May 3, 2009
Connecting our home to the O2 ADSL broadband service seems unbelievably easy! After we had a fresh BT line installed to our premise, we placed an order with O2 to become their home broadband customer, as it is much cheaper to use their service when we are already their existing customer through their mobile phone service, at about £9 a month for their Premium service. We then received a couple of text messages, telling us that our line will be activated in six days time, and we will receive the broadband modem cum wireless router package two days before the activation date.
As promised, the package arrived in the evening of the delivery date (hence not with Royal Mail). Three days later, when I finally got the time to install everything, it was painless, almost perfect, and everything just works. Amazing. Including setting up our laptop to connect to the wireless router. This is how home products or services should be, user friendly. And we are also entitled a copy of the McAfee security software!
On the broadband speed, we should be getting up to 20Mbps for the downlink. Tried peer-to-peer and FTP downloads, but seems that we are not even close to that “magic” number. Think we can at most hit 8Mbps. Anyway it does not feel that normal web browsing is that much quicker either than my previous 2Mbps connection, although it IS quicker. To be honest we are not too fussed on this as we are not hard core users of broadband, and we seldom download large movie files etc 
But had it not been the initial 3 months free offer, I think we probably would have phoned in to “downgrade” from their Premium service, as their Standard service can provide up to 8Mbps too.
All in all, we are very pleased with O2’s service so far. And we are also using their mobile broadband service, for our laptop, when we are on the move. Hope they are able to keep this up.
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April 26, 2009
LOVEFiLM is a British DVD rental company which provides online DVD rentals in the UK. By right they should only own DVDs with region codes suitable for playback in the UK or Western Europe. But annoyingly it happened to me twice already that I received Blu-ray discs that I couldn’t play. It cannot be the problem of my player, say it has been set to play only DVDs from a certain region, because I can play most of the Blu-ray discs from LOVEFiLM! Anyway the conclusion is they don’t know why I’m facing this problem, as they also thought they only have DVDs that are suitable for UK playback. Not helpful. If this keeps happening I’m afraid that I’ll have to quit subscribing to LOVEFiLM, as being able to rent Blu-ray movies is the biggest reason I’m paying for their service.
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April 20, 2009
It has been a while since I last wrote anything. Mainly because I am so busy doing nothing, but also that each day has been so monotonous that there wasn’t much inspiration to venture writing anything. However, I hope those days had passed as I have again found myself occupied with renewed interests in reducing my carbon footprint.
C and I have always been very keen to keep our carbon footprint minimal. Not to mention the reduction in energy bill, it also makes us feel proud that we are responsible to our environment. However, we know that no matter how much we try to cut down on our footprint, the main culprit is our air travel. Well, an annual return trip home to visit our families in the Far East is the equivalent of the CO2 produced by our household for the whole year! So, for all the moral high ground that we earned from composting, cycling and buying UK produce etc, would be for nothing if we continue to make our annual trips home. As much as I wish to reduce our carbon footprint, I am not sure if I would be willing to sacrifice the precious family time that I get to spend with my family. It is a very difficult decision.
You know, for all that I am, I am definitely not a hypocrite. I don’t want to have done all I can do for the environment on a daily basis, to be faulted on a 3 weeks holiday with my family because they happened to live thousands of miles away. And yet, this is the real dilemma. I think realistically, we could only cut all other holidays to compensate for the one indispensable trip we have to make. I suppose because of this, we should do more for our environment than someone who doesn’t do any air travel for the whole year.
I also have another idea. If we can afford a bigger house with a bigger garden, we could grow a few trees to compensate our carbon footprint, but until then… Speaking of trees, we had a friend over to help us prune the ash tree at our backyard. We were very close to cutting it down because it was blocking all the sunlight to our flat. However, I’ve noticed that it is a favourite spot for birds to perch and rest while making their journeys in the morning and at sunset. I don’t want the birds to have lost another tree. It also makes me feel horrible to be responsible for the felling of another tree on this planet and I supposed we could do with less sunlight. I only hope that more people would raise their awareness on the actions that they take and the impacts on the environment.
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April 4, 2009
An excellent analysis into investors’ behaviours. I’m certainly one who is always filled with regrets when I have “missed” opportunities, to buy or sell stocks when the prices are good, quite often with hindsight And I’m not willing to cut my losses, even though it makes sense to cut them and then buy back when the prices are lower. I guess it is also to do with not knowing that the stock prices are going to be much lower. But having said that I have never cut any loss with the strategy to buy back at a lower price. Instead I always prefer to average out the positions of my stocks. This strategy can work too, provided that I have more money to pour in. But not so much if I’ve already gone all out. And I certainly agree on the Prospect Theory, as I’m one of many who is willing to take more risks when I’m losing money, although not quite to an insane level which I’ve seen some people do. Anyway if one is not comfortable about losing money, even if it is just paper loss at the time, it is best to only invest money you can afford to lose. Otherwise, be prepared for any potential anxiety over your portfolio, particularly at this kind of uncertain economic climate, when all is not going according to plans.
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March 30, 2009
They think the services they are offering are the best, and that their existing customers can never live without them. I have just placed my order with Sky *two fingers up their arse*.
I called them to complain about the latest increase in my current price plan, which includes Telephone size M, Braodband size M and TV size XL. But they were not bothered in the slightest way that I was unhappy about the price increase. So I suggested that I want to downgrade the services I’m receiving from them, as I want to keep the cost down. But they just wouldn’t listen. Instead kept telling me that the price I’m paying is the best deal they can offer. And that downgrading my services can only make it more expensive or that is not value for money. Ridiculous isn’t it, that a customer can get stucked in such position? Told them that I saw better deals advertised on their website, but unfortunately they are only interested in offering them to new customers. Good, penalise existing customers to bring in new ones. We should have left them half a year ago for taking 3 months to connect our phone line back due to some problem I don’t exactly know what. Big mistake.
So glad that Sky is footing the bill to connect a fresh BT line to our flat, as it normally costs just over £120! With Sky it works out that we will be paying £10 a month less from next month onwards, how about that!
I have some respect for Virgin’s owner Richard Branson. But if his people continue to think that their services are the best in the market and then act as though they have the biggest cork in the world then good luck to him and his Virgin Media business. I’m having none of their antics.
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