The Acanac Online PC Experience - Really?!?!?!?
July 26, 2008
First, let’s take a look at the company!
From their Website:
“Acanac is the sister company of Canaca.com Inc one of Canada’s Largest
webhosting companies. Acanac takes the same principles brought to you by
Canaca, great service at a great value. Acanac provides cost effective Residential
and Business phone service at an affordable price. We also offer High speed DSL
and dial up access as well.We are truly a global communications company
connecting the world for less.
Acanac’s core value is to make sure that you the customer is served with the
utmost respect and professionalism. This is the reason that we are one of
the few companies that offer a unconditional money back guarantee.
We recognize that down time is not an option for your internet access and
that you deserve crystal clear Phone Service at all times. That’s why we
have invested heavily in hardware, and facilities this ensures that you, the
client is up and running on 24 hours a day seven days a week.”
My Experience Loathing with for Acanac
The Search for a VPS Begins - July 14th, 2008
Looking for a cost-effective way of hosting multiple websites I came across a company called Acanac. They are offering a Online PC (Virtual Private Server) with the following specs:
Price - $23.95/month (12-month)
Speed - 10mbps up/10mbps down
Static IP - 1
Bandwidth - 500GB
HDD Space - 100GB
RAM - 750Mb
Root Access - Yes
OS - Centos 5
Software Included with CentOS
(Standard with any lin box)
Firefox
KTorrent
Open Office
http streaming
ftp access
File Encryption
Gftp client
Games
IM
Lenovo X61 - 4-month failure
April 20, 2008
After receiving the X61 as a gift, I was very pleased. I have always bought IBM’s and would never buy another brand. However, let’s take a look at the road-map of my IBM ownership, and the issues that I have faced. It may be time to pack it in and say sayonara to IBM / Lenovo.
Road Map to failure (Issues that required Warranty Service):
2004 - 2nd Year University IBM T40
- 6-Months after first turning this laptop on, the motherboard fails and is sent in to IBM free of charge.
- 13-Months - LCD is resembling a leper and is sent in to IBM
- 24-Months - Cracks formed on palm-rest & leper LCD is back, not sent in to IBM
2006 - The Real World - IBM T42
- 1-month after purchase, ethernet fails and has to be sent into IBM
- 9-months - Hard drive failure, sent in to IBM
2008 - Web Guru - IBM x61
- 4-Months after receiving the great gift, “Fan Error” is received when attempting to turn-on. Computer will not POST, which makes for a very expensive paperweight. Will be sent in to IBM…
Is this just bad luck with IBM/Lenovo or does there seem to be a deeper issue with QA. Maybe, it’s the nature of the beast and laptops have high-failure rates. Whatever it is, I think that it may be time to give another company my business. The hard part is going to be finding a laptop company that makes laptops that don’t feel plastic-like / cheap….
Any ideas?
YouTube Resolution Tweaking
March 4, 2008
Tired of looking at mediocre quality videos on YouTube? Depending on your internet connection, YouTube automatically adjusts the quality of the videos that you can view.
Add this “&fmt=6” (without the quotes) to the end of the URL and if there’s a higher quality video available it will begin loading right away. Otherwise you’ll sit there staring at a loading symbol until you realize that it’s not working.
The quality difference is noticeable but don’t expect HD content to be loaded.
Acer Customer Support - A Rip-off to remember
February 15, 2008
What do you get from Acer when you buy a Premium Ferrari Laptop for $3000?
1-Ferrari “Branded” laptop
1-Year Warranty that does not cover battery/acpi issues
1-Battery
10 or more Bloatware programs that are automatically installed
eRestore which restores your computer to its original state (bloatware included)
ePerformace utility built by monkey’s that removes critical Windows Processes
A burnt lap ‘n’ berries - Warning if you are male do not use this laptop
What do you get when your out of warranty for 1-month and your computer won’t shut down?
A 45-minute customer support phone call that includes rude and useless speeches from obviously unqualified people with very little technical knowledge
An offer for $3/minute technical support or $479 return to depot service (This does not include the parts that they may use to repair it)
Buyer beware when purchasing an Acer Laptop! Customer support is a necessity when purchasing hardware and Acer is obviously not up to the task. They’re by no means a premium company and they should not pretend to be by offering a $3000 laptop. I’ll stick with IBM who has not let me down in 6-years with 3 different laptops.
Where’s my 4GB of Ram? - In Vista
February 12, 2008
So, you just bought/made a new computer with 4GB of sweet sweet RAM but the installed OS (Vista 32-bit) only shows 3GB. What’s the deal?
If you run Vista 32-bit, there’s nothing that you can do about this issue. The reason stems from a decision made long before 4GB was even a feasible option. The name of this behaviour — Memory Mapped Input Output Reservations
A large chunk of memory is made available to System Hardware and can usually cost you 256mb to 1GB of your favourite volatile memory. Therefore it is inaccessible by your OS and you only “see” 2.75GB to 3.5GB.
If you run:
Windows 32-bit OS - The maximum amount of usable memory is 4GB unless you have a PAE equipped system
Windows 64-bit OS - The maximum amount of usable memory is between 8GB and 128GB, but accessibility depends on your chipset
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