Abstract View's Blog

I can’t recommend ordering from High Point Scientific.

I recently placed an order with them online for the first time.  It turns out they do not accept Visa transactions from any country other than the US.  After 2 days I called them and asked why my order was still pending, to be told it’s due to this issue.  They didn’t notify me and also didn’t reply to my email inquiry.  They claimed to be busy.

I asked to have the order cancelled, and they said they would.

I see no reason they can’t mention their order system limitation with credit cards on their website.  They have many countries listed, claiming to deliver to them all.  The customer service person I spoke to agreed.

I placed my order with them because they website claimed all the items I ordered were in stock.  Yet when I called to inquire on my order, I was told one of the items was out of stock anyway.  So their online inventory system is not accuracte either.

I was told they will accept PayPal payments from customers outside the US, if I wanted to cancel my order and place it again.

They obviously aren’t too interested in dealing with customers outside their country’s border, so I for one will place my order elsewhere.

My experience…Not impressive.

Alternatively, I would recommend B&H Photo Video.  As a Canadian customer, I had a good experience dealing with them.  They ship quickly what’s in stock, have a comprehensive order system, and seemingly accurate online inventory system.  They accept credit cards as expected, and they did not treat me as a second class customer for not residing in the USA.

Yesterday I ranted about how I disliked the new version of Hotmail, and said I would switch to Gmail.  Well it was far easier than I thought.

You can easily import all your Hotmail messages into a Gmail account using Google’s own built in import feature.  And it will continue to poll your Hotmail account for 30 days, giving you time to instruct people and services to switch to sending you mail to your Gmail account.

And Hotmail now has a feature where you can forward email to another address, and it doesn’t have to be a Hotmail account.  I remember when Microsoft wouldn’t allow this, and there was no forward feature in Hotmail.  Well there is now, so old mail can be forwarded to your Gmail account till you are ready to abandon your Hotmail account permanently.

Sign up and log into your Gmail account.  Click “Settings” in the top right hand corner.  Then click “Accounts and Import”.  Click the button named “Import from another address” and follow the instructions.  It will warn you that it could take from 2 hours to 2 days to complete the import.  I would expect this is based on your Hotmail accounts size and how busy their servers might be.  For me, some mail showed up in a couple of hours, and all of it was imported by the next morning with this message at the top of my Gmail screen:

Import complete!

Your contacts and messages from name@hotmail.com have finished importing. New messages will be forwarded as they arrive. Visit the name@hotmail.com label to see your messages.

Now log into your Hotmail account you are importing from.  Click on “Options” then “More Options”.

In the section “Customize your mail” go to option “Mobile alerts for new messages” and make sure the option “None. Never send me mobile alerts” is selected.  You will never receive any alert sms by setting this option so you will stay free of charges.

Click Save.

In the section “Manage your account” goto “Forward mail to another e-mail account”.

Enter the e-mail address you want your Hotmail to be forwarded to, in our case your Gmail account address.

Click “Save” and confirm the setting by clicking the link in the e-mail that has been sent to your Gmail account.  I never did get a confirmation link emailed to me, but others have, so this may vary.  Perhaps the import feature confirmed this for me, I’m not sure, but I was surprised to not see one.

That’s basically it, you can now abandon your Hotmail account in favour of your Gmail account.  And you will have time to migrate your friends and services that send messages to your “old” hotmail address.

I’ve been using the new version of Hotmail for the past couple of weeks.  And it sucks.  That’s not a very professional sounding review comment, but that just sums it up.

It’s many times slower than it was before.  It gives me scripting errors on slower systems.  It’s so script intensive that on slower systems like Intel Atom based desktops (that are more than adequate of normal computer work) can seem to lock up on occasion due to whatever it is doing in the background.  They rolled MSN Messenger into it and turned it on by default (a privacy tip from the Face Book handbook) and it took me a while to figure out how to even go Offline or Invisible on this new web based version of Messenger.  It isn’t the least bit intuitive.  You have to click on your user name in the top right hand corner, which doesn’t even appear to look like a click-able button or link.

