diarmydotnet

I recently, on a promotional quest, purchased a FireFox polo shirt from the Mozilla store, based in the US. All went well with the order, as had in the past. I wasn’t notified immediately of the shipping costs, a fact I let slide.

I was emailed then some two days later to be informed that the product, a t-shirt weighing less than 400g, and costing €24.00 equivalent, would cost almost €70.00 to deliver to the Republic of Ireland. This was due to customs and excise duties - on a friggin’ t-shirt!! (Pardon my Language).

This is grossly unacceptable. Just because a company is shipping from the US, I pay tax on it there, freight charges, and just because our money-hungry state feels like it, we get penalised for buying online.

I thought the purpose of the Net was to allow commerce to flourish! Needless to say I’ve cancelled the order. I had a previous experience of this, quite an embarrassing one actually, during the summer, when a DHL shipped item was incurring €40.00 import tax. Again, t-shirts. Something that cannot be got here in Ireland - therefore had to be imported. The import tax was actually double the cost of the item. For the Mozilla shirts, the charges were over 3 times the cost of the original purchase!

WHY?!

diarmy

Only now are the revelations being made about the iPod nano’s problems. Not three weeks since its unveiling, reports are flooding in with heralds of problems with the product, pertaining to its fragility.

I myself concur on this point, it is EXTREMELY fragile. I’ve already scratched its polished surfaces, in a total playing time of about 2 hours! I ordered nano tubes from the Apple Ireland site but I’m told not to expect them before mid-November, by which time the nano will probably be destroyed from normal use.

Several users throughout the complaints demense have reported cracked and broken screens leading to failure, due to normal use. I for one am worried.

Let’s see if the great company has a plan… I still support Apple and give them credit where it is due, but this needs to be resolved - quick!

diarmy

Well, the days have come and gone, and my attention strayed a little lately with the arrival of Daingean Uí Chúis.com. I’ve since finished the little project and the results are published.

Perhaps the most surprising result of the excercise was that of the low turnout in favour of Dingle as the name of the town. An Daingean won, but the jury is still out on the genuine nature of this.

All in all very good.

diarmy

Well, my path to “Appledom” is being followed these days at a slow pace - much like any path I walk or run! In my quest to become all things Apple, today I recieved my iPod nano. Magically releasing my iPod Shuffle 1GB into the wild last week saw me once more parting ways with Apple technology I had purchased and then sold. Since March of 2004 I have bought and sold an eMac, several iMac G3s, an iPod Shuffle and two iBook G4s. Quite a lot from the man who once proclaimed the Cupertino based company illiterate in the language of Windows.

In fact, if it must be said, Apple are working their asses off to comply with the closed-minded Microsoft and it’s range of obsolete operating systems, notably the Windows XP platform, which is celebrating its fourth birthday in a few months time. Apple, on the other hand, are prepping their next big thing in OS development, the Apple OS X 10.5 Leopard.

But back to the nano, and the first thing I noticed, though hardly surprising, is that even the freight-packaging was meticulously engineered with precision and skill. The nano’s box was equally a treat to eat, with its emphasis on the now adopted Black and Silver and White colours of Apple. Slide out the double CD-like box from its cardboard printed media and open to reveal the smallest iPod ever, the iPod nano. Mine is the 4GB white version, which I had engraved (no selling this one then!)

While criticisms are rife at the moment over Apple’s dropping of FireWire IEEE 1394 cables coming as standard with each iPod, and the power-cord and docks being sold seperately, the iPod nano is fuel for this fire, with only a USB sync cable, standard nano headphones (only the jack recepticle is different from previous headsets) and an iPod dock adaptor.

The iPod itself is stunning. While I’m concious of destroying the polished rear of the magical box of tunes, the front is almost a sheet of glass, much like the older iPods, but this is very obvious on the nano. It works well too with its friend iTunes, with the nano unlocking a host of options compared with its little cousin, the Shuffle. However, the sync with Outlook for Calendar and Contacts is a nightmare (lots of conditions attached).

Overall, it’s a cracking good product, and one I’m not afraid of endorsing here! Get yourself an iPod, but make sure it’s a nano. And don’t mind the hard-asses who say that a 40GB one is what you want because you can fit all your music on it - 1000 songs is plenty!

diarmy

Awoken by news I was featured on Raidio na Gaeltachta, I was in contact all day with the media regarding daingeanuichuis.com. It has become hugely popular, with over 800 votes cast today alone!!! Tomorrow I feature in an article in the newspaper Lá.

diarmy