The older images seem to be missing now. To be fixed. 

Yes, we are still alive and well. Incl. cats, gerbils, fish and mice :)

In the mix of all the things I have been tending to, some distractions and some personal reasons - I haven't focused on the site. I keep thinking, next month iBlog 2 will be out and I can do a new design, update the whole site and get a fresh start. But, despite many hours & days of helping with iBlog 2, it is not ready yet for prime time. There's a couple things I want that iBlog 2 doesn't support yet. Hopefully those are implemented soon.

I also have the new JAlbum, to bring you some new and exciting images from our neck of the woods. Our photo library keeps growing and I really need to share some images.

Plus, I'm moving my blog back from my mobile to my desktop as the notebook has been in the closet or bag 99% of the time. And, actually, there is a faster notebook in the wings :) And no, I'm not talking about the iPhone. If Apple allowed 3rd party apps, blogging from the iPhone would be superb. I'm up for that.

So, as soon as I get some bits and bytes in order, I'll be updating again.

We finally received some of that nice romantic white fluffy stuff :-)



It really makes things glow.



With a glass of champagne in our hand we wish everybody - and especially our family, friends, relatives and blog friends - a

Happy New Year - Gelukkig Nieuwjaar - Hyvaa Uutta Vuotta - Bonne Annee - Buon Natale - Gutes Neues Jahr

Cingular - best known for their "Raising the bar" motto - advised me I had to upgrade my trusted Panasonic cellphone to something newer or else find myself unable to make calls in another 2 or 3 months. Part of the ATT - Cingular merger and switching everybody to better Cingular technology. The closest Cingular store is 45 min out of my way, but, considering I would get the phone free after rebate when I loaded it with more minutes, so it wasn't all that bad.

The sales representative was very nice, in fact one of the nicer ones I've dealt with, and pointed out that coverage in my area is spotty. Basically along the highway etc. Which is true. Maine is far from ideal to get a cell connection given its forested diverse terrain with low population density. But I wanted to keep our number active and this is a backup / emergency phone with a prepaid plan, so, I didn't worry. A half hour later I walked out with the new phone.

My happiness was shortlived. Along the road I could see the signal reception wasn't as I expected. Back home I'm lucky to get a 1-2 bar signal outside, where the old phone gets 3-4. You literally hold a phone in each hand and the old one will get a usable signal and the new one doesn't. This could be a matter of life or death at some point and really worried me, so, I called to Cingular. Past customer service level 1 (pffff) I got to someone understanding the situation and with computer access to the right data. I was advised that I really should get good coverage in my area and should switch to a different phone within 30 days at the point of sale. Nothing else they could do. Sigh.

I called the guys at the 'local' Cingular outlet. One of his colleagues explained what the friendly guy last night failed to explain: this switch locked me into Cingular towers ONLY! And that's why my left hand gets 3-4 bars (connecting via US Cellular/Verizon/Unicell/... tower) and my right hand gets 0-1-2 because Cingular is on the other side of town, over the hill near the highway / shopping center. And, most likely getting a different phone will not help, but I'm welcome to try it.

With this 'mandatory Cingular upgrade' I lost connectivity with every other company's tower in Maine. Merry Christmas to you too, Cingular.

We wish everybody a very Merry Christmas.

Our Christmas will not be white - unfortunately there is none of that nice fluffy white stuff, but it will be bright :) Here are this years decorations in the front garden:






And this is our festive green house :)



Have fun and be safe.

Needed: serious DIY person with skills, patience, perseverance and sense of adventure
Job at hand: one 75+ year old garage in need of some serious TLC to fix: in-grown tree damage, water infiltration, missing sills, roof, siding and preferably install some type of foundation.
Ideal applicant: icerabbit

So what exactly has been my main DIY activity for the past few weeks?






Yes, it's off the ground!


Forms are ready.





We have concrete.



Stay tuned for more images.

Oh how time flies when you're busy. Time to highlight a few of the projects.

As spring came early this year, at the end of April I built a deck in the back garden. Can you spot the proud builder? ;)

Yes, the icerabbit has been very quiet lately. Online at least. I guess, that happens when you're as busy as a bee and try to juggle a few different things. Something has to go on the back burner and before you know it weeks go by.

We are enjoying a nice and early spring, after a really warm January, February & March. I don't think it happens too often that you wear shorts & a t-shirt in Maine pretty much day in day out in April. Two weeks ago I was outside doing some paint work and getting a tan. No, I'm not kidding. At 70F/20C it felt like mid-summer and was just too hot to keep my shirt on :)

So what is new?

