The Technology Vent and Rant Thread

[pdurrant]

So, what bit of technology has annoyed you today?

[wodin]

[not_rant]
Thank you!
[/not_rant]

[Cinisajoy]

Thanks a million.

[Bilbo1967]

Bloody SharePoint.

I know it's supposed to just work, but somehow it never does for me. And a s the character limit on file paths?

[FizzyWater]

I suspect it's less the technology than the technologists, but our team at work is slowly being switched over to VDI from laptops/desktops. Like everything else lately, they think it'll all be magically understood by the users. "Hook it up and they will come."

I consider myself a pretty good amateur, and the team treats me like the resident geek. But I haven't switched over yet - I run tasks that crawl on VDI, so I've been able to keep my laptop so far. It's really hard to help the hapless, however, when the understand almost nothing about computers, and I've never used the platform they're now on.

The IT guys want to pretend it's "just like what you've always had", but that's not true - and not just because the cloud/virtual world acts differently than having a hard drive. We're on Office 2010 on our physical machines, but the VDI users are all on 2013, for example....and every database we have is giving them errors because we're going back and forth between the two versions of Access.

All the emails announcing the changes have NO contacts included - only the generic "button" help desk ticket option. And the only class on our training site is for a version of VDI they stopped using early this year/late last year.

[Toxaris]

VDI can work fine for most users, if (and that is a very big if) it is configured correctly AND the latency is taken into account.

[DiapDealer]

People who think they're doing themselves (and others) a favor by choosing a 2.4Ghz wireless channel other than 1, 6, or 11 because they look less busy.

[DiapDealer]

And people who don't know they shouldn't use a 2.4GHz channel other than 1, 6, or 11 thinking they have any business manually selecting the 2.4GHz channel their router uses in the first place.

[BetterRed]

People who don't read release notes and basic doco. It's not PC to say RTFM these days,

[wodin]

I ALWAYS read the destructions!

[Katsunami]

How to lose a loyal customer? By making your service so expensive that basically anyone else is cheaper.

I've been hosting my e-mail, and sometimes some small files, pages or domains, with the same webhost, since 2004. Even though support is great and I rarely have had any problems, I've just started to move to someone else. Their prices are becoming ridiculous.

Let's see:
2004: Webhosting for €28.95 (one domain name free).
2005-6-7-8-9-10: Webhosting for €28.95 and one domain name for €9.95 per year. Storage capacity, speed, and some functionality increased.
2011: big package setup change. Costs are now €43 a year... I thought. Turned out that VAT was now not included in the price. Final cost for a year of hosting is €52 (and €9.95 for the domain).
2011-14: Costs steady rose to €70, but I was still on the old plan, and I bought an extension for three years, for €52 a year (and the domain name at €9.95 a year).

Today I get an SMS: My account is about to be terminated, as I have not paid for a renewal. Eh... why? Shouldn't I have gotten e-mails about that?

Turned out, Ziggo has removed my old e-mail forward setting somewhere around two months ago. This webhoster was the only one sending e-mails to that address. (Obviously, in 2004, I couldn't handle the setup of a new domain under the domain name itself as it didn't exist yet.) My webhost has been sending me e-mails for six weeks about the account, as they always do.

The account ends somewhere this month. OK. Fair enough.

After I find out, I log in to have a look at their current packages.... and I'm shocked to see that the lowest offering they have now stands at €91 per year (when I add the VAT to their price). So in 10 years time, their hosting prices rose from €28.95 to €91 a year (ex domain name), while other hosters, either older ones that were expensive, or newer ones that trying to break into the market, have become cheaper.

Out of protest I've removed all of my emails (I have everything back to 2011 archived on my computer and in my own backups) and files, and searched for another hoster. The current number one in the Netherlands (my current hoster is now number 2, after being number one since 2007 or so) has a very small package on offering. It's basically comparable to what I started with in 2004:

2GB of space
25GB of data
Some SQL databases
PHP (version selectable; everything 5.x and 7.x)
Unlimited e-mail boxes, forwarders, and subdomains.

They don't have any of the fancy new-fangled stuff such as RedisCache, Memcached, triple failover, hourly backup and so on on this package. My current hoster does, but I don't need it. I just need a place to receive e-mails not tied to anything like Google, Microsoft or an internetprovider (so I can move it anywhere). That space needs to receive mails containing attachments as large as I want, and to (sometimes) put some files and maybe a tiny personal wordpress site or even a static page. It needs to be big enough to receive a year's worth of e-mail, after which I'll archive it on the computer itself.

That's it. This provider offers it... for the sum of €0.54 a month (including VAT). I only needed to pay for the move of my .net domain. My .nl domain was moved for free. I'll be switching my personal mail to my personal domain (which contains my name), and in august 2018, when it runs out, I'll drop the .net domain and replace it by a GMAIL adress for forum use.

Even if I need to have more power, storage, speed or functionality, I can upgrade to their next account. That one still has my current hoster beat by €2 a month.

I don't need to pinch pennies and look at €2 a month for e-mail, but I just refuse to pay €91 (and rising, probably) just to host my email on an over the top powerful webspace. I just don't need that.

I my current hoster had kept a smaller package for somewhere around €30-45 a year, I wouldn't have left. THEY stole customers from others using cheap hosting in 2004. Now the newcomers of 2017 are stealing customers from THEM.

After everything is set up and working on the new hoster (my mail will still come in at the previous hoster until the move is complete), I'll extend my subscription to four years @ €0.54 a month, and then I'll take a look at it again in 2022 again.

[Toxaris]

I had the same with my old hoster. I think I switched about ten years ago and now pay €1.95 a month for 25GB storage, 150GB data traffic, SSL certificate, PHP and the works (no Python though...). I have my domain also there and my mail. It works fine and I almost never have an issue.

[BetterRed]

Don't you hate it when something stops working for no apparent reason, and then some time later it starts working again, again for no apparent reason.

My most recent occurrence of this were the Word 2016 dictionary add-ins (French and English) from Definitions.Net (STANDS4.NET). The 'diagnostic' was 'check network connection', and 'go to the site (http://www.definitions.net/)' both of which worked of course. I reinstalled Office etc etc - to no avail of course. Uninstalled all my other addins - to no avail of course. I sent a query to STANDS.NET - to no avail of course (no response)

Out of the blue - the add-ins sprang back into life - no updates to Windows, Office etc

BR

[Terisa de morgan]

For me, that's the way things are. I'm so used to it....

[meeera]

Originally Posted by pdurrant

So, what bit of technology has annoyed you today?

My portable powerchair. A piece of plastic has broken off the plug connecting the arm (where the plug-in point is) to the base (where the battery is). These things cost thousands and thousands of dollars, but they're mostly plastic and velcro. (And, at this stage, duct tape.)