2007-10-30

No Alienware Laptop for me...

On the 4/9/2007 I purchased an Alienware Aroura m9700 notebook. Until the last few days I have not received any correspondence or communication from Alienware about my order because it looks like they have gone into receivership.

Below is a snippet of the email that was sent to me that confirmed this:



From: sales@alienware.com.au
Sent: Tuesday, 9 October 2007 3:59 p.m.
To: <deleted>
Subject: RE: Arora m9700 status.

Dear Mr <deleted>,

We apologise for the serious delay in your order. Alienware Australia which was a subsidiary company of Jackar Holdings has been affected as its parent company Jackar Holdings which operated the Alienware license in Australia has fallen into bankruptcy last week. Alienware America has taken over all operations and will honour all sales and warranty claims. We are able to process your order and it will be dispatched to you in the next 7 – 14 days.

I will try and push your order through faster and keep you updated.

Best Regards,

Alienware Sales


Alienware Australia



After waiting even longer for it, they still failed to get my order done within that time period as the next email states:



Sent: 29 Oct 2007 13:08
To: <deleted>
Subject: RE: Arora m9700 status.

Dear <deleted>,

Firstly I would like to apologise for the current situation as stated below your order was affected by the bankruptcy of our local partner. The M9700 has gone end of life I am able to upgrade you to the M9750 at no extra cost however we would need you to do a chargeback on your credit card for the last order and re process your card. If this is of interest please provide a contact number and I will give you a call to run you through the process.


Best Regards,

Alienware Sales


Alienware


The problem with this was not necessarily the waiting, but the lack of communication and the fact that this was also arranged with my current employer as a salary sacrifice. Alienware also will not directly refund me so I now have to fill out a funds dispute form for my bank and so hopefully I should get a refunded soon.

Anyway, it looks like Dell have a similar product for about the same costs and specifications.



UPDATE: 8/12/2007 @1638
The Credit Card Charge back went through last week and now my funds (and happiness) is back. Hooray!

2007-10-26

Very Clean USB Flash Disk

I now have a very clean USB flash disk. Not wiped clean of data, but hermetically/hygienically clean :P. I not only accidently left it in my pocket during my scheduled clothes washing, but I also left it outside to alow it to dry, only to forget about it and have it get rained on. Funny thing is, it still works!

With this in mind, I think I will continue to buy Astone USB mass storage devices due to there (tested) reliability and toughness when completely submerged into liquid, dried and used again!

2007-10-24

WSUS Breaks itself

It seems that the WSUS-3.0-sp1 update from Automatic Updates has broken WSUS on one of the servers at work!

Apon initial investigation, I found that WSUS 3.0 was installed, the files were all there and the database existed, however there was no registry entry for the configuration.

This is how I fixed it (after realising that it refused to uninstall).

Logged onto the Perth main WSUS server and exported HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Update Services\Server\Setup and imported it into my replica server. I immediately uninstalled WSUS and installed the default 3.0 version and I am now back in business :)

NOTE TO SELF: Move away from Windows-based servers and workstations...

 
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