FRIDAY ROUNDUP

Should non commerical lawyers do commercial deals?

Did RIM design trackballs on blackberries to help blokes finesse clitical aspects of the oral art of love?

Did you get an invite to the National Party Caucus Xmas do at the big whare on Tinakori road ?

Why is Sean Plunket smiling these days?

TELECONS

We blogged the other day about the demise of our blackberry trackball. It had a terminal fur ball.
Essentially Telecom's "authorised dealer" was going to charge us $250 to replace and fit a new roller ball. The phone is out of warranty but they refused to supply the drop and load trackball kit. and it would take a week.

We smelled a con. And we were right. We paid $20 including post and package from Arwel in Porirua on Trade Me.Turn around time to get the replacement parts - 48 hours.
Time to take out old bit and put in new bits - 45 seconds - yip you read it right - 45 seconds

It works a treat.

So we will be ringing Telecom tomorrow for some answers.

We will blog in due course.

BLACKBERRY

Our blackberry is an essential part of our communication arsenal. It has lessened the stress in our life and we have in the space of two years worn the bugger out. Well , we have worn the trackball out. the rest works fine.

It was just out of warranty when we first started getting problems with the wee ball sticking. So we went on line and found a myriad of sites dedicated to helping with the problem. Anyway - we opened it up and pulled out a wadge of fluff and it went again. Sadly its now beyond repair.

We went on line and found an off shore site that sells the track balls and worked out that the little suckers were quite cheap. US$ 10 bucks.

So today we toddled on into the ORB store on the Terrace. A happy bunch of very helpful young people are always there with a smile and some advice. So we rock on up to the counter and ask to order a trackball kit.

"Has to be sent away sorry." the girly says.

Nah I said, the phone is out of warranty and I know how to replace it - all I want is the kit.

Ahh says the lovely girl behind the counter - She will ring and ask.

She does.
She tells the " authorised dealer" what she wants and I am impressed with her reply -

" Nah thats too expensive"

She gets off the phone and tells me it was going to cost $250 to get a replacement trackball fitted.

I am due to upgrade my phone in 3 weeks so I decide to hold off and the staff promise if they get a broken blackerry with a good trackball they will ring.

Anyway tonite we went online to trademe. $20 later and we have a trackball kit on its way from Porirua - including free postage.

So when we fit the trackball and its all okay we will be asking some pretty tough questions of Telecom.

Interestingly there are whole websites overseas who just sell trackballs. cheap - with instructions -
So are we being ripped off here in NZ ? We think so.

TELECOM RORTS BLACKBERRY USERS

We bought a Blackberry last April - we love it. Its on a 24 month plan. All good. Not so, it seems buried in the last few paras of Chris Kealls revelation in the NBR that Vodophones I-phones will run on Telecoms wizzy XT 3G network, is this nasty little insight about our favourite phone.

The telco has yet to say if any BlackBerries will feature in its XT line-up, for example (Telecom currently does currently have a “worldmode” BlackBerry 8830 aimed at business travellers - many of whom may be surprised that their RIM device won’t run on the new XT network.

And because the BlackBerry handset relies on a proprietary BlackBerry server, it’s far less of a candidate for network hopping.

Well yes we are bloody surprised - we would not have entered into a 24month contract if we had realised that the Blackberry face dont fit with the XT network.

We want answers and quick bloody smart.

CRACKBERRY

Yip I have it . It is debilitating. A mate threatened to chuck it into the harbour at Dockside at lunch the other day. I was saved by the fella next to me, also a crackberry addict who defended my right to use my blackberry where ever and whenever I wanted. Yesterday the unthinkable happened. My emails stopped coming in. They were on my computer but they weren't going to my blackberry.

Phoned Telecom- they said it was my email providers fault. - I use Freeparking / Webfarm. It was 8pm. No joy in raising anyone. Funny thing is I could send emails from my Blackberry and they were going to my email account its just that they weren't going to my blackberry.

I didn't sleep well . I woke up on the hour every hour checking one my one eyed black best friend , to see if by chance it had recovered.
6am this morning as I lay staring at my crackberry I saw the sweet soft seductive flash of red that indicated incoming messages after 14 hours of nothingness.
82 of the wonderful little snippets of information I thirst for every minute of the day waited for me. I felt a lovely warm sensation seep into my bones. I picked up my blackberry and gave it a loving stroke and waited patiently for the soft red flash to signal my next fix.
How fucked is that.