Byte by Bite

A Wii problem

by Marv Dealy

Since the hand-held unit is motion sensitive, when you play a video game of tennis you’ll be swinging the thing around like a tennis racket. If your video game involves knights, horses and swords, then you’d be swinging the thing around like a sword – you get the idea.

I’m a little puzzled about what the game manufacturers were thinking – perhaps they just had sedate Japanese players test the units and it never occurred to them that we’d use the equipment as directed, only more so.

It’s possible they forgot that the bulk of gamers are young men, often given to a bit of rough play, so it’s not surprised the dang wrist straps aren’t holding up. On the other hand, the problems with the wrist straps are getting Nintendo all sorts of press they wouldn’t get otherwise – look what we’re talking about here.

Nintendo has pushed more than twice as many game consoles out the door as has Sony with its PlayStation 3, and in the gaming world, more consoles will eventually equal more games for that console which will in turn result in more sales of consoles.

One thing I don’t understand about the PlayStation 3 is Sony’s insistence on calling their digital recording device a Blue-Ray. Sounds kind of like what killed that TV fellow a few months back when it stabbed him in the chest after he annoyed it. I mean everybody by now calls a little silver disc that records music or movies either a CD or a DVD and now we have to figure out the difference between a DVD, available in single and dual layer as well as single write and rewriteable and over here on the other side of the aisle, a stack of Blue-Rays.

Why couldn’t Sony have just called it an EVE? It would have lent itself t advertising, (EVEolution, etc.), it was next in the alphabet after DVD, and it would imply in the consumer’s mind that it’s the next thing. Blue-Ray – might be something from the most recent iterations of Star Trek which no one I know admits to ever watching anymore.

For those of you who just can’t get enough details, the essential difference in Blue-Ray and DVD technology is the laser used to read and write the discs. In Blue-Ray it’s a blue-violet laser with a far shorter wavelength of 405 nm than the HD DVD, which uses a 650 nm blue laser. This doesn’t explain why the marketing department didn’t calit the Blue-Violet-Ray. The shorter wavelength means a lot more stuff can be stored on a Blue-Ray Disc – Sony is expected to release 50 GB rewriteable discs soon. Word is that under no circumstances will these new Sony discs burst into flames while being used in your laptop.

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A WildBlue Surprise – Reader Charlie Speight contacted me sometime back concerning problems he was having after having had a WildBlue satellite installed by someone other than the folks out of Georgetown that I routinely recommend for such jobs.

Ultimately, Jason Niedens agreed to go look at the install and based on what he’d learned at WildBlue U and from having seen and helped with numerous installs subsequently pointed out some things that might be problematic. Charlie already had a service call set up with the installers, PrimeDirec and he went ahead and had that service call during which they found that a certain part was indeed bad, but only after Charlie insisted on thorough diagnostics rather than just a “well, let’s replace this and try that.”

Charlie reports that the three-week delay in getting that service call was met with only “lame excuses, but I won’t get into that” he says. WildBlue told Charlie that they would credit him for one month of lost service, but when the bill showed up they made up for lost time by charging him for all the service alls going back to August. Says Charlie, “Great company, huh? I’m writing the COE David Leonard but don’t expect resolution. I would never recommend WildBlue – when there is a better deal in town please let me know.”

A few days later, Charlie wrote back to say that WildBlue’s President, one Ken Carroll, called him today and reversed the service charges and credited him for some downtime. I wrote Charlie saying that I was quite surprised, and he wrote back to say “I was surprised too. He was actually pleasant about the whole thing. Didn’t want to reimburse me for your charges until I told him we would still be looking for the problem without Jason’s input. I told him their diagnostics by substitution left a lot to be desired and they really need to incorporate actual testing in the process. Then I asked him about the new satellite they just launched from French Guiana – says it should be operational in March.”

That last little tidbit is good news if you’re on a waiting list for WildBlue – they’ve not been taking new customers as they had maxed out their equipment and the next big wave of signups had to wait until they could get the new satellite operational. Thanks, Charlie, for passing on your trials and tribulations and the rest of you out there beware who you have install your satellite.

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That’s it for this month from The Computer Guy — e-mail me any rants at marv.dealy@throck.com For your review, these columns are posted on our web site at www.Throck.com/articles

Marv Dealy founded Throckmorten Enterprises in San Francisco in 1988 and moved the company to Big Oak Flat in 1996. The company has branches in Boise and Sutter Creek. Throckmorten provides support to companies such as Hewlett Packard and The Griffin Company in “webinars” in addition to marketing, graphic design, newsletter production, web design, wired and wireless networks, home audio, computer repair and upgrades (Mac or PC). Big Oak Flat office open Monday thru Friday, 9-ish to 5-ish. Phone 209 962-7308.