Logitech Are Evil
So it's been a while since it happened; I've had time to calm down, they've had time to rip off a bunch more people. It's time I tell the story about my wrangle with Logitech's Customer 'Support'.
You may remember that I had some problems with my Logitech Bluetooth Headset. By the end of all of that, I just wanted to return the headset, get my money back, and try something else entirely.
That's when things got interesting.
Basically, it went something like this...
We're not going to be able to send another replacement product sir, since we've already done that and it hasn't worked.
That's fine, I don't want to return it, I want my money back.
I'm afraid we can't do that either sir, we can't issue a refund on the product because we don't believe it is defective.
So what am I supposed to do?
We believe your phone is faulty - take it to a Nokia store and have them fix it.
There's nothing wrong with the phone - the headset doesn't work with your bluetooth hub on my computer.
We believe your phone is faulty...
repeat
So there you have it - basically they replaced it a couple times, it still didn't work, so they tell me to piss off. End of story - no other options. Brilliant.
I now officially hate Logitech, it's just a pity that they still have some products I really like (such as the diNovo), otherwise I could entirely boycott them.
Configuring a Wireless Network under Windows XP
So I got my new computer (well, most of the pieces anyway, the keyboard's coming next week hopefully), and I wanted to get wireles set up and running straight away so that I could get on the 'net with it and download any patches etc that I needed. I get everything connected, then get my box to pick up my AP and then what happens? Nothing. Absolutely, positively, not a damn thing. For some reason, I could not get my desktop box to connect properly to my AP. It would say it was connected, but if I logged into the admin interface on it (using my lappy luckily), it wouldn't say it was connected.
To cut a potentially long story short, I tried playing with some of the settings in Windows' control panel, and it turns out that XP and the Netgear control utility don't play so well together. When I told XP to control all wireless network settings, everything Just Worked(tm).
So now I am posting this, the first post from my new desktop, which is wirelessly connected to the 'net (insecurely ATM!) into another room, where my modem sits on its own. When I get my keyboard, things will really be getting wireless, but this will do nicely until then!
WA Freenet Project and Open Access
Well, I noticed that I had a little bit of traffic from e3.com.au, the home of the WA wireless freenet blog, so I jumped on over there, and sure enough, somone had posted a link to my site. The post was followed up by some comments relating to my lack of involvement in the freenet project here in Perth, so I thought I'd post a little about my reasons behind that.
Basically, I'd like to be involved, but I don't have the resources at the moment. When I get around to getting a new desktop box, then it will be an option because I can have it running all the time, and it will be reliable, but at the moment I only have my laptop running on this WAP, so I can't really act as any sort of reliable node in a network, thus there's no point getting involved just yet. I'll also need to get an external aerial, and figure out how I'm going to go about only semi-permanently attaching that to a rental property, but that's a whole other issue.
In the mean time, I'd like to point out that there's probably not a lot that I'm going to directly get out of being a part of the network (i.e. access to any extra information etc), but that I'd be providing my WAP as a repeater/node to help out the power of the entire network more than any sort of personal gain.
Now on to something that might interest other people.
I'm considering opening up my node and leaving it open for public use, for anyone that wants to get onto the 'net, check email -- whatever. I'd leave it completely open, because when I'm not here, it's not even connected to my computer, so I don't mind, and I have massive bandwidth quotas, which are paid for by my employer and that I'll never use, so it's of no consequence to me. All that I would consider doing is giving myself the ability, and reserving the right, to block users out if they abused it, or if I needed a large slice of my bandwidth for anything in particular at any one time.
What do you think of this? Anyone out there that'd be interested in using a public node once in a while in the Comer Street, Como area? Let me know via the comments and I'll consider it further :)
