Delboy’s Blog

I have now had my iPhone 3G phone for a few days so I think its time to write about my experience so far.

I decided that this year I would line up on Friday morning for the iPhone, I got a bit of luck in that the weather in Chicago on Thursday night was very bad rain so when I got to the AT&T shop at 7am there was only about 20 people in line in front of me. As there were a number of techy people in the line the time flew by. At 8 the store opened and the 1st 5 people were allowed in. 8:45 must have been the time that the systems started to go down and it was then the line started to move. I was in and out of the store with in 30 mins and back up by 9:30.

I was not happy when I got home, after the AT&T store telling us it was the “Store’s” computers that were down, to find that it was Apple yet again letting everyone down. At about 3pm on Frinday I finally got my new Phone working and it wasn’t until 10am on Saturday morning that my Voice Mail was working.

So how am I enjoying the new iPhone, well first the bad news.
The Battery – I have found that the battery is not as good as my old iPhone even with 3G turned, I have found that I need to charge my phone at least once again, my old phone was every other day.
The Camera – Although I believe that the camera takes a better photo its still only a 2Mb camera and this could have been a lot better especially with the New Apps and location services. Also still no Video.
SMS & MMS – Still no multi media messages and you are still unable to forward text messages.
IM- Still no IM apart for AIM that only works when the App is open, although this is to be fixed in September we are told.
Crashing – I have noticed that the iPhone does now crash at least once a day I am hoping this is going to be fixed in a future update.

Now the good!!!
GPS – This is one of the best parts to the phone and all the Apps that are now using location services is great, the fact that I can take a picture and upload to flickr and I can see a map of were it was taken is great.
3G – This is a definite plus to the phone and the Internet is faster when using 3G. I do however thing that there is still work to do as when I use 3G for calls I do get some dropped calls.
Push email – Push email is good but not great as only about 80% of my mails get pushed I guess this is more to do with Apple’s lack of infrastructure for MobileMe and will improve in time.
Apps – The Apps are one of the best things about iPhone 2.0 and I will cover this in another blog.
Settings -  I do like the fact that I now have more control over what I turn off when in Airplane mode I can now have wifi ON something I really wanted.

All in all I am very happy with the new iPhone, Apple still has a lot of work to do but I am sure this will be done soon. I hope so!!!

Late last night I received the following email for Tom Metge of Mozy.

“I’ve been postponing an answer until I’ve had something concrete to give
you.  My apologies for the silence- unfortunately, we’re still buried in QA.
Anyhow, until you get back on your feet, there’s no point paying for the
service.  I’ve taken the liberty of refunding your last payment… That will
hold you out until 5/28/09.

I do have some good news for you- from your last log, I can see a number
connection errors and other network interruptions, but Mozy seems to be
plodding along, getting the job done.  You have 1.1TB backed up right now,
which is no mean feet

Hopefully the refund will help us keep things moving.  I’ll try harder to
keep you up-to-date as we get a fix out on this.  Believe me, we’re making
it a priority.  As soon as I’ve got even an alpha build of a client that
addresses this, I’ll fire it off to you.

Nice blog post, by the way.  Let me know what I can do to help turn your
opinion around.  We have nearly 1 million users, so I can’t say I’m
surprised to hear that you’ve found people having a few problems.  What may
not have come across (and that is my fault and I offer my apologies) is
that, regardless of the number, we have a vested interest in solving every
single one of those problems.

Let me polish this off with a personal promise- until we have this fixed,
you won’t pay a penny to Mozy.  That refund stands and will stand until May
of next year, at a minimum.  As we work through this, I will also make sure
that your help is appropriately rewarded, beyond the refund.  Helping us to
push the boundaries of what Mozy can and was designed to do is enormously
valuable to us.

Thanks again for the help and the patience.  Once more, I offer my apologies
for the silence.  My intention was to have a solid answer for you.  I hope
the refund and renewed commitment will stand until I can hand that solution
to you.”

I now feel that Mozy has done the correct thing and does care about me as a customer. I will continue to recommend Mozy as a god backup option as until this problem I had no issues and I now believe that Mozy IS doing everything they can to fix my problem. I still do have an issue with the current version but I am able to get some backups done using an older version of the software. I would like to thank Tom for the update and I will update my blog once I get the new version of the software.

Over the last 8 weeks I have been having a problem with Mozy the company I use for my online backup’s. Even though the problem is still not fixed I deiced to blog about the problem so far.

About 8 weeks ago I noticed that I had started to have 2 problems with my Mozy Home client. The first problem was a MozyServerError6 problem, the second was I noticed that my client was send more data than was being encoded, this was a real problem for me.

