Thumb Drives are great. I can't even begin to explain how useful it is for me to have 16GB of storage in such a small form factor. I keep 8+ GB of music on my thumb drive so I've got plenty of fresh tunes to listen to at work, on the road... wherever! I keep a couple hundred meg or so of various documents... beer recipes, food recipes, resumes, handy how-tos, diagrams... lots of random stuff on there. I use it to hold avi files to watch on my laptop on the couch. I use it to hold data while I work on "clients" computers. I use it to share all sorts of media with my non-bittorrent savvy friends, or those with slow internet connections. I can't even fully sum up just how handy it is to have so much space available anywhere I've got a USB port... which is just about anywhere nowadays.
But I should back up... Thumb drives "were" great, I "did" use my thumb drive for all of these uses... until it DIED. My current (dead) drive is an OCZ ATV 16GB flash drive. It worked wonderfully for 9 months... fast, lots of room, water resistant... I had nothing to complain about! When I bought it from Newegg last June, the ratings were pretty good, at least they were good enough for me to buy it and Newegg ratings are a HUGE part of any buying decision I make when I purchase tech equipment of almost any kind. Well when I look at them now... they've taken a serious hit. It seems that my situation with this drive failing after a short to medium length period of time is not at all unique. In fact... if I were considering this thumb drive right now... I would not buy it. It's got an overall three "egg" (star) rating, with only 48% of ratings at 5 stars, including a 2-star rating from me. I try to find products that have an overall 4 or 5 star rating, with preferably 75%+ ratings at 5 star, and that normally provides me with a high quality, highly functional equipment.
Well that provides me with a bit of a problem... OCZ IS going to replace my ATV 16GB drive for me (but I'm responsible for paying for shipment to OCZ, hmmm... that doesn't make me very happy even though it's light and will be cheap.). But that still leaves me with an unreliable thumb drive, one that I don't want to use for anything anywhere NEAR important. I can't even count on this drive to last a few weeks according to all of the reviews on Newegg.
So I've been looking at other thumb drives, preferably at 16GB, to use as my "primary" drive and keep my OCZ as just a music storage device. Well... I'm not exactly liking what I see. When I search for 16GB thumb drives and sort by rating, I find a few drives with 5 star ratings but not enough ratings to count, and then a few drives with 4 star ratings... Taking a look a the Corsair Flash Voyager 16GB we've got an overall rating of 4-stars, ok so far. But when you look at the breakdown only 53% of ratings are at 5-star... not quite as good as I would like, but hey, it does come with a 10-year warranty! The next drive in the list is by OCZ... well that's a no-go, I will not buy another OCZ flash drive! Even though the ratings on this drive are a fair bit better (4-star overall, 61% 5-star)... I just don't trust them, and I don't want to have to pay to ship another drive back if it fails! Next in the list is the Pariot Xporter XT 16GB... I don't have any experience with Patriot RAM or flash devices, but the ratings are getting better, 4-star overall and 67% 5-star, but with less total ratings. Next is another OCZ... And further, not only are the exact numbers not up to my (apparently) high standards... when I get to reading the reviews of any of the thumb drives I've been looking at... I'm not comforted. It seems to be pretty common for thumb drives to die young, to have random incompatibilities with random hardware rendering them anywhere from slow to completely inoperable. It's not at all comforting... Can I not rely on a thumb drive for storage of important data? I had hopes of tinkering with installing a small Linux distro on a drive so I always had a familiar desktop with me no matter where I go...
So what in the hell is one supposed to do for long-term, portable, bootable, important data storage? Print it off? Seriously... this can't be too difficult. I used to have a Lexar 1GB thumb drive that has now lasted for close to 5 years, I know it's still working because one of my friends has it and still uses it. External Hard Drives are not a good solution because platter-based magnetic data storage is physically fragile, I need something I can throw in my backpack and take with me without having to worry about keeping from breaking. I can't afford... much less do I know if I can trust a SSD drive... they're based on Flash RAM too! And I don't know if I can trust Flash RAM anymore... For example, SSDs with USB connectivity start at $96 for a 32GB drive with an average of less than 1 review.
Fwiw... if I relax my limitations a bit on the size of the thumb drive I want, I can find some thumb drives that DO meet my exacting standards. But one of my requirements for a good thumb drive was that I be able to fit an ISO of a complete dual-layer DVD on that drive, with room to spare. That basically means 16GB is the minimum, and it seems that 16GB thumb drives are CRAP.
Showing posts with label Bitching. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Bitching. Show all posts
Thursday, March 19, 2009
Tuesday, September 9, 2008
AT&T can FUCK OFF!!
ok... I officially HATE AT&T.
