Savimize? Er, no.

Nearly every I get spam from Rogers or Bell, trying in vain to make me switch to their service. It's in vain because a) I'm already with Rogers, so they're wasting their time trying to get me to sign up for services I already have, and b) I won't go back to Bell because the phone lines (and thus DSL rates) in this neighbourhood are teh suck.

But wast of paper and postage aside, let's contrast the two current promotions they're running, both trying to be clever with language... and failing.

Bell recently unveiled what I like to call its "sucki-er" campaign, with numerous print and billboard ads all including the suffix "-er" in the copy. Better, faster, beaver... you name it, they've gone superlative on it. Why does it suck? Because let's be real. Better is entirely subjective. Faster can be measured, and at least in my part of Toronto, it's not. This campaign makes me long for their now famous beaver campaign, because at least it was creative.

Meanwhile, in response, Rogers has unveiled its "invent a new word" campaign, which I find frankly insulting. If there was another cable provider I could turn to, I'd consider switching just because of this bit of lameness.

Recently Rogers has started telling everyone they're faster (but refuses to release details). Lame. This new campaign? Lamer.

Bellch, Part 2: Traffic Shaping

Another reason to boycott Bell: p2p traffic throttling, w/o first contacting customers & resellers.

So much for the claim that because everyone has a dedicated phone line (unlike the supposedly slower, pooled cable lines) the service will be faster and more fair for the consumer.

IT Business reports that Bell is now trying to throttle its p2p traffic.

Luckily, not everyone buys that claim:

In April, CAIP - a group representing 55 third-party ISPs that buy connectivity on a wholesale basis from Bell and then resell it to consumers – petitioned the Canadian Radio and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) for an immediate cease-and-desist order on Bell's traffic-shaping practices.

Subsequently, other groups – such as The Campaign for Democratic Media (CDM) – lent their voices to the protest, urging the CRTC to initiate a "public proceeding" examining the practice. read more

In related news, I'm thinking it might be time to get myself a Blackberry -- the aptly named Bold(t). The Bold isn't available... yet, but I'm hoping when it does finally get released it'll be available through Rogers for less than its current pre-order / unlocked price. $800 for a phone is insane -- even one with gigs of storage and built in GPS & A2DP.

xubuntu 8.04: easy enough for grandma

I'm in love with the newest ubuntu for xfce, xubuntu. So much so that I've decided to install it on my mother-in-law's desktop (which keeps getting virii and trojans). Yes, it's really that grandma-friendly. (Time will tell whether I'm on crack or if they agree.)

However, I have a few minor complaints -- the usual "close-but-no-cigar" usability tweaks.

1. If you log in two users in parallel (it lets you switch between them) for some reason there's a pc speaker (system bell / system beep) every couple seconds once the second user logs in. This is of course incredibly annoying, but there's an easy fix.

First, disable it:

modprobe -r pcspkr

Then, turn it off for good by blacklisting the pcspkr module in /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist:

blacklist pcspkr

2. I immediately installed OpenOffice 2.4 (because abiword and gnumeric suck) and upgraded the Firefox 3 beta to the full release.

3. I also combined the two default taskbars (top and bottom of screen) into a single one on the bottom, because that's less weird for Windows people.

4. I had to manually force mounting of their old C and D drives (in /etc/fstab), just in case they need them. Thunar is great for adding quick shortcuts into the file browser (see screenshot below).

/dev/sda1 /media/sda1 vfat rw,noexec,nosuid,nodev,quiet,uhelper=hal,utf8,shortname=winnt,uid=999,gid=100,umask=007 0 0 /dev/sda3 /media/sda3 vfat rw,noexec,nosuid,nodev,quiet,uhelper=hal,utf8,shortname=winnt,uid=999,gid=100,umask=007 0 0

5. I had to add the volume control applet to the taskbar. Sure, having to add it is nowhere as annoying as having to remove MEPIS/KDE's fish tank app, but c'mon -- shouldn't this be there by default?

6. Firefox doesn't come with the Flash player pre-installed, for obvious licensing reasons. However, the latest Firefox, combined with the latest xubuntu, lets me install the whole thing without having to revert to apt-get or tar -xzf. Finally, the Plugin Finder Service in Firefox actually works! It finds the plugin, prompts for password (to run the install as root), downloads it, and installs it. And on restart of Firefox -- YouTube works.

But other than these minor tweaks, it's pretty much xubuntu out of the box, and a viable replacement for Windows XP and its non-stop barrage of virii & trojans.

Because really, what does your grandma need on a computer? Firefox, Thunderbird, OpenOffice, a file browser like Thunar, and of course, some card games (thanks, PySol!).

Bellch

I've been screening a lot of calls from Bell lately, but last week I finally decided to pick up and see why they've been harassing me. Turns out -- big surprise -- it's the usual "we miss your money."

I'm with Rogers for two reasons: the now-defunct IBM employee / partner discount, which used to be 20% off the top until one day it just magically vanished w/o explanation, and because the phone lines in this 'hood are old and slow.

According to the Bell rep on the phone, they've fixed that. He couldn't give me technical details, but he said the lines here were "better." Yep, I'm sold. So I can now drop my 7Mb/s Rogers line and switch to a 7Mb/s Bell line, because it MIGHT now be comparable in speed. Before Rogers upped my posted bandwidth rate for free from 5 to 7Mb/s and later I increased my bandwidth limit (because 65Gb/mo is nothing when you 'torrent), I was getting 3-5Mb/s. At the same time, I tried Bell, then later Primus, and never got about 1.5-2Mb/s -- for about the same monthly fee.

He also tried the "but with Rogers it's a shared line, with us it's dedicated." Woo. My neighbourhood is mostly retiree and seniors, many of whom have probably been with Bell for the past few decades and who surely aren't using much bandwidth. I don't mind sharing when I almost always get great speed.

But the real kicker for me was when he started with the high-pressure sales stuff. I rarely buy stuff on the phone or in the driveway, so it was going to be an uphill battle for him no matter how good the offer was. But telling me that the deal he was offering would not be available should I decide in a day or two to call Bell myself, and refusing to send me the details so I could peruse them at my leisure in order to be educated about the deal he was selling? Please. How can any business these days, with the world having a decade and a half of Internet culture under its belt, seriously think to sell stuff without letting consumers educate themselves first? Do they think we're still stuck in the pre-Nader era of illiterates buying what we're told because we're told to do so? Oh, wait, there are the iPhonatics & the Macolytes. But anyway...

In a related news item, Bell and Telus have decided to start charging their consumers for incoming text messages - spam or otherwise. Of course if you buy a monthly plan, they waive that. Cash grab, anyone? If you're a Bell or Telus customer, you might want to sign this petition.

Here's hoping Rogers decides to differentiate themselves by NOT stooping to this level. With consumer confidence levels plummeting all the time, I hope they'll see this might net a few bucks, but lose them customers.