Author: rahul

After a lot of crying n cribbing over my previous ISP (You Tele) for almost more than a month, I have finally got a new ISP – Airtel Broadband. Though initially I faced some problem in finding out the details about some offer, the service was excellent once I had confirmed that I would be taking the connection. There was a one-day delay in the installation of the connection but I don’t think that is a really big issue. The connection costed me Rs.500 (installation charges) + Rs.1000 (refundable security deposit). It is a 256 Kbps unlimited connection and the speeds are on an average 230 Kbps. The connection also comes with a free Airtel phone with 50 free pulses. As soon as the phone + modem were installed, I received a call from the Customer Care taking instant feedback. For more information on Airtel broadband and tariffs, visit Airtel.

My previous ISP (You Tele) was fine sometime back. But for the past couple of months, their service has deteriorated considerably. They took 10 days to fix an issue I had raised and after a couple of days, the problem was back. Also their support is poor. I remember an incident where I had pointed out to the Customer Care the possible problem but she denied it. And the next day they confirmed that the problem was indeed the same which I had pointed out the previous day. Anyways, I am using You Tele at office as well and it seems to be stable over there.

For a more detailed list of ISPs available in Hyderebad, visit my article Guide to Broaband ISPs in Hyderabad.

Update time!!!!!!!!!!

To begin with, I’ve become a permanent Secunderabad Club Member. My dad is a member and as I was below 16 years when my dad had become a member, I am given the privilege of becoming a permanent member as soon as I am 25. The interview was held a couple of weeks back and I received the membership letter last week.

Next, the big news. My sister is going to start working from next month. She has long been waiting for a job which will suit her interests and I think the patience has paid off. Her work involves managing a shop near Banjara Hills.

Lastly, I have now become a regular user of MMTS :). I have also purchased a pass. The office I visit daily is located near the station. And I look at this move as the triple benefit move – 1. Money saving 2. Exercise involving (as I need to walk from the station to my office daily) and 3. Energy saving (it is really tiring driving by yourself or traveling by bus). On a side note, I really can’t deny that while working from home may have certain benefits, going to office daily definitely helps one manage time better as you complete your work at office and can concentrate on personal activities once back home.

The gallery (photo album) of my site is working again. There have been no new albums added though. With this the migration of my site to the online hosting provider can be considered complete.

*****DVDs SOLD OUT*****

I am buying 100 pack Taiyo Yuden 8x DVD+R. Taiyo Yuden DVD+R are considered to be the best for DVD backup and reliability. Anyway, as I will not be using so many DVDs, I intend to sell off 50 of them for Rs.20 per dvd with at least 10 per order (bulk orders may lower the price per DVD). I would like to know if anybody of you would be interested in buying these so that if nobody is interested I would order a 50 pack which would prove to be slightly expensive for me per dvd.

Related Links:

How To Choose CD/DVD Archival Media

http://club.cdfreaks.com/f33/dvd-r-media-best-long-term-storage-183683/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taiyo_Yuden

Interested people can either leave a comment here or contact me.

For the ignorant ;), Black Friday is the day next to Thanksgiving day and marks the beginning of the shopping season. This day huge discounts are offered on many products.

Traditionally all these discounts had been available only in stores. But of late with the penetration of internet and e-shopping, this year had seen a good increase in discounts being offered online as well. There were few things I realized about Black Friday 2007.

• To begin with, the huge discounts which seem to be offered on Black Friday was more of an illusion (at least for the online offers). In most of the cases, I found that the items which were for sale on Black Friday were actually available for the same price or slighty higher price from other stores (and in some cases for a lower price). While it may seem that the discount is more than 50% when compared to the actual price of the item, it will only be 10-20% less than the rates offered in other stores. For example, I was looking at the Motorola Bluetooth headset H300. Its actually price was about 40 USD. And there was a Black Friday offer for 20 USD with free shipping at one of the stores. I thought this was really great until I found that the same piece would cost me even less than 20 USD (item price + shipping costs) at amazon.com (though there was no Black Friday sale at Amazon). So googling for the product and visiting sites such as amazon.com might help you get a good picture on the *real* discount you get on the product which is being advertised as being sold for a great deal on Black Friday.

  It should be noted though that there will be some items which come for a really cheap price online and also that the in-store discounts are generally bigger than online discounts.

• Next thing to keep in mind is about the quality of the goods. It is quite possible that because of the huge discounts we might be tempted to buy a product. But it might be of poor quality and might later prove to be a very bad idea having purchased it. For instance, I needed to buy DVDs. I’ve found out that Dynex DVDs (100 pack) was available for only 7 USD. I thought this was a great offer and was tempted to buy it. But a quick review revealed that many customers were dissatisfied with Dynex DVDs. Finally after some reading, I’ve found out that currently Taiyo Yuden is the best DVD manufcaturing company and if you are looking for long term storage Taiyo Yuden DVD+R would be the best choice. And hence though they are slightly costly when compared to other DVDs, I decided to go ahead and purchase it.
• Next comes the question when is the right time to begin looking for Black Friday deals. While Black Friday offers start as early as one week before Black Friday, I realized that all the great deals were available on the Thanksgiving day (Thursday) and Black Friday. Below are some of the sites which I was constantly visiting to keep track of the online offers.

  http://www.blackfriday.info/online/
  http://blackfriday.gottadeal.com/Online
  http://bfads.net/Online-Deals/
  http://tgiblackfriday.com/online
  http://www.dealcatcher.com/

• When some good product is offered for a really low price, people buy it like crazy. Therefore it is quite possible that the item will be sold by the time you purchase it. This happened to me when I tried purchasing the 4 GB Sandisk Micro Curzer with ReadyBoost from CircuitCity. I added it to my cart and just as I was about to checkout there was no stock left online :(.
• Lastly it might be a good idea to keep the details of a U.S. credit card with you. The reason being not all stores accept international credit cards.

