(no subject)
Apr. 30th, 2008 06:11 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
miko2Stuff that annoys me:
1. Computer companies that have online customer service that they completely ignore.
Example A would be MaxData, the European company that makes my laptop. I filled out another "contact" form at their web site yesterday. This was the sixth time I've tried to contact them this month. I would have given up, except that I thought to have Comcast save copies of anything it considers spam in a folder so I can make sure it's not tossing anything important out. But no, MaxData has not even tried to contact me, not even to say, "We're not going to help you."
Example B would be Sam Broadcaster. I purchased a copy of their excellent broadcasting software two years ago. It cost $200.00, not small change, but I liked the program enough to buy it. I did a complete reinstall of my computer back in November, so I haven't tried to reinstall Sam. The version I bought is 3.5.0, their new version is 4 something. I can't download 3.5.0, and when I try to install the latest version it says my registration key is not valid. So I opened a ticket on their web site. They said they would mail me a password so that I could view the status of my ticket. Nothing. After making the adjustment to Comcast's handling of spam e-mail (above), I opened a second ticket. A day later, I've yet to hear anything back from them.
These are the kind of things that greatly encourage me to forget about paying for software and just rip companies like this off. You'd think a $200.00 purchase would entitle me to at least a reply to my support question.
2. Companies that offer their product "for free" and try to hide any mention on their web page of how much it costs for the real version or in what way the trial version is crippled, or that it is in any way a trial version.
I've spent the last couple of hours trying to figure out how to save a portion of a Youtube video as a sound file that I could put on a mix cd or something along those lines. This has proven to be much more complicated than it ought to be. I found an online web-based site that would allow me to save the video to my hard drive in .flv format, but it was very difficult finding a video converter that was not a crippled, useless version of something You have to pay at least $40.00 to actually use. The one I got mentioned nowhere that it was not a full version or that you had to pay anything for a full version, but nevertheless when I ran it it said it was an "inactive" version of the program... which actually means it places a watermark in the middle of the video when it converts it. Fine, I don't care, i'm just trying to save a portion of the sound file anyway. I found another online web-based converter that allowed me to turn the video into an mp3 file, but now I'm looking for an mp3 editor so I can chop out the part that I want. I probably should have converted it to a wav file and used the Windows sound converter, but whatever, having an mp3 converter would be nice, if I can find one I don't have to pay an arm and a leg for. The one I downloaded is by all appearances a fully functioning free converter... but it has so many nice features that I suspect it's not free or fully functioning at all. We'll see.
All this so I can insert a few random lines of dialogue into a music playlist.
1. Computer companies that have online customer service that they completely ignore.
Example A would be MaxData, the European company that makes my laptop. I filled out another "contact" form at their web site yesterday. This was the sixth time I've tried to contact them this month. I would have given up, except that I thought to have Comcast save copies of anything it considers spam in a folder so I can make sure it's not tossing anything important out. But no, MaxData has not even tried to contact me, not even to say, "We're not going to help you."
Example B would be Sam Broadcaster. I purchased a copy of their excellent broadcasting software two years ago. It cost $200.00, not small change, but I liked the program enough to buy it. I did a complete reinstall of my computer back in November, so I haven't tried to reinstall Sam. The version I bought is 3.5.0, their new version is 4 something. I can't download 3.5.0, and when I try to install the latest version it says my registration key is not valid. So I opened a ticket on their web site. They said they would mail me a password so that I could view the status of my ticket. Nothing. After making the adjustment to Comcast's handling of spam e-mail (above), I opened a second ticket. A day later, I've yet to hear anything back from them.
These are the kind of things that greatly encourage me to forget about paying for software and just rip companies like this off. You'd think a $200.00 purchase would entitle me to at least a reply to my support question.
2. Companies that offer their product "for free" and try to hide any mention on their web page of how much it costs for the real version or in what way the trial version is crippled, or that it is in any way a trial version.
I've spent the last couple of hours trying to figure out how to save a portion of a Youtube video as a sound file that I could put on a mix cd or something along those lines. This has proven to be much more complicated than it ought to be. I found an online web-based site that would allow me to save the video to my hard drive in .flv format, but it was very difficult finding a video converter that was not a crippled, useless version of something You have to pay at least $40.00 to actually use. The one I got mentioned nowhere that it was not a full version or that you had to pay anything for a full version, but nevertheless when I ran it it said it was an "inactive" version of the program... which actually means it places a watermark in the middle of the video when it converts it. Fine, I don't care, i'm just trying to save a portion of the sound file anyway. I found another online web-based converter that allowed me to turn the video into an mp3 file, but now I'm looking for an mp3 editor so I can chop out the part that I want. I probably should have converted it to a wav file and used the Windows sound converter, but whatever, having an mp3 converter would be nice, if I can find one I don't have to pay an arm and a leg for. The one I downloaded is by all appearances a fully functioning free converter... but it has so many nice features that I suspect it's not free or fully functioning at all. We'll see.
All this so I can insert a few random lines of dialogue into a music playlist.
