Category: Rants

A Technical Support’s Nightmare with a Fujitsu Lifebook S7111

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Before I start, let me make a few things clear. This is not a post to criticise the staff providing the service, nor is the service provided by the staff not up to par. It is also not a post concerning the quality of the product but a post to point out the frustration a friend recently experienced with a Fujitsu product.

My friend has been a system integrator for at least 8 years. Recently, a customer’s laptop – a Lifebook S7111 – failed due to a hard disk failure. After replacing the hard disk, my friend attempted to restore Windows XP to that laptop.

Normally, there is a quick and easy way to restore the OS (Operating System) to a laptop – just use the manufacturer’s Recovery CD. Unfortunately, when the customer bought the laptop, he downgraded to Windows XP but and for some odd reasons, Fujitsu had shipped the recovery CD containing Vista along with it.

A quick call to Fujitsu to obtain the Windows XP recovery CD failed because there is no more stock. That left my friend with the last resort – manually install the OS and then download all the relevant drivers and install them one by one.

And so, after all is done, my friend discovered that he couldn’t get the panel buttons and the bluetooth to work no matter what he tried. BIOS settings were checked and rechecked to ensure that these hardware are already enabled but to no avail. Device Manager just refused to detect these hardware. It was as if these hardware was dead – the familiar yellow question mark that shows unknown hardware was nowhere to be found!

So, to double check, my friend formatted the hard disk and restored it using the Recovery CD. To his dismay, the panel buttons and bluetooth didn’t work either. And now, if this was a user, I would have just told him to check the Recovery CD again to find if the drivers are stored somewhere on a sub-folder, or advised him to download the drivers again from the Internet. But this is a friend whom I also seek advice from time to time on some computer problems my users have at work so as expected, he has already done all that.

My friend then sought the assistance of his colleague who is an expert in troubleshooting laptops and even that didn’t help. So, he once again wiped the hard disk, reinstalled it with Windows XP and brought it back to Fujitsu’s service centre to get it fixed as there is still a valid 3-year extended warranty.

Everything from registering, and getting attended to was more or less a breeze at the service centre. After explaining to the staff at the counter the issue, the staff disappeared with the laptop for like 10 minutes before he returns with… everything working.

It’s a job well done, but that left my friend puzzled. He tried to find out whether it was a hardware issue or a settings one, but all the staff could only reveal that the engineers reinstalled the drivers and he appeared reluctant to provide more information.

So my friend left the service centre sheepishly. He then proceeded to examine the laptop and he discovered extra files have been loaded. These extra files are not available from the archive downloaded from the Fujitsu website even though the version were the same.

This simply means both the Recovery CD and the drivers on the website were incomplete. My friend suspected that the drivers currently available on the website for Windows XP may not have been updated for a long time. The question now is, did the service centre staff have a more complete set of drivers compared to that uploaded to their website, which are also not available on the Recovery CD?

And if that is the case, why aren’t the complete drivers uploaded to the website? Has no one ever tested the Recovery CD before shipping it? Why did the staff not show my friend what could be done if this was so easily resolved?

These are the questions that probably only Fujitsu could answer.

Daily Discourse – Our local media

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I wonder, how do you feel, when you were misquoted? How would you feel when your work is reproduced without even so much of a note to ask for your permission?

Yet recently, 2 of my friends suffered this. One of them got quoted twice – the first time just a section of his post, and the second time, another post in its entirety. On both occasions, there was no notification that he was being quoted. He wouldn’t have known if not for comments left behind by readers. (Not linking to this friend as he has declined to be identified.)

You might be thinking that this is yet another case of bloggers taking it for granted and just reproducing another bloggers’ post. But it wasn’t. It was done by papers of our local press! When did they get the idea of getting articles of blogs to fill up the space on the papers?

This is how I felt about it: You have your flower pots along the corridor outside your HDB flat, and one day, a flower bloomed and then someone just snip it away without even so much of saying “Thank you!” or asking whether you would mind at all. However you want to justify it – i.e. it’s in a public area and all that jazz – the minimum amount of courtesy is still expected! (Furthermore, even helpers in a dessert shop asked permission before they took photos of the tiger on my t-shirt, when they can just do it and I won’t know any better!)

And if you think that’s the lowest our local papers can sink, you haven’t seen nothing yet.

A friend who was interviewed, got misquoted when the article went to print. And that, in spite of the tape recording being made during the interview! (Her account here.)

It makes one wonder, just how qualified are our so-called journalists? Just who the hell train their editors and this breed of journalists anyway? In fact, it even begs the question, are they even qualified at all? And even if their journalism qualifications is not in question, one wonders whether their own comprehension and listening skills is that bad too! Seriously, they need to go back to elementary school!

It is no surprise I have stopped reading our local papers other than the RECRUIT section. And it is no wonder why I have yet to regret the day I ended my ST Online subscription.


Clarification: This isn’t a post directed at the Straits Times though it was the one which misquoted. It was another paper which quoted the other friend’s blog post, however.