Photography has been really slow. We hardly had any snow and it always melted in a matter of days, which meant no snowshoe trekking nor snowmobiling. The first flowers are still a few weeks away. In the warmest spots you can already see the first plants stand tall so I'm itching to go to the arboretum and some other nearby parks.

We're on a gigabit ethernet now. I still need to order some Cat6 cables, which tend to be pricey, to go full throttle. For some obscure reason Netgear does seem to have a throughput flaw over Linksys, in that when you "open in tabs" a series of bookmarks in Safari you'll get 5 pages which time-out or so, versus none with Linksys. Haven't had time to look at the details.

C has severe hard drive issues. I am pretty much convinced now that a hard drive can fail at any time. It is not a matter of IF, but a WHEN will it fail. Hard drives that do not work out of the box, hard drives that fail after 6 months, ... I'm really considering a dedicated network storage server.

The house is still coming along. One project at a time.

I had planned to build a nice little deck in the back yard today, but Home Depot decided otherwise as they are closed. Go figure. You can't do anything today, besides buying overpriced gas and a soda. If you're lucky you'll find a few of the chain restaurants open. Speaking of which. The other day, as we haven't been very happy at Longhorn (two weeks in a row they did not cook the steaks right), we decided to try out the new restaurant in town: Red Robin. Boy is it ever noisy! I thought I was at some Disneyworld or Universal cafeteria. The food was very average too, unfortunately. Anyway.

Our new master bathroom is 95% finished. I still have to place the ceiling tiles and touch up two spots of paint.

One thing I am pretty excited about is that this old house no longer features the old & worn green carpet. As I had to rent the big drum sander to refinish the floor in the third bedroom / guest room, I figured why not go for it and do some other rooms while I am at it. So, I'm in the process of re-finishing half the floors to shiny hardwood. I would do more, but I can only empty so many rooms at once ;) The tv/media room & dining room are all done. The 3rd bedroom will get a few coats of polyurethane in the upcoming days. Add some paint details, door & molding installations and that room will be done :) Right now I'm sweating the detail work on the staircase's steps. Loads of hand work with all those tight little corners.

One of the upcoming major projects will be fixing up the garage. Strip it down to bones. Raise it. Put foundation under it. Straighten it. Etc. One of our neighbors will help me tackle that.

I received a call from Averatec Advanced Customer Care. After yesterday's re-escalation from tier 1, that was pretty quick this time.

They will not exchange our defective machine with a new one. This even though it is pretty obvious we have a "lemon" and we are certainly not to blame for the issues in their repair facility (which returns non-repaired machines to the customer) nor their shipping department (which in our case made 2 shipping errors during the 3 RMAs)

Our options are:
a) another repair
b) exchange it (for a refurbished unit it turns out)
c) refund (turns out to be partial).

Another repair? There is no quality control in the Averatec Repair Department so that is a no-brainer really. This machine has been bouncing on trucks for 6 weeks already. Who says this repair will be the last one and will be professional? Why wasn't the battery replaced as promised three times?

Exchange it? I initially said yes, till it became clear it would be for a refurbished machine. I don't think that is a viable option, as that would means we are exchanging this machine (after 3 RMAs) for another one which has had 3 RMAs ... and is refurbished by their technical department without QA. Absolutely not an option.

That leaves the refund. Which is actually only a partial refund as it is a used machine and according to Averatec has been used for 9 months. That translates for us to 2/3 of the purchase price.

Purchased 9 months ago? Yes.
But 9 months of use? No way.

They conveniently ignore that:
- this machine came with issues and we tried to troubleshoot in house first
- we have been troubleshooting with customer care over the phone since June/July (last summer)
- only after several mandatory steps were allowed to mail in the machine with RMA 1 (before they refused to accept it were hardware issues)
- since the first RMA (=November) have not had possession nor use of the machine, which is a total of 3.5 months !

In all honesty, I more than likely have spent more time troubleshooting this machine and dealing with Averatec; than Carolyn actually used it.

So, how in the world can they say we used it for 9 months when it about half of that time it was under RMA?

By the way: this machine still has the protective plastics on it and is absolutely clean plus scratch & dent free. So it is not like this machine is abused by a teenager and the issues are a result of misuse, inadequate care or so and we are looking for a free ride. Our systems are treated like babies.

Don't get me wrong, we do not expect a full refund and understand that this machine is not new. But the facts are the facts and I think they should do better. Yes, OK, we were slow of the mark detecting issues. But, if you have a new machine, do you test every feature within the first week? Like test battery life? Back up data to DVDr? Check for dead pixels which may happen to be masked by the Averatec theme? I don't think you do. Neither do I. Should we be penalize for that? Or for their lengthy repair procedure?

