Category Archives: Personal Rants

If you are thinking of signing up for Vonage account you had better read the terms and conditions before you start. I have been using the Vonage system for just over two years now as my business line and it really hasn’t been that bad. For the most part, call quality has not been too bad, I’ve had some occasional calls with echoes and some where the person I’m calling can’t hear me, as well a few with delays. While these don’t happen often they can be frustrating. Usually a quick reconnect solves the problem. These don’t happen too often and since I don’t use the phone all that much the service does save me money over a dedicated phone line. Another thing that helps is that I also have a very high speed cable network which helps with the call quality (Shaw’s Extreme-I service). Recently I found a website based in the U.S. called www.wehatevonage.com. This site while lists complaints that people have about Vonage service and technical support. Some of the complaints are people not knowing any better and transferring phone service from their DSL provider and losing their high speed Internet connection at the same time. They indicate that Vonage does not tell them this could happen (and I know most aren’t Internet gurus) and they are mad at Vonage (there should be some blame paced on their DSL provider). I have blogged on this before, indicating that you need naked DSL service to use Vonage without an analog phone line. TELUS currently does not provide a naked DSL service, so you are throwing away money using Vonage with them. The other most often cited major problem is people trying to cancel accounts and in some cases it taking several tries and several months’ worth of phone calls to Vonage to try and cancel their accounts and then finding out that there’s a fee for cancellation. Another very common complaint at the website above is people complaining about trying to cancel the service within the 30 day free trial period. These people are indicating that Vonage is saying the 30 days begin with a signup and not when they receive and activate their phone adaptors. These people are being charged the $50.00 disconnection fee as well as complaining about fees for unused months being charged.

When I first started with Vonage Canada’s service, there was a $50.00 fee if you cancelled within three months and the fee was waived after this. About a year ago I received a notice indicating that they would no longer charge the 50.00 cancellation fee. Today after reading the above site, I went back to check on Vonage Canada’s terms of service, only to find out that if your account is opened after February 1, 2007, you will have to pay a $50.00 cancellation fee if you cancel your account within two years. If you connected or activated your service on or before January 31, 2007, the cancellation fee will be waived if your account was open for one year. I am not sure what I would do if I cancelled my account today, as I have been using it as my business line. I will be checking with my phone provider, Shaw Cable, to see if I can move the phone number to their system. The only other problem I have is that I am also using Vonage’s fax services which would probably require a third line (with Telus) into my house. When I started with Shaw there that had no second line program. At least now they offer a Digital Phone light service (all features, cheap long distance).

While Vonage has been convenient and has worked for me so far, some people are not happy to call quality and the occasional echo that you can get. One thing I like about the Vonage service is that I can take my adaptor when I travel. For example, I was in Hawaii this January and I took my Vonage adapter, connected to the high speed Internet Service in the condo and was able to receive calls without people having to dial long distance, and make calls without incurring long distance charges on the condo phone. I know there have been some problems with 310 numbers that are used for government and pizza places, as well as some problems reaching Canadian 1800 numbers because they cannot tell where the call is being routed from. There is one advantage to this however; as my daughter can make calls to Radio Disney’s toll free number and they get through, unlike when we tried to call from a regular phone line. They block non U.S. calls to their toll free numbers.

As I’ve stated a couple of times, I’m very happy with the Vonage service. Would I use it for a home phone service? Probably not. I expect my phone to work all the time, and while there were some small growing pains when we switched our phone to Shaw’s Digital phone service, (a couple of times we had some echoes, that this was as a result of their call volumes being louder and using it with a cordless phone). The service and value has been excellent. We have used Shaw’s Digital phone for two years and other than the first couple of months and the slight echo the service has been great. I have also a few friends that are using Vonage as home service and have been happy with it. I have also set it up as a long distance line for my sisters to call Calgary from Victoria as the Vonage phone is setup with a local Victoria phone number.

As with any type of service before getting into it always read the fine print. Most companies publish terms of service on their web sites to can actually read them before you sign up for or activate any service. If you don’t read the terms of service, if you do have a complaint about the service, there is really not a lot you can do as in most cases, signing up or activating indicates that you accept that the terms and conditions. As always it is buyer beware.

