Apple 2.0: Apple Ugrades iPhone Battery Life

Apple 2.0: Apple Ugrades iPhone Battery Life

This is great, as it addresses one of the big down-sides to the iPhone.

I still have to ask Apple: Why? Would a battery door or snap-on battery REALLY degrade the design and engineering of the iPhone? No matter how good the battery is- it won’t last more than a year. Batteries in cell phones and PDAs are only good for about a year. Lithium ion batteries generally start degrading after about 100-150 charge cycles. No matter how cool it is- I’m not going to pay $500+ for a piece of hardware I know has that limited a lifespan.

I don’t know when they will address my other big concern (and that of a lot of other people) as far as the iPhone goes- AT&T (formerly Cingular). Contrary to their advertising- they do not have very exemplary customer service or quality records. I personally refuse to do business with them after a bad experience many years ago. If the iPhone makes it to other carriers, and has a replaceable battery- I might consider it.

Local Resellers

I hate them. Period. I’m working with a manufacturer right now for some network hardware, and they want me to go through a local reseller. Here is a typical experience, at least for me and the company I work for, with local resellers:

We want to buy “Product A”. We contact manufacturer of Product A and are told we must purchase it from a “Local Reseller”. So we do.

Local Reseller quotes us a price for Product A, which we agree to. Local Reseller also insists that we NEED to buy Product B and Product C to go with it. We tell Local Reseller we ONLY WANT Product A. We already researched Product A and how it will fit into our enterprise, and don’t want anything else.

Local Reseller insists that Product A won’t work properly without Product B and Product C. We contact the manufacturer- who tells us that is not correct and Product A will work just fine in our enterprise without the other products. They also speak glowingly of Local Reseller (one of their “top” Resellers, of course).

After a week of arguing, Local Reseller finally delivers Product A by itself, for a higher price than originally quoted. Another argument ensues. Local Reseller claims their cost for Product A went up. Whatever- we buy it.

We install Product A. Product A works great for a couple of weeks, and then we start having problems. We contact Local Reseller for support. Local Reseller doesn’t want to support Product A because we didn’t purchase Product B and Product C to go with it. They don’t want to support our “configuration”.

We contact the manufacturer for support- and get it directly from them. It turns out to be a minor configuration issue that was quickly resolved. We are happy with Product A, even without the support of the Local Reseller.

Local Reseller has sales people call us for weeks afterward trying to sell us Product B and Product C to go with Product A. They also have new upgrades for Product A, and a Product D we should really consider. We tell sales person to bugger-off since they won’t support the Product A we already bought for them.

Local Reseller continues to have sales people call to sell us other products. This is ongoing. Local Reseller just doesn’t “get” the fact that we don’t want to buy anything else from them, ever again. Sales person just doesn’t understand why we are dissatisfied with their service department and swears someone will contact us immediately to resolve our issue.

Nobody from their service department ever calls, and their sales department continues to call every month.

This sort of thing has happened with virtually EVERY Local Reseller my company has dealt with. We just flat-out won’t do it anymore. If a manufacturer won’t deal with us directly- we will buy products online or go to another manufacturer who will.

Genuine Windows is Ubuntu

Genuine Windows is Ubuntu – Ubuntu Forums

I think the post says it all.