Christina Wood's blog

T-Mobile account services serving up porn

Christina Wood — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 11:00:00 +0000

A recent story on Consumerist.org had me chuckling. It appears that some T-Mobile customers have been logging in to their online billing accounts, only to be greeted with photos of naked women and naughty sex acts.

Windows 7: No overnight sensation

Christina Wood — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 11:00:00 +0000

As it turns out, David ("Where is my copy of Windows 7?") wasn't the only Gripe Line reader left waiting for Windows 7. It appears that Microsoft dropped the ball on reader Brian's Windows 7 order as well.

A Western Digital hard drive warranty that is not what it seems

Christina Wood — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 19:12:47 +0000

On the heels of Gripe Line reader Paul's complaint about defective Seagate drives, Bob writes in with a related issue, this time with Western Digital hardware.

"I recently purchased a couple of Western Digital 250GB RE3 drives, which were advertised as having a 5-year warranty," says Bob. "But when I entered the two drives' serial numbers into WD's warranty status web page, they both came up with less than 2 years remaining." He wants to know what gives.

Where is my copy of Windows 7?

Christina Wood — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 10:00:00 +0000

David preordered a copy of Windows 7 Home Premium way back in July, then watched the hoopla over the official Windows 7 launch day come and go with no sign of his copy of the OS. He got miffed: "My order for Windows 7 Home premium was approved on July 9. Today is October 24. Windows 7 was released on October 22. Amazon was shipping copies on October 20. So where is my copy?"

Have hard drives become less reliable?

Christina Wood — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 19:59:39 +0000

"In the past six months," writes Paul, "I have had to return eight Seagate drives for refurbishment. One was a 2.5, 80G drive, five were 500GB, and two were 750GB. One of these last is going back for to be refurbished for the second time in less than three months." All of Paul's drives were still under warranty, which is a good thing, but replacing hard drives after they have been installed and used to store data is no laughing matter. And isn't this an awfully high rate of failure? Is this just one man with very bad luck or some sort of trend?

Why you should supplement your cloud data storage

Christina Wood — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 18:02:24 +0000

As I mentioned in my last post, the recent T-Mobile Sidekick data outage has caused many of us who rely on cloud computing to stop and ask, "Should I back up data stored in the cloud?" The question, then, that logically follows: How do I do that? There was a lot of debate over this in the comments in my personal data-outage story, so I went looking for some answers.

Should I back up data stored in the cloud?

Christina Wood — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 10:00:00 +0000

Yesterday, I participated in a blog radio discussion with some folks from Google, another journalist, and Sree Sreenivasan, dean of student affairs and digital media professor at the Columbia Journalism School. The topic was how journalists use Google Docs and cloud computing, but the conversation took some interesting turns.

Microsoft learns the hard way: Back up our data!

Christina Wood — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 18:01:12 +0000

I have had technical difficulties here at the Gripe Line that kept me from posting. Apologies! I'm back now. If you sent an e-mail recently, though, please resend it.

Free Internet in deluxe hotels? Just a rumor

Christina Wood — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 18:01:00 +0000

Responding to the Gripe Line post "Robbed for Internet access," where Stanley complained about the high cost of Wi-Fi in high-end hotels -- in particular, the Marriott -- Tim offered a link to a blog post from Bill Marriott. According to Marriott:

Readers react: Thumbs-up to MPC support site, thumbs-down to FCC rules

Christina Wood — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 20:31:40 +0000

DJ, who asked for help finding a service manual for his MPC computer in last week's "Self-servicing an MPC system," wrote to thank Steve of mpcdrivers.com for finding the document he needed to do his own repairs on his computer. "This is exactly what I was looking for!" he says. He also suggests, "Maybe Gateway should change their script for MPC customers seeking tech support.