in the book more plausible, particularly when dealing with the ones that were buried under urban areas. You'd think we'd have found at least one. Also, wouldn't the aliens' technology have advanced far beyond what they had when they'd buried the tripods in the first place?
• If the EMP pulse had taken out all the electronics early on, how were the camera and camcorder the people using to film the first tripod working? Granted, they could have had extensive shielding or something like that, but I doubt it. Of course, it's possible that some devices were spared; I don't know enough about electro-magnetics to know how likely that is.

Anyway, it was a decent movie. I'd give the first half 2.5 stars, but 2 stars to the movie overall.

No more "chuckling" please

For some reason when I see something like "*laugh*" or "*chuckle*" in someone's e-mail or forum post, it really grates on me. Not sure why; I don't mind "emoticons", but in-line "emotes" or whatever you call them just seem so very lame. Well, maybe not all of them. "*smile*" seems innocuous enough, for instance. But "*chuckle*"...ack!

So, if you're doing it: stop. If you're not, don't start.

That is all.

Does Anyone Who Matters (the Consumers) Care About Industry Awards?

I was reading a thread over on ENWorld about this year's Origins Awards and the "ENnies" and issues surrounding both, and the overriding question in my mind was: Who really cares? Granted, it's nice to get an award for something you did, whether from the "fans" or your peers, but it seems like there's so much unnecessary complexity and way too much drama surrounding this stuff.

I can't think of a single gaming item that I purchased because it won any sort of award. I base my purchases on things like utility, what material is covered, previous experience with the author's/publisher's work, reviews from sources I respect, etc. Maybe it's just me, though from what I've seen and read I don't think so.

I'm not saying that such awards should be eliminated, but for what little true importance and value they have, it seems to me that the interested parties should just lighten up and stop treating them with so much gravity.

Review of Land of the Dead

Possible spoiler warning: I try not to get into details below, but some people may want to avoid reading this until after they've seen the movie.

So, we saw Land of the Dead last Friday. I enjoyed the movie, though I still like Dawn of the Dead (the original and the remake) more. Some of the characters where fairly clichéd, but others were pretty cool, like "Charlie" and "Pillsbury".

The thing for me, though, is that with this film the series seems to have shifted from horror to more action/sci-fi. The biggest reason for this is the fact that at the point when the movie takes place, zombies are considered to be commonplace. They aren't a horrific deviation from day-to-day life - they're a part of day-to-day life. Now, this isn't a problem with the movie itself - it's a natural progression of events; you actually saw this to a certain degree with Day of the Dead. It's still an interesting and creepy setting, but it's not really horror any longer, at least in the conventional sense.

The other thing that causes this movie to deviate from the horror genre is the "evolution" of the zombies. This may or may not be a "natural progression" of events - who knows if this would happen, or if it's feasible that it would have happened in the relatively short timeframe from when it all started in Night of the Living Dead to this movie. But given that the zombies are manifesting intelligence and, seemingly showing emotion (at least for "Big Daddy"), they are no longer the mindless, relentless walking dead but something else. Something even to be pitied, if one buys in to the hippy, zombie-hugging ending (which was the only part of the movie I truly didn't care for).

Overall, I guess it's still a "horror" movie, just not the type of "horror" that a zombie movie tends to be. I have no desire to quibble over what a genre label means, particularly since such definitions are so subjective.

I'd rate Land of the Dead...um...hmm...I suppose I need a rating system. I guess I'll go with 1-3 stars, like so:

1: Didn't like it; don't waste your time or money
2: Liked it; it's worth seeing, but not a big loss if you miss it
3: Loved it; definitely worth seeing

So, Land of the Dead gets 2 stars.

Making the Blog Titles More Meaningful

From this point forward my plan is to both categorize the blog entries (via each entry's title) as well as make them more meaningful. The categorization is to make things a little easier to...well, categorize, while the titles are intended to help a reader decide if the post is worth reading. Pretty self-explanatory stuff, really. This is something I should have done awhile ago; in some cases I've been doing the equivalent of sending an e-mail with the subject line of "Hi!" (for me, that usually is recognized as spam).

Categorization might be easier with another content management tool (like MoveableType maybe?), but I don't have time right now to mess with that. Blogger works fine for now.

Cool Web Site: The Invisible Library

The front page of the site says it all:

The Invisible Library is a collection of books that only appear in other books. Within the library's catalog you will find imaginary books, pseudobiblia, artifictions, fabled tomes, libris phantastica, and all manner of books unwritten, unread, unpublished, and unfound.