Stephen

There are some people out there that really do not like Microsoft or the Windows Operating system. These are the Mac and Linux users out there and sometimes I wonder if these people have lives! While I am not impressed or happy with everything that Microsoft does, I think that their last couple Operating Systems have been good. Who could live without Windows XP today or would want to continue running Windows 98?

I was looking through some forums last night trying to find out if there was a Vista version of one of the applications I use. It was amazing reading some of the threads where someone said they had purchased a new computer with Windows Vista or was upgrading, and the treatment that these people got. They were being called stupid and how they should never upgrade until Microsoft releases the first service pack for it. I really want to know what makes these people qualified to judge Vista.

If they point to Beta experiences well that is not a legitimate argument. Beta software version are test versions of software. Yes they are buggy, yes they are unstable at times and yes they break. That is the purpose of beta testing. Vista being delayed as long as it was is arguably one of the most tested software platforms that have ever come out. And even with all the beta testing there are still combinations of hardware, software and configurations that can never ever be duplicated. Are there going to be problems with released software? Yes and they will be fixed. Is Vista stable? Yes! I have been using it for a month and a half on my laptop and it has been fine. Are there going to be problems? Yes, I have some applications that don’t like Vista and I have hardware that doesn’t yet, or won’t have drivers for it. For most of these problems I actually blame the software developers and Hardware manufacturers that have not yet released drivers fully functioning drivers. They also point the finger at Microsoft, but here we are almost a month and a half after release and there are several pieces of hardware that are still not ready.

As for security and interesting thing happened last week. Microsoft sent out their monthly security bulletin for patch Tuesday and there was no critical security patches, both for XP and for Vista… Some folks on IT based newsgroups joked that DST must be the end of the world. But my thought is that this shows how secure Vista is. I am sure there are hackers out there that are trying really hard to break and find security holes in Vista. The fact that in about a month and a half since its public release I have seen no Critical Security patches for it. Vista has been out since Mid November to Volume clients) and in that time there have been no critical security patches needed (I just confirmed this myself as my laptop does not have 1).

I am more likely to believe that some of these people that are Vista bashing have also been using illegal copies of Vista. These are versions that bypass the activation process by using old beta code or some other hack that is out there. Again I would not trust this software as you can’t know what else has been bundled on it.

I am still advising clients that if they wish to upgrade to Vista they should do 2 things. Run the Vista upgrade advisor to check hardware and software compatibility first. Then yes wait a month or two to ensure that there are proper drivers for most of their software. If they are willing to risk it there are usually a few work a rounds as well. For example one of my scanners indicated it wasn’t compatible, I still downloaded the XP driver and installed it. Clicked OK on the warning, but it still worked after the install. For software, I am running the really problematic programs in a Virtualized XP Pro machine using MS Virtual PC 2007.

If you are planning on purchasing a new system with Windows Vista, go ahead and run the upgrade advisor on your existing PC to see if there are recognized hardware and software issues. This way you know ahead of time if you have to buy new hardware or software and you can do it at the same time as you purchase your machine!

Added 03/15/2007
I wrote the above post earlier this week while sitting in Vancouver Airport waiting to get on a flight. Since then I have read a few more forums about Vista and upgrading. There are loads of people out there that are blaming Microsoft because their 5 year old version of software doesn’t work and the company that originally published the software has no plans of upgrading that version to Vista compatibility (let alone support the program any more period)… To these people I say tough luck, I guess you will have to continue to use Windows XP and can’t upgrade to a new computer (soon they will only sell with Vista)!

People seem to forget that we went through virtually the same problems and complaints with the introduction of Windows 95 from Windows 3.1, with the transition to Windows XP from the Win 9x OS’ and we will have to go through it again. So far I am happy and have found some solutions or workarounds to most of the problems I had. Yes I even went out and bought an refurbished Dell Laptop (no bells and whistles) that had Windows XP Home on it just so that I could use a couple of pieces of specialized hardware that is not (and apparently won’t be supported on Windows Vista! I will use this machine for a while and when I am done either give it to the kids or sell it.

Yesterday there was another application compatibility patch released for Windows Vista. These patches are as a result of people sending the problems to Microsoft after having a crash. There are quite a few programs that have been fixed in this release. Remember that before you click no to sending information to Microsoft regarding an application patch. If you do you are helping with these application compatibility patches that could help some of your software run better.

