We have seen that the new Mac Mini is now void of any drive to insert DVD’s into and f you look at any of the latest tablet / laptop type computers – they too have no drive to insert any DVD’s into. You may ask yourself what if you wanted to install the operating system, what about playing DVD movies and god forbid you wanted to sabre some data to cd to send off right?

I wanted to use this post to look at ways to show that in fact CD/DVD as a medium is in fact dying out and there is always a way around doing things better using other media, namely memory sticks.

Installing operating systems

The first thing that comes to mind is how on earth do you install the operating system using something other than CD/DVD? Writing an ISO Image to a DVD is very easy compared to trying to pull of the same trick on a memory stick but armed with a large enough memory stick you can install Windows or Mac  via that memory stick and it is MUCH faster than DVD.

Movies 

Back in the day you went along to a store and rent out DVD movies, you may also have bought some movies for the one’s you wanted to keep and it was such a simple task – you slotted that disk into the drive under your TV and watched the movie in high quality (compared to VHS Tapes anyhow). The problem came when you had to return the movies back to the store and run the risk of late fee’s or scratched media and so forth.

In this day and age you have the choice of renting movies online and devices that stream the movies across the network to your TV. To take a good example, I store all my movies on a NAS box and then I use a WDTV box modded up with wireless which is connected to my TV and I can get access to any movie in my collection at the flick of a switch, no more having a tower of DVD’s taking up space in my living room. I can then also view them same movies on the my iPad using a program that comes from my NAS maker (Synology) and finally I can watch them on any PC in my collection.

Media in General

I bought some time back 100 CD-R, 100 DVD-R and 50 DVD-R (DL), all of these were printable on my canon ip4200 printer. CD is hardly used and I must have 80+ still in the caddy. DVD-R is maybe a lot more popular for install media and the like whilst DVD-R (DL) is again hardly used, maybe in my Hackintosh days I used them but this day and age, hardly ever.

I was put off my DVD in general for storage of files as I recall years ago writing all of my MP3 collection to lots of DVD-R, I placed them into a holder and filed them away think my collection was safe. It was not until I came to use them only to find some of them had errors – how can a disc untouched by a human hand have such errors? I did verify them before putting them away as well.

They have a place but for how long?

Old machines cannot boot from USB Drives, so these will continue to need media on DVD and if people struggle with the concept of making a thumb drive OS install then again, these people will need media. Even Apple have released OSX Lion only via download – the sign of the times and we need to think about moving forward. What about you? do you feel we should leave CD/DVD behind or would you rather carry on using this?

This morning when I woke up, I noticed a message on the phone “There is a system update available”. I set it off to download, it restarted, installed the update and restarted again. I was left at the HTC Hero starting screen – I assumed that it might take a while before updating or something, so I left it plugged in and on while I went off to the Gym at 9am. I returned at 10:30am and the phone was in the same state -i.e. Not working. Maybe reboots, took sim out, tried the rom screen (Power & Back key while switching on) and nothing I did made it work.

Calling T-Mobile

Now on 4th April I will be calling T-Mobile anyhow to cancel my 18 month contract but this does not mean I should accept that a firmware update (or whatever it was) killed my phone for good, I may want to use a different sim or sell it etc. The told me the phone was in warranty till Nov 2011 and I should return it to a local store where thy will send it off for repair and give me a replacement loan phone.

Not so much a replacement phone

I did as instructed and they gave me a nokia 6400 I think it was, a basic phone with no internet or touch screen and such. I could not be bothered to argue my case to be honest as I have a work phone – I should get the phone back in two weeks time by which time I can call them and cancel my contract and wave goodbye to T-Mobile.

I wish to write about my sister dealing so far with this company, you can find them HERE and they go by the name of Dino PC. I already wrote about this before in my previous story but we ask, what has happened since? Is my sister now a happy end user of a fast and cheap desktop pc and was my shouts of “go to Dell” all wrong?

They admit defeat

They finally say that it could be a hardware issue and they will sink the cost (£40) of getting the product back, testing it fully and making sure she has a working computer. She really wanted her money back at this stage so she can deal with a proper company (like Dell) and in the future listen to what I have to say. The Company issue a pick up with I think FedEx and we wait. The instructions were strange, they told her to seal the case so that it if they opened it (which meant a hardware failure) she could check this. This so far sounded very dodgy to me and I advised my sister to melt candle wax (small blob) on the side of the case were the panel comes off. 

Snow and more Snow

As a stroke of bad luck though, the snow stopped the people getting to the door it seems and they were unable to pick the package up. The next day they also filed the same notice but at the same time said they left a card? It was either bad weather stopping FedEx (which meant no card) or nobody was in (which there was). DinoPC later contacted my sister and explained that they had been charged the £13 even though no pickup was made, you now begin to ask were this £40 charge came about right?

Getting Married

It seems an email came forth saying the person dealing with this collection / fix is now away as he is getting married but he shall be back on Monday – so that’s 4 days more of waiting before anything happens. Begs the question, is there only a handful of people who work there and only one can do returns? 

It gets there in the end

They arrange another collection, it gets picked up now nothing – no emails, no phone calls or even a letter to say they had got the item and how long they plan to take with this computer – we call this very bad customer service. I finally send an email near the end of the week and they respond quickly saying that the machine is in testing and takes 5 working days after which it is fixed and returned. My sister gets an email later that days (funnily enough) saying it has been fixed and despatched and will arrive the next day.

The Machine lands

So the machine turns up and with it there is a check list, it states that the motherboard was replaced and it is working and passed all the other tests. It is also ticked to say it is in 100% A1 condition physically. No power lead was in the box – that was sent with the machine but with luck she had one from the printer. The side of the case was scratched to hell – not quite the condition she sent it in. She plugged in the power cord, made sure the power switch was on, the power supply on/off switch was on and pressed the on/off switch on the front……. NOTHING.

Some random guesses

The power supply might have died, the connector from the power supply might have come loose. The CPU might have been knocked out during the journey or the motherboard might be dead all over again. It is hard to say and quite rightly she is not about to rip the machine apart and try to fix this. This will have to wait till Monday until it all start again – she will fight for her money back now as this is getting silly. The Company will have lost some money already over this considering it was £13 x 2 for delivery and the time it took the person to test it (wages).

The on-going fight

My sister is now disheartened and still without a working computer, one that she has paid for already, she wants her money back so she can go forth to say Dell and get a working computer from a company who can support her. Dino Pc will fight to the bitter end – they do not want to loose money and no way will they want to give her the money back. I have advised her to take picture of the case and email them explaining she wants her money back. Should they say no (which I suspect they will) – then this is now a matter for trading standards and/or the credit card company.