OK the first problem was easy I emailed Mozy and they told me that this was an error with there server’s and would be fixed very soon. I was told that my client would reconnect and this would not be a problem. This may not be a problem to most people but when you have 1.3Tb backed up to Mozy it can take a good couple of hour to restart a backup. 8 Weeks later I am still having the same problems with this first error which makes me wounder just how good are the server’s back at Mozy or how good are there engineer’s.

The second issue has been a far worse problem to try and get fixed. After speaking with a number of Mozy engineer’s over a 2 week period it became clear to me that none of them had a clue what they were talking about. Over there chat option I was told that this is not a problem and my data was being encoded and being sent to Mozy, over the phone I was told that this was an issue and to upgrade to the latest version. When I told him I was at the latest version he didn’t know what to say (I would have asked for the version number first). After more investigation at my end I now know that the client is not sending any data and has crashed just saying that it is sending data, it just sticks on the same file, that is until it crashes out with a MozyServerError6 problem.

After 4 weeks of fighting with Mozy about this problem and getting nowhere fast I was leaving for Microsoft’s TechEd. Imagine how happy I was when I came across a Mozy stand at the EMC Booth. It was here that I met Tom Metge who told me he was a lead engineer for the Mozy client, great I thought. I told Tom of my problem and explained to him how I was getting no support, Tom told me he was fully aware of the problem and how the help desk didn’t really understand the problem. Tom told me that there was another version getting ready for release to fix this exact problem and asked if I would like to be a beta tester to be sure the problem was fixed, I agreed. I had a number of emails back and forth with Tom showing him my log files and the error’s I was getting he told me one of his engineers to email me with a link to the beta version and all would be good. I spoke to Tom a number of times during my week and TechEd and all looked good.

A week after returning from TechEd and I still had not received the beta software and so I emailed Tom and surprise, surprise no reply. I have now emailed Tom a number of times over the last two weeks and as yet no reply, another sinning example of Mozy’s great support.

Yesterday I received a follow up call from my time at TechEd from Mozy, so I told the poor girl just what I thought of the company and the support they have. She told me that she will arrange a call with Mozy corporate to get this issue fixed but so far I have herd nothing. I will update this post if anything happens.

As of today 8 weeks after my problems started I have managed to backup just 10Gb in that time (I used to backup about 7Gb a night) I am no further forward and still no fix insight. In the whole 8 weeks I have only had 1 good call to Mozy when and egineer called Josh extended my subscription by 3 months as I have been unable to backup my data, but still no fix.

I will keep this blog up dated as to when or if I get my problem fixed.

******Update******

Please see this blog post for the latest update http://delboycarter.wordpress.com/2008/07/03/mozy-redeem-themselves/

Well I am back from TechEd and although I had a great time down in Orlando I have to say I feel a little disappointed with Microsoft. This was my first ever TechEd and due to the fact that I am working in the virtualization space I decided to go to as many Hyper-V sessions as I could. Now we all know that Microsoft are way behind VMware when it comes to virtualization but I think someone should inform Microsoft that it is just them that are behind. All week I found that I was attending different sessions and looking at the same slides. This became the running joke of the the week that Microsoft only have 2 slides on Hyper-V this was always followed up with, “We can’t say when this will be released as we are waiting for other’s in the company to release there code first.” Maybe the different parts of the same company should start talking to each other.

Although Microsoft had a number of different levels depending on how technical you are they still just showed you the same slides and give you the same information. Even when I went to speak to the engineers at the different booths I always felt that I was getting conflicting information depending on who I spoke to. When it comes to Hyper-V I really don’t think that I am any better off than I was a week ago, I will have to wait for the DVD’s to arrive and review more of the information that I was given and hope I never see the 2 slides again. As for Microsoft’s Virtual Machine Manager (VMM) I really can see a future for this tool especially in an environment that has a mixture of ESX and Hyper-V servers and hopefully XenServers in the future. There are a couple of things that I didn’t like about it and I still have a few unanswered questions but at least I managed to learn something in this space.

All in all I would hope that Microsoft will improve there content for Hyper-V for future events however I have a feeling that I will be attending TechEd next year for the same reasons as I did this year looking for more information on Microsoft’s plans for virtualization. 

Away from the sessions TechEd was great, it was great to meet new friends and even better to meet up with old ones again. Who ever organize these events for Microsoft did a great job in moving so many people around Orlando and the event party at Universal studio’s was a fantastic evening.

Pictures from my TechEd week can be found here.

OK so this week I decided to move my Internet connection back to Comcast. I did this when I herd that Comcast now have a 2Mb Up load version. The package I now have is 16Mb Down and 2Mb Up, or is it.