Stephen

Telus is at it again. There new high speed ads or going back on the old argument that their service is faster because it is not shared. For comparisions sake, I won’t touch their extreme offerings.

A side note. I do not work for Telus or Shaw. I get paid nothing by either company. I have been a Shaw High Speed Customer since 1995, and a year ago got rid of my final Telus phone line. My experience comes with dealing with people’s PCs in their homes and Offices and I even at one point did some testing with both services in my house and identical PCs.

Telus is claiming that since cable shares the connection around a neighborhood that it slows down when loads of people get on. This can be true but is not likely and here are a couple of reasons.

Telus’ High Speed offering is slower to begin with. Shaw’s rated download speed is 5.0 MB per Second. Telus’ is 3 Mb per second. Upload speeds – Shaw up to 512KBPS, Telsu up to 640 KBPS. What dows this mean? Shaw has more bandwidth coming down to your computer but Telus’ upload speed is higher meaning the mouse click on the link is sent slightly faster to the server.

These rated speeds for both companies though are for a perfect world. Line noise can affect both and Telus’ DSL speeds are also based on how far you are away form the Central Office (CO) or switch. The further away, the weaker the signal and the slower the speed.

There are also many other factors that can affect this. If you use a router the processor in there can affect the speed of how fast it processes the requests. more machines on your network also affect perfromance. Cat 5 cable quality, your network card and even your CPU also affect performance. For example I run a Gigabit switch running to an old Nexland router (but with a higher end processor built in). My nic cards on my main PCs are all Gigabit, but I also run Media Center Extenders (gets used a lot), game consoles (Xbox 360 and Wii) and several printers and a VOIP phone on my network.  On my latest PC ( ac ore 2 Duo Machine) the speeds are much faster than my other machine because of the architecture of the processor and integrated NIC. I have seen download speeds of up to 7 MBS on my Shaw Extreme Connection and just under 6 on my older AMD PC. So there are too many factors that affect performance to back Telus’ claim.

As well at some point there has to be a junction between all their clients and the Internet, it may be further up the line, but yes there will be congestion.

The site you are visiting and what you are doing also plays a role. Some web servers are faster than others or have more hits against them than others. This performance affects your perceived speeds as well. Time zoes play another role. At 4:00 PM in Calgary it is 6:00 PM in eastern North America and more people are hitting hte Internet after coming home from work. Later for Central and all the way to Pacific times.

Several years ago I brought in a Telus DSL connection as well as my Shaw one (this was before I opted for Shaw Extreme). I set up two virtually identical PCs (all components) and the one that had a slight processor performace edge (AMD vs Intell) I put on my home network to handicap it. I tested both PCs at identical times to identical test sites all through out the day for two months. The final result was that the Shaw connection was always faster!

Looking at the fastest ISP’s results at www.dslreports.com although it is difficult to tell what kind of account it is, Shaw is higher in the rankings than Telus in almost all cases. This should be taken with a grain of salt however because you can’t tell what the account is (Extreme or regular).

In the end my personal experience however is that I have found Shaw connections to be consistently faster, with better support overall. There are also other reasons in an earlier blog post on why I recommend Shaw.

Stephen

It’s been a while since I posted and I just wanted to add a little to my PC vs Mac post. The newest Apple commercials featuring PC (a guy that looks like Bill Gates) and Mac (a hip young guy) focus on Windows Vista. While these commercials are humerous again they stretch the truth abit. My favorite so far is directly pointed at Vista’s UAC (User Access Control). It’s features PC with a Secret Service looking guy guy behind him dressed in a black suit. Mac walks up and starts to talk but the SS dude intercepts and asks “Mac is trying to talk to you, do you want to allow or cancel.” The whole commercial goes on tlike this with UAC (the guy in black) intercepting and prompting to allow or cancel for the entire spot. It is funny but a little stretched.

