Tuesday, 25 December 2012

Goodbye Play, welcome Amazon...


Today's a good day to post, as Amazon are offering the fantastic World of Goo for free today, so if you stumble across this page by accident, it's obviously more likely than being a follower, then do this, get World of Goo for free.



Obviously the Amazon Appstore for Android is not downloadable from Google's 'Play' store, you have to browse to Amazon (.co.uk for me, .com for US etc.) and install it from there, easiest just to googe "Amazon Appstore for Android". Oh you'll also have to allow the installation of Applications from "Unknown Sources" (For Ice Cream Sandwich it's under Settings-> Security -> Unknown Sources) before you install it.



If you have an Amzaon account, just log in and start it, there you go. The vast majority of what's on Play can be found here, often cheaper, and they let you download a free app (one that is normally a paid for app) every day. Sometimes the stuff is useless, but more often than not, something really nice, it's got me hooked, looking daily at what's being offered for free.



My 'You can't win' paradigm still applies, I've had my 'issues' with Amazon, there's a yet to be written up 59" Samsung Plasma buying story that worked out in the end, but did require two rather heated calls to their call centre, that showed up some rather remarkable inadequacies. But that's for another time.



Obviously I plug my blog in comments on other sites, "Yes, I'm hacked off, and I'll spend a few seconds telling all I can about it!". There I receive some responses, and obviously not all are positive. I was however quite struck by a few of them...



There were two of note on the Google Wallet thingy. One chap said my response had a fair few howlers, whilst I was complaining about the quality of e-mail that Google were sending me. However, though I think I said this sort of thing at the end of the blog entry, it's worth repeating, that my e-mails will by default have typos, because I am usually quite annoyed when having these exchanges, and that I am not the one asking for someone's passport!



The other chap wanted to educate me on the use of apostrophes, so I had a look and in the 1000+ words I had blurted out in frustration. It turned out that I had made one singular mistake of that nature. Did make me wonder, what a grammar Nazi, finds a single occurrence, and then posts a message about it? How odd.







Last but not least, that Humax Box, someone was really upset, either an employee, or a fanboi, but a Humax Foxsat HDR fanboi? Seriously? Grief.







The points are worth mentioning, because I found them so amusing. The remote control being sluggish, apparently removing the extra protective packing film on the inner panel (it's part covered by a front flap) solves that problem. Err no it does not, and anyway, my multi-remote will even work through glass (infra-red, so it should!). The Humax remote is, in a word, rubbish.



Never a software update I complained? Because it's a mature product came the answer (with the added argument that it's old and that their new Freeview box is the current device, but I want Freesat, NOT Freeview, Duh?)?! A small part of this argument tis valid, yes it has simply never crashed (though the remote locks up once a month, open, remove batteries, put back in, and it's fine), but it's slow, really slow, and that recording cutting problem.... more on that later, in short 'padding' fixed it, but now the recordings are huge, and there are other issues....



Worst still I hooked up my Sky HD box up in another room, and it did an update, amazing, whole new looking UI, and now it doesn't crash, but does default to a radio chancel when turned off, but £10 a month for recording… nah.



I also noticed that TalkTalk are now giving a Huawei set-top box rather than the Humax one that I heard they were going to provide, or did provide, not sure what happened there. I have a Huawei wireless router modem from TalkTalk, and it needs a resetting every few days.. oh well maybe their satellite box is better?



 

No comments:

Post a Comment