Basically they have 2 phones that should be coming to the market in the coming months (estimated at 4-6 weeks). These phones are the LC203 and the LC303 are have basic features. Both phones are 2G and the LC303 has extra features such as a camera. These 2 phones are not running Android but a custom OS from their partners. They have prototypes that are running Android and Windows Mobile but those phones will only be seen in the future.
Aiming at the B$400-B$600 price point they could make a market for themselves as typical Android handsets are targeting the more premium market at the moment. Looking at QQeStores Android phone listing there is only the Samsung Galaxy Spica I5700 and LG GW620 in this price range. My only concerns would be support for firmware updates to an Android phone. The HTC Hero has yet still get any 2.0+ firmware here in Asia and I wonder if this could be an issue with a new manufacturer. The prototype is running Donut (Android 1.6) but as it is not coming out any time soon, they may be running a newer version of Android so nothing much to comment yet.
Zahid, the managing director of BDFone, informed me that they have partnerships with Alcatel, Motorola and Nokia; and that they are targeting low cost but functional phones. I’m not too sure about lower end feature/dumb phones as I think Nokia has pretty functional phones at the low end but aiming for the lower end of Android may be beneficial. There is a void here as almost all Android phones are trying to be an iPhone killer and fetches top dollar. I’m thinking a non-touch Android phone with a keypad (1-9) would be an interesting form factor like the Nokia E52. Either way I wish them all the best and will try update on any developments on this Brunei phone.
Have you got old/non-working computers? If you do and want a new computer, Concepts has a deal for you.
Trade in your old computer at get an Acer Aspire X3900 – 353X7 for B$798 (B$818 with card) which is a B$90 discount for your old computer. The monitor has a resolution of 1600×900 and a standalone cost of B$248 (or B$198 bundled price with a computer) and I believe this is a good deal and the computer is ideal for general / family use.
With only an Intel integrated graphics card, it will not be the perfect gaming machine but there is 1 PCI Express X1 slot and One PCI Express X16 slot (low-profile) for expansion. Note: I was told by the staff that there are no expansions slots, however on the specifications in the brochure and online there seems to be PCI Express slots, so I believe the staff was mistaken. However taking a look at the back of the machine, it is fulled with ports and there doesn’t seem to be any space for expansion cards to be placed. I asked to see inside the chassis but they declined my request. (Update 1: managed to get them to open the chassis for me as there are only 2 SATA connectors which are used for the DVD drive and hard drive and there are 2 expansion slots on the back of the case as shown below, I guess I wasn’t remembering things right) Ports on the back of the system (including 2 slots of PCIe expansion)
Also note that this is a mini-tower and thus regular components may not fit in the expansion slots, thus the reason for "low-profile" mentioned in online specifications of this system. Another thing I noticed is that the configuration that Concepts is selling only has 2GB RAM where all the other bundles I’ve seen for the same model X3900-353X7 has 4GB RAM (Acer Malaysia’s product page | QQeStore | Google Search). I will try clarify with them on this (Update 1: seems that the 2GB is a Brunei deal, other computer shops selling Acer products have the same 2GB with monitor configuration as opposed to 4GB without monitor)
The base Acer Aspire X3900 – 353X7 bundle from QQeStore has 4GB RAM but no monitor. QQeStore sells OCZ 2GB DDR3 RAM for $258 which is more or less the price of the monitor (assuming existing 2GB in the system is a single stick). Personally I have enough monitors at home and would prefer 4GB RAM but I guess for the typical home looking to upgrade a computer system, the choice for a monitor is better. While 4GB would be great for any system, I feel 2GB should be sufficient for most and only enthusiast or people with higher requirements from a computer will complain. (Update 2: You can upgrade RAM to 4GB for B$98 – 2 sticks of 2GB)
Acer Aspire X3900 – 353X7 bundle by Concepts Computers, Brunei
9 x USB 2.0, IEEE 3994 port, eSata, HDMI, Dsub VGA, 5 audio jacks, S/PDIF jack & 2 x PS/2
Acer USB Speaker Keyboard & Optical Mouse
Genuine Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium
Update 1: Kudo’s to Concepts for allowing me to tickle my fancy of wanting to know how many SATA connectors there are. I asked if I could transplant the system in an existing chassis and they even offered to do it for free. So if you do transplant the system you can use normal sized components but the next issue that you could run into would insufficient power to the component. Stock power supply is only 220W, so if you put in a power hungry graphics card you will have to spend more on an extra power supply too. Possibly add another $200 – $300 for that.
