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  • Samsung memory card – failed after 4 months!

    Last Christmas I bought my eldest daughter a Samsung Tocco Lite mobile phone. I bought it from Phones4U, as they were also providing a free Samsung 8GB Micro SD card.

    4 months of use later and the card has failed. And I don’t mean the data has gone – it appears the controller has stopped working and, hence, the card is totally inaccessible. Unfortunately, my daughter didn’t backup her myriad of photos, videos and music.

    But… seriously? 4 months?

    I’ve contacted Phones4u and, with no quibble, said they’d send out a replacement card.

    I thought I’d also contact Samsung to see if there’s anything they can do about recovering the data. Or at least query why their card lasted so little amount of time. Unfortunately, Samsung UK only offer support via phone or post – no twitter or email support. I tried the phone option but it appears to be an Indian-based Helpdesk and I gave up.

    I’ll try sending a letter and see how that goes – Phones4u haven’t asked for the faulty card back so I can hold onto that in case Samsung are able to do anything about the contents.

    There are companies that will remove the memory chip and recover the contents, but it’s an expensive process.

    So, top marks to Phones4u and a wooden spoon to Samsung. So far. Can they redeem themselves?

  • T-Mobile & Poor Reception

    Since getting my HTC Hero (sorry, T-Mobile G2 Touch), I’ve been plagued with poor reception problems at home. T-Mobiles map shows a very good signal strength for my area, but I’m often without ANY reception when indoors (and it’s a 70’s build semi, not a Victorian terrace with thick walls).

    It was never bad enough an issue (I don’t get many calls at home!) that it was worth returning the phone, but I contacted T-Mobile.

    First of all, there was their description of what the signal map meant…

    it looks like the coverage is ‘good’ the description of ‘good’ explains outdoor only guaranteed.

    Now, maybe it’s just me, but not being able to get a signal when inside your house does not indicate “good” to me. That’s poor.I’m not talking about the 3G signal either – there isn’t one. This is the basic 2G/able to make a phone call signal.

    When pushed a little further, their response was…

    ahh, sadly there’s nothing we can do re the network. another phone may have better radio reception, failing that we have to accept it 🙂

    Nice.

    Maybe the merger of T-Mobile and Orange will mean that they’ll start sharing transmitters – my wife is on Orange and has no such signal problems. Indeed, I never had problems with my previous phone, which was on O2 and my SatNav, which uses Vodafone, is fine. My Three broadband dongle has no signal though, so they’re also best avoided by me.

    I love my Hero, but there are lots of good looking Android phones appearing on the market at the moment. Come my contract renewal in 15 months time, I’ll be seriously looking elsewhere.

    Signal strength is a big issue when buying mobile phones, as few networks will do anything if you get home with your shiny new phone and find you have no signal.

    I was therefore quite intrigued to hear of Vodafone’s solution to this – their Mobile Phone Signal Booster. This connects to your home broadband and provides a Vodafone 3G network in your home.

    Their network maps show me as having an excellent 2G signal (so I can at least receive phone calls when at home) and a reasonable 3G signal, possibly only working outside. So a single payment of £50 will get me their Signal Booster, ensuring I get a strong 3G signal, even at home. If they have the phone I’m after next year, it may be a winner for me!

  • Creating a random number in Excel

    To create a whole random number in Excel, place the following into the equation line :

    =INT((RAND()*max)+min)

    Where min and max are the minimum and maximum values. For example…

    =INT((RAND()*10)+1)

    This will generate a number between (and including) 1 and 10.

    This will be recalculated every time the spreadsheet is opened. Alternatively, press F9 to update the number.

    If you don’t want the numbers to change every time the cell is calculated, you can enter the equation into the formula bar and then press F9 to change the formula to a fixed random number.

    All of the above works with OpenOffice, with the exception of using F9 in the formula bar to fix the result.

  • Changing the location of Firefox bookmarks

    If you wish Firefox to look elsewhere for the bookmark file

    • Type about:config in the URL bar
    • Right click within the window and add a new string entry
    • The entry name should be browser.bookmarks.file
    • Set its value to the new location (eg F:bookmarks.html)

  • Synchronising Files Across Computers

    For some time now I’ve used Microsoft’s Live Mesh software to synchronise folders across a number of computers. It’s a little tricky to set up at first but otherwise is relatively easy to use.

    The idea is that you mark folder that you wish to add to the Mesh. On your other linked computers, it then creates matching folders where the data is shared. These folders aren’t short cuts, so even though you would have set one up initially on one computer, there is no “base” computer on which the data is held. “The cloud” is used to hold the data as it flows between the various computers.

    However, for a good few days one of my PCs has only been synchronising one way, for no good reason. I tried un-installing and re-installing the program, but then it wouldn’t connect at all to Live Mesh.

    To add insult to injury, upon un-installing a folder of file conflicts was generated by Live Mesh containing 11 files going back to August last year. I had thought that occasionally changes had gone missing, but as no conflicts had been flagged, I just assumed it wasn’t the case. Now I know otherwise. Indeed, un-installing Live Mesh on my 2 other computers also generated folders full of file conflicts.

    So, the search was on for a replacement.

    My initial investigations lead me to ZumoDrive. Now, ZumoDrive works in a different way to Live Mesh. Again you assign folders to share, but here you have a new mapped drive letter on which each shared computer appears with the shared folders under each. With Mesh there was no concept of which computer the data was coming from – it was all one shared “mass”. I’ll admit I wasn’t keen. None-the-less, ZumoDrive have an excellent matching Android App, which even separates out music and photos.

    However, the initial synchronisation took forever – in fact it seemed to sit on “idle” with no transfer activity at all. On top of that some files transferred over with missing icons.

    Next, I came to Dropbox. One of the most popular solutions, I’d initially avoided it because of the lack of a matching Android App (although one is due soon). However, it’s the one I’ve settled with.

    Dropbox is simplicity itself – maybe too simple for some people. Basically, it places a folder on your PC (wherever you wish to put it) and anything you place in it gets synchronised with your other PCs. And the best bit – it’s damn fast. The initial synchronisation of 10MB of data took no time at all, and file modifications have been almost instant. I’m very, very impressed.

    Only one issue so far – after booting up one of my computers this morning it didn’t, even after a number of minutes active, pick up on a number of file changes that I’d made. It was only when I added something to the Dropbox folder on that computer did it transfer everything else. I’m sure it was just my impatience though…

    Capacity is not a great issue for me as I’m only synchronising small amounts of data however it should be noted that Mesh provides 5GB and ZumoDrive and Dropbox 2GB. ZumoDrive initially provides 1GB and you have to perform a series of tasks to receive the extra 1GB. Dropbox does similar and you can continue to increase your capacity by signing up new customers.