To understand a little better let me explain about UAC in Vista. This is a new security feature that Microsoft implemented. In the XP days, most user accounts ran on the PC as the Local System Administrator. This means that those accounts could do virtually anything to the system at any time (Install Programs and Hardware, delete files, change settings). This is one of the primary reasons that Spyware and Viruses can get installed on a system without the person knowing. With Windows Vista even the computer administrator account runs as a standard user all the time, and if a program requests elevated access to do something the user is prompted to allow or cancel it. At first this can come up often but for some programs you can have Vista remeber the settings and allow the program to elevate privledges as it needs it. Furthermore as programs get written for Vista this will start to go away (except for stuff written by lazy coders) as they write for the security features in Vista. I have now been running an RTM of Vista Ultimate on my laptop since late December and I now rarely get UAC prompts. Apple makes this sound like it is a huge problem when it is fact not. In fact UAC and IE7 protected mode (IE Browser runs in a sandbox) protects the user from getting infected even if they get to a malicious site.

What they also don’t tell you is that Mac OS X does the same thing! If you download file updates for your Mac you get prompted to insert an ID and password to install them. Yes you can turn off UAC in Vista (I would not recommend it) but I have yet to find a way of turning this off on my Mac!

I do have to give some credit though. Mac did get it right on the commercial dealing with PCs upgrades. Yes Vista does have some hefty hardware requirements, yes this is for the new eyecandy Aero interface (Flip 3D is still my favorite) but these features can be turned off and you don’t have to run the interface. Windows Vista Home Basic also does not ship with Aero and is suitable for earlier PCs. In my opinion if your PC is relatively new, purchased in the last 8 to 12 months, you should be able to run Vista but double check by downloading the Vista Upgrade Advisor.

Also on another note the commercial featuring the installation of a Video Camera is also false. Many Windows PCs now do feature these options and the buyer can select to get them if they want.  It is much easier for MAC to do this as the only people that can build a Mac system is Apple themselves. They are a monopoly. You can’t get a MAC clone. This leads to higher prices and fewer options and upgrades in the future.

That’s it for now.. I have more Rants and News coming right up!

Apple’s TV ad campaign that makes you think the MAC is so much easier to use than the PC is not entirely true. I remember an ad where Mac and PC are talking and a Japanese girls walks in and Mac talks to her as she is the latest digital camera on the market… Let me tell you about my frustrations.

Back in August I purchased a Dual Core (Intel) Mac Mini PC so that I could see and try what all the fuss was about. Worst case is that my video editing pc has been down for a while (I need to do some upgrades and swap components around) so I figured at least I can use the Mac for that since it is suppposedly so much better.

I have found the Mac a little difficult to navigate around in but I didn’t want that to cloud my judgement as I am a long time PC user. So I muddled my wat through and am trying to learn it.

Today I am as frustrated as ever. I am right now trying to connect my daughter’s Canon ZR500 Vidoe camera up to the Mac to copy some of her tapes to DVD. Shoudl be easy right!. Plug the firewire cable into the camera, start IDvd and do a transfer after inserting a blank disk. Is it nooo. I followed the steps clicked Onestep DVD and nothing happened! OK I’ll try Imovie. Switch to camera capture mode. No camera. With a Mac there is no way (such as Windows XP control panel) to see if the camera is connected. I try shutting the camera on and off a couple of times, check help and still can’t get it to work. Hmmmm let’s try a reboot… Start all over and this time it recognizes the camera and works, finally!

This leads me to another “beef” I have with the system. When creating these OneStep DVDs the system stores everything to a temporary file. Well after creating 3 DVDs I notice I have no hard drive space left. OK i figure this is temporary files so I go to delete them. I can’t find them! From what I have so far determined there is no way other than rebooting the Mac to clear ou thte temporary files. I know I can do this in Windows so if you know how to do it on a Mac please let me know!

Other things are still confusing to me like how to install software etc.

I am trying… I am determined to give this little Mac mini a chance and will even spend a little to upgrade the Ram in it. From conversations I have had with other IT pros is that they find creative peolple (obviously I am not one of these) can figure out that Mac more easily than logical thinkers.

Oh well I will keep trying and if I finally give up you will see an upgraded Mac Mini available for sale here! At the very least I will dual boot it with Windows Vista and run that are a majority of the hard drive!

Stephen

For a while when people asked my who they should use for High Speed Internet, my answer was either was ok and that their best bet was to find out from neighbors what service they had and how good it was. I have sinc e changed my tune n the Calgary area and am currently recommending Shaw to all cof my Small Business and Residential clients for a few reasons.

Both services are fairly fast and both have their share of problems (network outages etc). In my area I find Shaw very fast and extremely reliable. I have seen very slow and flakely Shaw service in some areas but this leads me to one of the reasons for my decisions – Customer Service.