Update 2: So you can upgrade the RAM to 4GB for B$98. (2 sticks of 2GB which is a added nice touch as it means you can max out the RAM without getting rid of any sticks, if they used 4 sticks of 1GB RAM). Also my brother seems to be having an issue with this brand new system. Monitor detected that the video signal was lost, then the power button kept blinking. Tried moving the mouse, pressing the keyboard, pressing the power button and none of that worked. Had to force shutdown and also during a restore, the restoration got stuck.
I found this out accidentally the a few weeks back. I was playing around with the Qik or uStream application and realized it was auto focusing, but the Nokia E71 by default in the video recording application does not have auto focus. After playing around a bit more I found that you need to enable auto focus in the camera application (by pressing ‘T’) and get red corners (it doesn’t work if you get green corners) before switching to Qik / uStream clients. If anybody knows what the significance of red vs green corners when you auto-focus on the E71 do let me know for I am curious why it doesn’t work for green corners but does for red.
Launch the Camera Application
Enable auto-focus by pressing ‘T’. Make sure you get red corners as it doesn’t work if you get green corners. Just keep pressing ‘T’ until you get red corners
Click home and launch Qik or uStream and auto-focus should be enabled
When Microsoft introduced Windows Vista 64-bit and later Windows 7 64-bit they implemented a security feature that will only allow signed drivers to work with the operating system. This is a way to ensure that only the proper driver can be installed with the hardware device to ensure stability and security but for regular consumers this can be a big hassle. A 64-bit operating system is needed to address more than 4GB of RAM (32-bit operating systems can only address a maximum of 4GB) so if you have less than 4GB RAM I would stick with 32-bit as the hassles of 64-bit isn’t worth it.
In order to get unsigned drivers to work use Driver Signature Enforcement Overrider. I managed to get it working with the bmobile’s 1st Generation 3.5G HSDPA Modem as show below
Click the “Sign a File” button and specify the location of the driver / sys file (location of the file can be found in “Device Manager”, device’s “Properties”, “Driver” tab, click “Driver details”)
Reboot the computer and things should work
Now I wouldn’t recommend disabling UAC as it is a form of security that would prevent possible malware but if you need to use the hardware and don’t want to spend money to get compatible hardware or don’t want to downgrade to a 32-bit operating system of Windows then I guess it’s one of the choices you have to make.
So my church’s laptop, a Dell Vostro 1200, had an unfortunate accident resulting in a broken LCD screen and was thus sent for repair with Netcom. It took quite a while to get the parts but finally after getting it fixed it came back and was unbootable: just a black screen. It was taken back to Netcom and diagnosed as a corrupt operating system and they recommended a format. It was decided that we could format it ourselves so I was sent to collect it.
Sure enough on booting it just turned out to be a black screen without even showing the Windows logon. Pressing F8 gave a message saying no bootable medium so I though probably the hard disk wasn’t being detected. So I decided to boot into GParted from a CD and it turns out that the partition table had been corrupted, so I managed to recover the partition table using TestDisk which was included in GParted (nice touch guys, kudos for including it!). After recovering the partition table I managed to reboot and see the Windows Vista boot up process. And I thought it was all over with the computer being fixed in roughly 10 minutes. Oh how wrong I was.
Quickly I noticed that the background wallpaper was not what used to be on the laptop. There were installations of Cabal Online, Google Chrome, aVast anti-virus, iTunes, Quick Time, Firefox, Orbit, Microsoft Office Enterprise 2007 (previous laptop had a non-commercial Standard edition, where did they get the product key from?), Skype and some other software as well that I was sure was not on the laptop before it went in for repair. I quickly deduced that 1) the hard drive is some other Netcom customer’s or 2) they formatted the drive. I check with the person at church and ask if they were asked to format the drive and found out that they did not request for formatting, nor were they asked to format the drive. So I called Netcom to ask if they formatted the drive or if the drive could be another one of their client’s drive. They couldn’t give me a proper answer and so I left my number with them and they said they would call me back because the person who received the laptop handed it over to his superior to process it. That was over 6 hours ago.
After some more probing I found that the version of Vista needed to be activated within 3 days and upon doing so it was an invalid product key. Also none of the drivers or service packs have been installed, making me think it is a cleanly formatted system. System Properties identified the laptop as an “HP Pavilion dv2500” when it’s a Dell Vostro 1200.
Having the computer identified as a completely different laptop made me think that they changed the LCD, tried to turn on the computer and it didn’t work so they restored the drive from their own cloned image (based on an HP Pavilion dv2500) and stuck it back in and called it a day without even booting it up to check it worked.