So once again Microsoft has taken a usable and decent product and created bloat-ware, and something I dislike using.  And if there is any way to go back to the old or classic version, it’s not apparent to me.  Google has rolled all sorts of products into Gmail, and it doesn’t seem to be as sluggish and computer intensive as Hotmail is now.

Does anyone remember Hotmail before Microsoft acquired it?  How it was basic, just worked, was reliable, and everyone on the Internet used it.  Plus back then it ran on Unix servers, and was faster than when Microsoft bought it and moved it to presumably Windows servers.  Back then they made the news cause over night it went from great to unreliable and slower.  And now it is bloat-ware that doesn’t even refresh properly when I want it to.

Good job Microsoft, I guess I’ll be ditching it for a Google product.  At least they seem to know how to write a web application.  But you guys (MS) can keep throwing the kitchen sink into Hotmail, cause I won’t be seeing your ads any more, I’ll be looking at even more Google ads.

The new Hotmail gets a 1/10 rating.

It’s been close to a year since Google acquired Gizmo5, back in November of 2009.  I was a Gizmo5 paying customer then and I still am now.  We use the Gizmo5 SIP trunks for some of our Asterisk VoIP phone lines.  I was never a fan or big user of the Gizmo5 Windows app.

When Google took over Gizmo5, they immediately shut down the ability to add new accounts, and also for existing paying members to add new lines to their existing accounts.  Neither Google or the Gizmo5 customer service people would provide existing customers with information on what would be happening with the service.  I inquired whether we would suddenly get cut off from our existing services, or when we could add new SIP lines to our existing accounts.  And I would contact them and ask on occasion.  Each time after maybe 2 weeks I would get a reply like, not at this time, and no news as when that might change.  Not impressive in my own opinion.  However, they did stop charging me for the local DID numbers I had acquired through them.  In fact when they expired, I complained and they made sure I got them back at no charge, and they informed me they would be no charge for the next 2 or 3 years, I forget the exact date at the moment.  I was paying quarterly for them up till that point.  You have to respect that.  They were obviously making some allowances to not interrupt service to existing customers, and I did appreciate that perk.

So this week they finally rolled out a new service, which looks much like the original Gizmo5 Windows app I think.  But now it is directly tied to their Gmail service, and it is now a web app that runs in your browser, after installing a plug-in.  Calls in the US and Canada are free till the end of 2010.  Obviously to allow people to get used to the service and not have to pay to try.

You activate the phone pop-up by clicking on “Call phone” in your Gmail Chat box in the left column of the Gmail page.  ”Call phone” seems like a strange name for this feature.  ”Phone call” would be more appropriate, as well as many other suggestions I’m sure we could all come up with.  Makes one think that someone who’s first language is not English got to decide what to call this new Gmail service.

I made a test call and it seems to work fine.  The interface is basic and easy to use.  The settings are located in the “Gmail > Settings > Chat” section.  However, the first time I looked for the new settings, after installing the plug-in and restarting my browser, they were missing.  They appeared after a refresh, so I assume it had to do with my browser caching.  I’m using Google Chrome.  You can change your mic and speakers at this settings location.

I do wish that there was a setting to change the calling location country, I have been unable to find it if it exists.  So it defaults and always starts as the US flag and calling location.  I’m in Canada, and even though the country code is still (+1) it would show some respect on their part to not assume that everyone lives in the USA.  There is only 2 English selections in Gmail settings, US and UK English.  Changing this to UK did not change this default to the UK, it stayed as US.  So it doesn’t appear to be tied to the language setting.

I’m glad they finally did something with the Gizmo5 tech.  I still wonder what they plan to do with us original Gizmo5 customers and accounts.  It doesn’t appear we will find out any sooner than anyone else.