gripes

Eight fixes the iPhone 5 needs

Three weeks into using the iPhone 5, there's an awful lot I like: the screen, the weight, the speed, and even features like turn-by-turn navigation, which has become my lifeline while moving out to the suburbs with a car. It is, without a doubt, my favorite iPhone. However, there are aspects I'd like to see addressed: Maps is at the top of the list, obviously. But there are also some small features in iOS 6 that could stand to be improved. And, there are some nonsoftware issues as well.

"Better reception or Wi-Fi quality" isn't … Read more

Guinea pigs squeal over Yahoo home page test

Some people Yahoo selected to test a revamp of its home page aren't happy with their involuntary guinea pig status.

On the blog post from Tapan Bhat announcing the new Yahoo front page, the commentary begins with a number of favorable comments and several requests by people who want to try it out, but soon, the complaints start bubbling up too.

A common complaint is that it's harder for a user to get to e-mail.

"I do not like this. I did not ask for it to be changed. It scares me that you have control over … Read more

Fraud ruling against Dell validates years of gripes

In December of 2002, I started a page on my Computer Gripes site devoted to Dell.

Accumulating gripes about Dell was like taking candy from a baby; there was no sport in it. Eventually, I gave up maintaining the page, but despite a total lack of advertising or promotion, people kept finding the page and adding their own gripes.

Now these Dell gripes are official.

The Office of New York State Attorney General Andrew Cuomo won a lawsuit on Tuesday against Dell and affiliate company Dell Financial Services (DFS). The illegal activity involved both computers and finance. According to a … Read more

Vote for the worst computer vendor of 2007

According to perennial computer griper, Ed Foster, we should all do our duty and vote in his GripeLog Worst Vendor of 2007 poll.

Things must be pretty bad in the computer field. According to Ed, "...this year I couldn't pare down the list of Worst Vendor candidates to less than 25. And even then I know I'm going to hear legit complaints about some of the companies I chose to leave off the ballot."

The voting just started, and the early leaders are Microsoft, Sony, Symantec and Comcast.

Here's a story by Ed from a … Read more

Black eyes for Adobe

On December 22, I wrote about problems updating the Flash player in Firefox, where I mentioned that the Adobe un-installer program for the Flash player does not always un-install the Firefox plug-in DLL version of the Flash player. Simply put, Adobe is not aware of all the places that Firefox looks to find the Flash player. The un-installer would run fine, but Firefox would nonetheless continue to use an old version of the Flash player, even after installing a newer version.

At the time, I reported this as a bug to Adobe (using this form). It is now two weeks … Read more

Problems updating the Flash player in Firefox? Here's help

Installing a new version of software should be trivial thing--especially for popular software such as the Adobe Systems' Flash player, which is used by millions of people every day. But no.

For one, the Flash player does not play well with the other kids in the sandbox. That is, trying to remove the currently installed version via the Windows XP Control Panel Add/Remove applet is a waste of time. The first three machines I tried this on resulted in three different outcomes, and the software was not removed on any of the machines. Instead, Adobe has an uninstaller for the Flash player.… Read more

Why Java can't do addition correctly

My last posting described a situation in which the Java programming language knowingly produces wrong results. In the example I gave, Java added two positive numbers, produced a negative result and didn't consider it an error. Specifically:

2,111,000,333 + 1,000,222,333 --------------- -1,183,744,630

I write this blog for a general audience, so I opted to leave out the technical details of how and why this happens. But, if you're not a computer programmer (the official term now being "developer") it may be inconceivable that a programming … Read more

Disgracefully unreliable software

Software can be made pretty reliable, lots of people and companies know how to do so. The auto-pilot on an airplane comes to mind, as do the computers that run financial markets. Then there's mainframe computers, perhaps the classic example of reliability (I spent many years working in a mainframe environment). But chances are that the computer you are reading this on is not as reliable as it could be.

Impolite Waiter Let's start with an analogy. How would you feel if you were in a restaurant, in the middle of your meal, and the waiter takes your … Read more

IE7 is missing and a sad tale of tech support

Internet Explorer 7 was missing on a brand new Dell Latitude D630 running Windows XP SP2. I tried to find out why, which resulted in the saga below. Consider this a tip for anyone purchasing a new XP based computer and a heads up on how Microsoft and Dell treat their customers.

The machine arrived a few days ago, and one of the first things I dutifully did was run Windows Update from Internet Explorer (Tools -> Windows Update). I was surprised to find the machine came with Internet Explorer 6 considering that IE7 has been available for a … Read more

Defensively shopping at amazon.com

A few days ago, I wrote about my experience using the new Amazon MP3 Download store. Perhaps the most important point I raised was that it was possible to purchase songs without having to enter an Amazon userid/password, let alone a credit card number. I have purchased many things from Amazon over a number of years and this was a first for me.

Two days after my posting, fellow computer griper Ed Foster, of Gripe to Ed fame, wrote about the issue of logging off Amazon.com in more detail. See Amazon Makes You Lie to Log Off.

Ed'… Read more