Daily Archives: June 23, 2005

Kansas Weather

Outdoors

So, we’ve made it through the Kansas monsoon/unpredictable season. The flooding, tornadoes, lightning damage, hail, etc. stayed mostly south of us this year, though the ice storn hit us hard this winter.

Now it’s time for the boring weather season. The boring weather season occurs when there is no need to give a 7-day forecast because every day is the same. In this case, it’s “Highs in the mid 90s, lows near 70, south winds 10-20 MPH” every day according to the National Weather Service.

Though Friday will shake things up a bit. That day, the winds will be from the south at only 10-15 MPH. Got to keep us on our toes.

Don’t Buy Albatron

Hardware, MythTV

My MythTV box has an Albatron KM18GPro motherboard in it. Last week, the Ethernet port on it went dead. I can plug in a known good cable, and don’t even get LED activity on the port. Plug the same cable into any number of other machines, and it works fine. (This is repeatable across different cables and switches, too.)

So I submitted an online RMA request to Albatron. Despite their claim of “instant confirmation” when an e-mail address is supplied, after submitting the form, it says to call them if there’s no response after 48 hours. I also submitted the proof of purchase as they requested.

Since there wasn’t, I called them and got a voice mail box. Left a voice mail. It was never returned. I also e-mailed their RMA team. No response. I’m sure this has nothing to do with the fact that my warranty expires in a few weeks.

It’s now been days since I first contacted them. This is absolutely the worst hardware support I’ve ever received from any vendor — taking days to even *respond* to a problem. I recently had a problem crop up with my Sipura SPA-841 phone, and got a replacement on its way to me within 12 hours. That’s right, a *phone* got better service than this motherboard.

I’ll never buy from Albatron again.

Their site says “Capturing the spirit of the albatross.” I think they got it wrong. It should be “capturing the spirit of the weasel.”