Shaw will send techs out at no charge to check everything in your house if you have a problem. I have even heard of instances where they have torn up an alleyway, installed new cable and repaved to fix problems. Telus does charge for service calls.

I also find the Telus service very restrictive. Both companies seem to have differnt philosophy’s when it comes to their high speed offerings. Telus seems to be, We know what’s best for you , while Shaw’s is here is your connection, have fun but if you need tools here they are.

Case in point. For email I don’t use Shaw. This and all of my websites are hosted elsewhere, and I use the email accounts for my domain. When on a Shaw connection I have no problems sending my email to my email server in the US. Telus blocks outbound port 25 (used for SMTP) so I can’t send using my own domain. In order to send from them I have to change Outlook to send via Telus’ SMTP server. You may be thinking well at least the mail goes out, but there is a cost. Telus claims they do this port blocking to control Spam, well what they are doing can make my email look like Spam. Mail servers see the email coming from my domain yet the server that is sending the mail is Telus.net they don’t match so this is a spoofed Id and can drop the mail. I have taken steps such as adding a sender policy framework record to my name servers indicating that telus.net is authorized to send mail for my domai, but that is a hassle.

Another port they block is port 80 inbound. Port 80 is the standard port for webservers. So if you want to run a webserver at your you can’t do it.

Also Telus forces and IP address change every 24 hours so if you so want to use remote desktop to access your home PC you have to use a dynamic DNS service or a program called log me in. I can’t remember the last time my SHaw IP address changed but it was more than 2 years ago.

I have seen more instances of Telus being down than Shaw being down in Calgary over the long run.

For Business Clients Telus’ so called static IP addresses are not static at all. They advise you to leave your router set at DHCP but they continue to assign the same address. The problem with this is if you change routers or even if you shut a router down for some time you can lose that IP address.

Last spring I had to move all of my clients that were using Shaw’s dynamic IP addresses on business accounts to static IP’s because Telus mail servers started rejecting mail from these Shaw accounts because they were on dynamic IP address blocks that their real time blacklist providor flagged. Again the we know what’s best argument.

I had one instance where on a business DSL connection Telus took 3 days to discover and fix a problem on their side. I did not receive a call till 3 days after the problem was fixed to tell me it was done. What ticks me off is that this was a business account at a Major Canadian Bank! Shaw gives priority to their business accounts with their own desk and realizes the value of these clients. I have recently had mext morning service calls after I suspected that the problem at one site was their, and sure enough they were there early the next day and fixed the problem.

I could go on and on with examples and problems I have run into with Telus, and like I said I have seen issues with Shaw as well. However Shaw has been and are willing to assist and solve the problem. I don’t get that from Telus.

So now you know. In the Calgary area I highly recommend Shaw’s service over Telus High Speed service anyday. Disagree? I look forward to your feedback.

PS, Telus is not yet offering a service called Naked DSL (at least I can’t find it on their site) which unbundles the phone line from your DSL connection. So if you want to use or switch to an IP phone providor (Vonage) it makes no sense as you have to keep your phoine in order to keep your DSL service in addition to paying for Vonage. Makes no sense really!

If there is anything I really hate about the Internet it is spammers… Especially since I have my own domain. I can assure you that we here at Sysguy Consulting do not send spam out of any sort. However our domain is used for spoofing spam email. What these low life’s do is send out spam with reply to addresses made up from our domain sysguy.com. How do I know. I get several emails a day from mail servers to non existent addresses on my domain indicating message failures. It is not very hard to spoof a reply email address and the software that these idiots use so it automatically.

I have threatened several companies that I will begin proceedings against them if they don’t stop and it does stop for a while, but inevitably it starts up again. Lately there seems to be a lot of Pump and Dump mails going out (pump a stock up getting people to buy and drive the price up, then they sell it driving the price down).

What can you do to protect yourself? Make sure you are sure where you are giving your email address. Look for check boxes giving permission when signing web forms allowing companies share info with partners. You can always use a free email address (Hotmail, Yahoo, Gmail) if you have to sign up.

If you have a web site use a contact form or at the very least use a script to disguise your email address from robots. Never set a up an auto reply for your personal email address.

Hopefully one day we will be able to come up with a sure fire way to stop these scum and get email back.