Apart from Black Friday there is something known as Cyber Monday which falls on the Monday immediately after Black Friday. This has been started recently and is meant for online shopping (as Black Friday is traditionally supposed to be associated with in-store shopping). But I felt that the online deals were actually better on Black Friday than Cyber Monday. It is also criticized that Cyber Monday is nothing but a marketing hype.

So coming to the end of this post, wonder what I had purchased for “Black Friday”? And the answer is “nothing”. Yeah .. you heard that right :). I already have most of the things which I need and the few things which I needed (such as DVDs) which were for sale were not those of very good quality. Anyway, as I had spent considerable time on this, I decided to buy a 4 GB Sandisk Micro Cruzer with ReadyBoost just for the heck of it as it seemed to becoming for a reasonably low price at CircuityCity. But as I already mentioned above at the time of checking out, it went out of stock. So I had to buy the same item from another store for a marginally higher price. But the irony is that the person to whom I have shipped it to might not be able to collect it before she leaves to India and hence I might have to return the item. Which essentially means that I have purchased nothing for Black Friday :).

It is a Nokia 6030. And frankly speaking I should have purchased it 2 months back, when had I lost my previous mobile because this model was released 2 years back. But I kept waiting for a newer model (Nokia 1650) to be released.

Nokia 1650 was supposed to release at the end of the second quarter. The third quarter also has come to an end but the model has not yet released. And moreover I would have to wait for feedback on Nokia 1650 from users after its release before purchasing it. All this would take at least another 1 month.

Waiting long enough (> 2 months) and also as Nokia 6030 is inferior only in certain aspects to Nokia 1650 (and actually has additional features such as GPRS, MMS when compared to 1650), I decided to go ahead with Nokia 6030.

And what is really interesting is that this is the fifth phone which I am using and I have not paid for any of the mobiles I have used. Here is some history on the mobiles I had used.

Mobile 1 (2003): The first one was my dad’s phone (I think it is the same phone which Keanu Reeves used in “The Matrix”). My dad had purchased it in late nineties for Rs.22000 (and this under a special scheme for doctors) !!! Just imagine the kind of phone you can get today for such a price. As far as I remember, outgoing and incoming both were as high as Rs.9/min then. After a few years, the charger stopped working and the battery’s life also reduced drastically. We were able to find a replacement charger but the battery problem couldn’t be solved. Therefore my dad purchased a new mobile and this piece was lying around. So during my third year of graduation I decided to use this piece. As the battery was dead, it always had to be plugged into the power source to work. Hence I ended up using this mobile as a landline phone. But nevertheless the thrill of having your own phone in your room and not using the common phone booth was great. But I couldn’t use this for long as one day while meddling with it, I accidentally broke the pin of the charger. And that marked the end of this piece.

Mobile 2 (2003-2004): My next mobile was one which I borrowed from my friend. What was special about this mobile was that it had no display. Oh yeah, I used a mobile which had no display for about 5 months :). But I should also mention that once in a couple of weeks, the display used to work for a few minutes (no idea how is this feasible). And during these few minutes, I used to try to explore it as much as I could. Eventually I understood the functionality so well that I was able to change the ring tone without the display working.

Mobile 3 (2004-2005): My first complete mobile, a Nokia 1100 :D. This was a gift on my 22nd birthday by my friends Swetha and Vamsidhar. But the haunting of display-less mobiles had not ended. A few months after using it, it fell from my hand accidentally and the screen broke. After using this display-less phones for a few months, I got it repaired. But this phone was not destined to be with me for long. Within less than 2 months of getting it repaired, I lost it when it slipped from my pocket in the cab when coming home after work. I immediately called up the car travels and asked them to check the cab but but it was too late.

Mobile 4 (2006-2007): The next phone which I used, Nokia 8310 was one of the best phones during its time (2002-2003). So how did I end up with this phone which was popular 4 years ago? Simple. It was my sister’s :). She got a new mobile for her birthday and she threw this old phone in the dustbin. I caught it midway and started using it. Alright that was a bit exaggerated :). Anyways, I really liked this piece because it had a HSCD modem which enabled me to connect my laptop to the net via GPRS. It also had a few interesting features compared to Nokia 1100. But even this was not destined to be with me for long. I lost it in August 2007 while watching Spiderman. And it was the same way I had lost my earlier phone. Slipped out of my pocket while I was in the cinema hall.

Mobile 5 (2007 – present): I was disappointed with the loss of the Nokia 8310 as I had to buy a new mobile (as I already had financial constraints). Seeing this my parents offered me to buy a new mobile for my 25 bday :D. And there is one thing I have learnt in my life, never turn down a gift offer … hee hee. So I went ahead and bought a Nokia 6030. I had spent a hell lot of time in deciding upon this model. For every few bucks, I seem to be getting extra features. And this made it very difficult for me to decide on a particular model. Anyways. I finally decided on this as it had most of the features I wanted and also I’ve seen good feedback about its reception quality. I have been using this phone for a couple of weeks and I’m very happy with it. It has got all the basic features – Colour screen, MMS, GPRS, handsfree, calendar and FM Radio. The only things which I feel lacking are support for playing the FM radio without the headset and HSCSD modem (without the HSCSD modem it is not feasible to connect your laptop to the Internet). I shall soon be writing another article on accessing this phone from the computer.

There it is, the history of the mobiles I have used so far. So at last, Rahul gets a new mobile :).