Now Netcom while no important information was lost (there should be a backup of any files in the other laptop), the way this was handled is not satisfying. Under no circumstance should a laptop be formatted without customer’s consent as there could be important information on it. Also if it was formatted, at least complete the job and provide the proper product key information. As with almost all laptops, the product key is on the bottom of the laptop, you can change it without issue. While I commend you for installing applications that the user would regularly need and use, I do not like the fact that Microsoft Office Enterprise 2007 is on it because this is just piracy. On further inspection there is also Corel Paint Shop Pro and Adobe Acrobat as well: there could be more commercial products but these 3 are the main ones. I don’t believe you have the rights to distribute them (do correct me if I’m wrong) Another point is why couldn’t they answer if the laptop had been formatted or otherwise? Isn’t any action on the laptop noted down so the customer has an itemized report on what was done on the laptop? I’m sorry but I cannot recommend any customers to you at this moment in time and am pretty appalled by what happened.
Telbru recently joined the Twitter sphere (@Telbru) and I hope this is part of them getting their act together and telling the customers what’s going on. I believe anybody living in Brunei knows how much people dislike the e-Speed (and now the Zoom!) experience. Complaints of slow speeds and connectivity issues are always heard every few days it seems. Sometimes Telbru will respond and other times not, but honestly they need to be more transparent in what they are doing. The same goes for all their other services; as goes with my Speed on Demand findings, there often is no official word on what is happening.
Maybe it’s just me but having a problem and not being told what is being done really annoys me. If you tell me what is being done or even if you tell me why it can’t be done, I will be more understanding. Just say something and treat your customer right by give them information they deserve. You can tell us that you are doing nothing but only if you have valid reasons (not excuses). Reach out and communicate with your customers. As mentioned before they recently started with Twitter (@Telbru) and slightly with Facebook (Telbru 4 U). I initially thought the eSpeed forum would have been a place for Telbru to communicate with their customers but alas it is not – no updates since June 2008.
Recently people were complaining that the eSpeed Upgrade was a joke because:
There was no improvement for them (the typical complaints: eSpeed not working and/or slow)
Their line was not yet upgraded even up till now (over 2 weeks since they announced the upgrade)
Recently it is supposed that peer-to-peer (P2P) in the form of bittorrent has been blocked
After some probing Telbru told me that they are rolling out the upgrades to different sections at a time and people will get them in due time. This information needs to be stated somewhere online from their official source. Just advertising that they have upgraded when in fact people have still yet to get an upgrade will just lead to further discontentment among those who did not get the upgrade: leading to them complaining about eSpeed being a joke in this case.
The official word is that they are not blocking bittorrent but users are still complaining of it not being to download properly. Initially I torrented an Ubuntu 9.04 ISO a few weeks back and it seemed to have no connections so I left it overnight and in the morning it managed to finish downloading but my total upload was 0. I suspect that somewhere in the early morning they unblock torrents when the traffic is low and continue blocking it in the morning. There has to be a reason for the upload to be 0 because previously it was fine. More recently I torrented Ubuntu 10.04 and it managed to fully download via torrent and it did manage to upload, however it did take 30 minutes to actually connect to peers and start downloading.
On a related note of discontentment with Telbru, their SpeedOnDemand service (logon page available only to newer networks) which has been advertised in October last year and recently in March this year, is still not available for all users, only those on the newer network. There is still no product service page on the eSpeed website and the only information I have on SpeedOnDemand is from what I gathered from asking them questions and I have documented in my posts here and here.
It seems to be that with the upgrade advert and the SpeedOnDemand service it seems that they are trying to grab people’s attention by introducing something new hoping to get the public’s support. Which they will initially get. But once customers try it out and find out that they can’t access it, they will get more frustrated with Telbru.
Honestly Telbru I give you kudos to setting up your twitter account and actively trying to get into contact with people having issues with eSpeed but you need to do more to get the public faith back. I’m sure the public perception of Telbru from the constant eSpeed and Zoom! complaints isn’t that great. I myself didn’t have much faith in Telbru with my on eSpeed issues – traffic bottleneck causing difficulty in surfing at home with lots of timeouts despite constant connectivity and having to renew IP every day after returning from work. I am happy after switching to the new Alcatel modem from the old Huawei modem which resulted in a constant and consistent connection with the combination of the eSpeed upgrade.