5 months ago I signed up for DSL through AT&T. I had just canceled my cable service because I don't watch a lot of TV, and the DSL was a good bit cheaper. Sounded like a good deal, $34 a month for 3mbit/512kbit service, and a $50 rebate on the modem... or so I thought.
But go figure, I haven't received my rebate check yet. Now I know the rebate things can take a while, so I waited about 6 weeks before I called to complain. And you know what the guy on the phone said when I called? "Oh, sorry, we'll get a check right out to you!" Oh, ok, that was easy!
Not.
About 5 weeks passed, and I still had no check. So I called again, and the gentleman apologized, explained the check had already been mailed but since it had been 4 weeks he could cancel it and send a new one. Cool. So that was about the end of June...
So here it is now, September, and I get my latest bill, reminding me once again that the lazy bastards STILL have not given me my money.
Allow me to take a momentary aside my main bitchfest to host another, smaller... mini-bitchfest if you will. I HATE automated telephone systems! Especially when they're used by HUGE companies with too many "departments" (meaning contracted call centers) to transfer you from one to another. So I call the # on my bill and navigate 3 minutes of automated menu, just trying to get a live person on the phone! And what do they tell me when I get them? "You have to call this number..." Grr! Ok, so I call. More automated menu, more stress, more yelling at a computer. Finally get a person and explain the situation... and I have to call somebody else because the order was not completed right. WTF? Ok fine, another menu more stupid computers... and FINALLY I get a person who can help.
So I get somebody, who informs me, for the very first time since talking to AT&T at all, that I don't qualify for the rebate because I don't have a home phone line! Say what?!?! NAH BULLSHIT!!! I was pissed, and got rather irate at the lady on the phone (which was rude, I should not have taken my frustration out on her, I should've waited for a manager!) After an apology I more delicately explained to the CSR that nobody had ever informed me that my account did not qualify for the rebate, and that in fact multiple people had told me the check "was in the mail". She apologized and indicate that she could not do anything, but she would out this in the hands of a manager who would call me back within 2 business days, or 48 hours or something to resolve this. He better, I've got his number.
So at this point, I'm waiting 2 more days for $50 that I was supposed to get 4 months ago, that nobody told me I wasn't supposed to get at all. It sounds like the manager may be willing to credit my account, which would really at this point be the ONLY acceptable solution to me, as there's no way in hell that I will trust them to send a check.
5 months ago I signed up for DSL through AT&T. I had just canceled my cable service because I don't watch a lot of TV, and the DSL was a good bit cheaper. Sounded like a good deal, $34 a month for 3mbit/512kbit service, and a $50 rebate on the modem... or so I thought.
But go figure, I haven't received my rebate check yet. Now I know the rebate things can take a while, so I waited about 6 weeks before I called to complain. And you know what the guy on the phone said when I called? "Oh, sorry, we'll get a check right out to you!" Oh, ok, that was easy!
Not.
About 5 weeks passed, and I still had no check. So I called again, and the gentleman apologized, explained the check had already been mailed but since it had been 4 weeks he could cancel it and send a new one. Cool. So that was about the end of June...
So here it is now, September, and I get my latest bill, reminding me once again that the lazy bastards STILL have not given me my money.
Allow me to take a momentary aside my main bitchfest to host another, smaller... mini-bitchfest if you will. I HATE automated telephone systems! Especially when they're used by HUGE companies with too many "departments" (meaning contracted call centers) to transfer you from one to another. So I call the # on my bill and navigate 3 minutes of automated menu, just trying to get a live person on the phone! And what do they tell me when I get them? "You have to call this number..." Grr! Ok, so I call. More automated menu, more stress, more yelling at a computer. Finally get a person and explain the situation... and I have to call somebody else because the order was not completed right. WTF? Ok fine, another menu more stupid computers... and FINALLY I get a person who can help.
So I get somebody, who informs me, for the very first time since talking to AT&T at all, that I don't qualify for the rebate because I don't have a home phone line! Say what?!?! NAH BULLSHIT!!! I was pissed, and got rather irate at the lady on the phone (which was rude, I should not have taken my frustration out on her, I should've waited for a manager!) After an apology I more delicately explained to the CSR that nobody had ever informed me that my account did not qualify for the rebate, and that in fact multiple people had told me the check "was in the mail". She apologized and indicate that she could not do anything, but she would out this in the hands of a manager who would call me back within 2 business days, or 48 hours or something to resolve this. He better, I've got his number.
So at this point, I'm waiting 2 more days for $50 that I was supposed to get 4 months ago, that nobody told me I wasn't supposed to get at all. It sounds like the manager may be willing to credit my account, which would really at this point be the ONLY acceptable solution to me, as there's no way in hell that I will trust them to send a check.
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