When the engineer turned up and tested my line he told me that he had never seen such a good connection and I should get some good speed from my line. As you can see from below I get far better than I am paying for. Thank you Comcast.

Oh yes that’s 25Mb Down and nearly 3Mb Up. Again thank you Comcast.

OK so I have had my Wii Fit for a week now and I have to say I love it. First off let me tell you if you are fit and go to the gym on a regular basis then this is not for you, at least to get you fitter, but it could still be fun.

For me the Wii fit is great for getting the not so fit off the sofa and moving not only that but due to the graph’s and measurements it makes you want to do more. For me I have been out walking more and riding my bike more in the last week just to I can add more exercise into the Wii fit.

As for the Wii fit I never thought I would enjoy Yoga but I have really enjoyed it over the last week and I find that any free moment that I have I am reaching for the Wii fit to do Yoga. The aerobics to start with are basic but once you start to unlock some of the other ones it starts to get good the advance hoola hoops is very good fun and the advance step class is fun and tiresome that has to be doing me some good. The balance games are more games that for fitness but they are very good fun, being a snowboarder I never thought I would enjoy a skiing game but they are both good fun. I have not tried the strength training exercises yet but I will get round to them.

I can see that the board itself has a lot of potential and I can’t wait to see what games are released for the board in the future I am looking forward to some snowboarding game now that will be fun.

As for Nintendo and Wii fit games I can see that maybe the next one will be a training bike and a Wii fit bike game now that would be fun.

I think the one big plus with the Wii fit is that it is really good fun to exercise and try and get your Mii to loose the fat as well as yourself. A big plus for the Wii fit so lets see if I can loose some of the weight over the summer and prove that it works.

Today DirecTV release 2 new services to there line up which make it much easier to never miss a TV show again. DVR Scheduler and DVR Scheduler Mobile make it possible to set recordings from your Computer or Mobile device and they will record to your DVR.

From your computer you can now log on to your DirecTV account at www.directv.com and click on My TV Schedule from there you can choose any show to recored and it will record to your DVR. If you have more than one DVR you can even choose what DVR to record to.

The mobile version is not as easy to use but you can search from any show and record it from your mobile device. This is still a very good application for when you are out with your friends and you get told about a new show you would like to record.

This is yet another reason not to use cable and to stay with satellite. Great work DitecTV.

I spoke to early, earlier this week when I thought all was well with Windows XP SP3. Today I sat down to watch my podcast’s shows when everything kept crashing. After I rebuilt my Apple TV reinstalled iTunes all was still not well.

The problem I was having was that the Apple TV kept loosing a connection with my iTunes and as such disappeared from the device list in my iTunes.  The only way to get the Apple TV back in the iTunes list was to close and reopen iTunes or power off the Apple TV. When I did get it back in the list as soon as I started to watch a show it would drop the connection.

Finally I decided that it most be SP3 and yes i was correct. What I can say is that the uninstall for for Service Pack 3 works very well, apparently better that the install and now that I am back to SP2 all is working well with my Apple TV.

In conclusion if you are using Apple TV I would avoid installing Microsoft Windows XP SP3.

For the last few years I have been using Skype to keep in touch with all of my family and friends back in the UK, this became a very important tool when Christopher was born. Video calling just makes the world a much smaller place.

However since the start of this year I have been having lots of problems with video calling with Skype back to the UK, it worked fine in the USA but every time I tried back to the UK they would not see my video. I then had to go and find the windows laptop to use MSN (Not good quality).

Now I have found ooVoo I have been tested ooVoo this week and it works just the same as Skype. Download the client on each PC and away you go. The good news is that I found the Video and Sound quality to be as good if not better than Skype. My parents were much happier they could just see Christopher with out me hunting down the other laptop.

I will still be using Skype for all my voice calling as that works great but for video calling I will be using ooVoo for the time being.

You can download oovoo at http://www.oovoo.com/

***** Update *****

AT&T has now removed this from there web site.

Just what are AT&T doing with this? 1st they give free access, then take it away. Then they say they are giving free access then they don’t. Come on AT&T make up your mind.

*******************

OK this has been rumored for some time now but its now official, iPhone users in the US will get free access to all of AT&T’s Wi-Fi hotspots.

This has now been included on AT&T’s web site under the iPhone plane section

“access to AT&T’s more than 17,000 Wi-Fi hotspots, including Starbucks* all for use in the U.S.
*Wi-Fi available at U.S. company operated Starbucks locations equipped with a hotspot.”

http://www.wireless.att.com/cell-phone-service/specials/iPhoneCenter.html

Things just keep getting better for the iPhone.