In order to improve I suggest that that Telbru give press releases or official information documenting what they are doing and to stop with any of the advertising that gives false hope to or misleads customers. Let us know and be transparent of the repair works or roll out works that are currently underway or are planned and the estimated time of completion. If anybody is like me, knowing what is happening will allow me to be more tolerable of any issues rather than being kept in the dark. I suggest they continue with something like their eSpeed forum giving FAQs, possible solutions as well as updates on their works. Telbru I wish you the best and hope you do this right.
This is what I hate about Nokia’s current 2.5mm charger. I charge my phone, my phone drops with the charger attached and I get a bent charger tip. The charger will still typically work until it’s been battered into submission and gets broken as shown below. This is my second Nokia charger tip to bite the dust.
Instead of buying a new charger I just bought a cheap B$3 adapter from BIT Computer that converts an older 3.5mm Nokia charger to the new 2.5mm tip. Works perfect and if it gets broken it’s just a $3 change. Saves money and recycles an old charger. Win for me, win for the Earth. You can buy this adapter from Deal Extreme.
Just make sure the old charger has an output rating of DC 5.0V, 800mA (I tried on an even older 3.5mm charger that has a rating of 3.7V, 355mA and I get a “Not charging” message on the phone, so you need the right rating)
With Ubuntu 10.04 Long Term Support (LTS) being released this month lets all learn the meaning of “Ubuntu”. It’s a great philosophy and just speaks to me and I hope it speaks to all of us to be better to one another and to make this world a better place.
A person with Ubuntu is open and available to others, affirming of others, does not feel threatened that others are able and good, for he or she has a proper self-assurance that comes from knowing that he or she belongs in a greater whole and is diminished when others are humiliated or diminished, when others are tortured or oppressed.
One of the sayings in our country is Ubuntu – the essence of being human. Ubuntu speaks particularly about the fact that you can’t exist as a human being in isolation. It speaks about our interconnectedness. You can’t be human all by yourself, and when you have this quality – Ubuntu – you are known for your generosity.
We think of ourselves far too frequently as just individuals, separated from one another, whereas you are connected and what you do affects the whole world. When you do well, it spreads out; it is for the whole of humanity.
What does Ubuntu mean?
Ubuntu is an African word meaning ‘Humanity to others’, or ‘I am what I am because of who we all are’. The Ubuntu distribution brings the spirit of Ubuntu to the software world.
Product activation for the following version of Microsoft Office 2007 is to done by calling 1800 6738 from a land lineonly, not a mobile phone line.
I was told from TechOneGlobal that there is no recourse for those people without a land line. You will need get a hold of a land line, which isn’t too bad because it is a told free number but still I believe that there should be way to activate without one. By the way, the activation process is all automated and can be done via voice or button presses. The voice interaction with the bot is a pretty interesting experience.
I had a few problems when activating this product without this knowledge:
Activation cannot be done over the Internet: as stated on the box it must be done in Malaysia. You must call the Product Activation phone number
I tried calling the number with my mobile phone: the number was engaged for over an hour and only the next day, did it give me an automated message saying that the number was not assigned. I had to call Tech One Global to find out that I needed to call using a land line in order to get through
Honestly these things should be made clear to the buyer to avoid the inconveniences I experienced. No where is it stated that you cannot activate online and that a land line must be used to call the Product Activation telephone number. Yes, it does say activation in Malaysia only, but it did have the Tech One Global sticker (stuck on the plastic wrap) saying that it is to be sold in Brunei only, so logically, they could have made the necessary changes in the activation process so that these items shipped to Brunei could be activated here instead of requiring customers to call.
Also, since the number is not available to mobile phone callers why did I get the engaged tone instead of the automated message saying that the number wasn’t assigned? It would have at least tipped me off earlier. Perhaps this is a telephony matter but it should state on the sticker that activation must be done via a land line.
Hopefully this will help you guys save time and answer any tech support calls you may get regarding this.
PS: I’m not sure if this is the only version sold in Brunei or if there are ones that can be activated within Brunei. For all to know I bought this at Yappe Computer so I suggest you look elsewhere to see if there are any other versions of Office that can be activated in Brunei
With the recent changes with eSpeed you’d like to know if you’ve been upgraded so here are 2 local bandwidth test sites that should enable you to check your bandwidth with between you and Telbru (and DST possibly)
Note that these will show you local link within Brunei and just because your local link has the full bandwidth doesn’t necessarily mean that all your downloads will get the full speed of connection. To check the speed with the outside world try bandwidth testers like Speedtest.net.
The Wheat Field 