Oct 5 – F1 Hangover (II)

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Apparently, they ‘dolled up’ the Merlion for the F1 event but they haven’t remove ‘the decorations’ until now. Just like all that rubbish that’s left over after the event, which I read recently, was still being cleared.

And what do I think about the decoration? Freaking ugly. This is the equivalent of dolling up your daughter as an ah-kwa and then trying to sell her as one at Changi Point. And you wonder… what’s the point?

Sep 29 – F1 HangOver

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This photo (see below) was taken somewhere near my office along Collyer Quay on the evening of Sep 29th, 2008 – one day after the Singapore Grand Prix.

I called it the F1 Hangover – a lingering headache. As motorists are unaware of of the road closure of the stretch after Fullerton to the Nichol Highway is still not cleared, all of them were forced to make a turn into Battery Road for a detour resulting in the congestion in this photo. I wonder just how much more fuel is wasted and how much more carbon dioxide is dumped into the atmosphere as a result of this.

Personally speaking, I am sick of the fact even almost a week after the night race is over, there are still people who talked about it and there are still news on the matter. From some guy calling the race track a circus because of the lack of overturing opps… overtaking opportunities to another blaming their gear box problem on static discharge which is caused by our MRT trains passing under race tracks.

Now, just fxxk off and die ok? Singaporeans haven’t even talked about just how much inconveniences you fxxkwits have caused for everybody over the days leading up to it and the day after it. And have they fined that fxxker who threw his gloves into the Singapore river yet? Look, fxxkwit, that’s going to be our reservoir in the future and I don’t take it very well when some bad ass F1 driver foul up my water supply. He should be fined and made to do CWO along Orchard Road. And ya, fine him in Euros but make him pay in Singapore dollars too.

Electricity Tariff Revision – October 2008

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I have been fairly muted regarding this matter even when the percentage increase – almost 22% ($0.0538 per kilowatt per hour) – has definitely shocked and riled everyone. This is up from $0.2507 for July – September 08, which means we pay $0.3045 per kilowatt per hour from October – December 08.

Understandably, it drew a wave of protests. Some bloggers have even called for the opening up of the energy market in Singapore to keep Singapore Power honest.

I would have been reasonably outraged previously whenever I hear about tariff increments. And if you asked me why I am cool now that is because when I posted the post titled ‘Friday Morning Craps’, I already had the idea that while energy tariffs may appear to rise in tandem with crude oil prices, they might not rise in the same proportions.

On top of that, our energy production is by naturally gas. And though the prices will be affected by that of crude oil, I suspect it would already have mitigated the effects somewhat. Anyway, I just didn’t have the figures to prove it… and all I did last Friday was pull whatever figures out of the Internet to make my point.

So I was trying to look for some hard facts to prove what I have been thinking about all along and I discovered that Singapore Power have published all their press release on their website since the year 2000. You can just go there and click on newsroom to check it out.

They have what I was looking for all along right here (see below). I’ll leave it to you to draw your own conclusions.

That being said, it doesn’t mean I have to accept this rise lying down. On a separate discussion with another blogger, we talked about other possible means to lower our energy consumption level, not only at the household level, but at the national level. It is our opinion that whatever we pay for per kilowatt per hour in household usage, some of that amount would have been used to cover all that public lighting we enjoyed.

So looking beyond solar energy – which we agree may cost a bit to implement – we talked about the reduction of street lighting which we felt is too much especially when the cars have their own headlights to illuminate the road ahead of them. We even mentioned that if it costs too much to remove the lamp posts already in place, then we might need to look at a way to have alternate lights powered up on alternate days. In effect, it would also save us a lot of money in maintenance, since we would have fewer light bulbs to replace. On top of that, new roads built should have lamp posts spaced further apart. Fewer lamp posts to maintain would also save us a lot of money in the long run, no?

Next, public corridor lighting. When you go for your clubbing and come back in the early morning, you will notice that all our HDB flats and light up nice and pretty. But is there a necessity in doing so? While it did concern us in our discussion that muggers may hide in the shadows to waylay someone coming home late or going to work for an early shift, there is no guarantee that one wouldn’t get mugged under bright light anyway since help is hard to come by.

Our idea is to have the corridor lighting be linked to the lifts, so when a lift lands on a particular level, the lights for that particular level will turn on. There should also be a manual backup for the resident to thump and turn on the lights should the lift’s sensors fail. In fact, we even go on to discuss how we can finance this because it would be ridiculous to ask for the people to pay for this. And guess what, the money is already there – the town council’s sinking funds – which they have happily used for investment. And considering the current market conditions, they might as well use the money in some infrastructure works to aid the economy.

I am not even talking about aggressively going green here. But basically, we have to admit we are not making enough effort on a national level to cut down our carbon footprint and we are also wasting a lot of energy. I suspect that maybe the reason why our electricity is one of the most expensive in the world.

So, if this is not a good time to do something about it, when will we ever start?

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