The way I look at it, I would say: " We're sorry and apologize for all the inconvenience. Here is a new machine. If you like we will honor the purchase price as a credit towards the a different machine. " Now that would be customer care. Sadly, all they do is alienate an existing repeat customer who will now not purchase their brand again, who will no longer recommend it to family, friends & colleagues and in the next user surveys will apply the correct votes for this vendor.


A final note about Averatec, Averatec Customer Care, Advanced Customer Care:

- Dead pixels. A screen is only replaced if you have two dead pixels side by side
- Battery replacement <6 months. We were promised a replacement under warranty, but have not received it.
- Technical Support / Customer Care. You will be required to wipe your machine and reset it to factory default. [maybe not if you have a dead hard drive]
- RMA. You will only receive an RMA after one or more factory resets and lots of other useless troubleshooting in our case.
- Ground shipping. RMA shipping is via Fedex Ground / Home Delivery. Because their repair facility is on the West coast, this means a 14 day total transit time from the East coast.
- The left hand does not know what the right hand does. During RMA the Averatec server gets infrequent updates. If you call in to check on the delay, Customer Care does not know what the repair facility does. Their server and the one from the repair facility only sync on weekday nights or whatever, so on more then one occasion the information was not up to date.
- Quality Control is absent. ( Three times we were promised a new battery, which we did not receive. Twice the optical drive went in for repair/exchange because of 1x burning. Twice it came back with an absolutely non-functional optical drive; and once it was protruding from the machine (unmistakably not installed correctly) )
- Return shipping is hit and miss. The initial return went to the wrong address even though it was noted in the system and on a paper with the machine.
- RMA 2 is still ground shipping. Customer Care can only ship ground and are only allowed to issue call tags, which means you have to be available 8 hours to allow the system to be picked up at your house or office. They do not issue a shipping # so you can drop it off at an authorized location at your convenience.
- RMA 3 = Advanced Customer Care. After two RMAs you can (or will) get bumped up a level and they will expedite shipping to 2-3 day air upon request. Upon request they will also give you a shipping label, instead of the pickup call tag. But, you need to call regular customer care yourself to explain the issues you are having (again) to get a ticket #. Then you call that # in to advanced customer care so they can call you back after setting up shipping.
- After three RMAs, if there are still issues, you cannot continue working with your contact person from Advanced Customer Care. You need to call tier 1 / regular tech support, explain the situation, get a ticket # and request escalation. Another person takes the case.
- RMA #4? After three RMAs you can get another repair, an exchange for another refurbished unit or partial refund.

Sometimes you receive news that lifts a huge load of your shoulders and brings tears to your eyes.

Today was one of those days.

After appeal, my parents' divorce has now been ruled against my dad (because of his extra-marital affair).
He also has been denied his repeated request for lifelong alimony.

It still is somewhat hard to believe that this ruling finally came. But, we are so happy it did. As some of you know, the divorce was initially ruled against my mom because he had claimed she had an affair et-cetera, while it was the absolute opposite. I vividly remember that a few days after our (Carolyn & me) wedding party in Belgium, back in 2000, my father told me he had met somebody about half a year earlier and had been seeing her for the past few months. My mom didn't know about it yet, ... He told my mom nothing happened and he wasn't seeing her anymore. Eh, right. Lies, lies, lies! Good thing there are witnesses and that in the end truth & justice prevail.

Now we just have to wait and see when he will be agreeable to a fair property settlement, which he has refused for I don't know how many months.

Kiwi - our Averatec 4265-EH1 notebook - is finally back with us, after its third RMA. The repair or shipping department forgot to return it via 2 day air. That meant again a 7 day ground trip.

First looks: The combo drive (DVD CDRw drive) now sits flush and closes properly. The severely stripped case screws have been replaced as I had requested. But that is pretty much where the good news ends. The battery again was not replaced. Even though this was noted in RMA #1, repeated in RMA #2 and once again in RMA #3. Or was it? I know 110% sure I requested it more then once.

After a little room temperature warm up period to acclimate the system, I fire it up. The optical drive is correctly recognized. Finally! Why didn't they do this the previous time(s)?

We already knew battery life is only 1 hr 15 min or so when you play a DVD. Tested it again, battery life is still 1 hr 15 min. I cannot accept this as "long battery life". Our 2yr old 12" Averatec 3150HS did better: 2 hours and time to spare.

One new anomaly shows up: the battery status does not update. It remains at 100%? Even 1 hour into a movie.




That's odd!
But, before I complain to Averatec again, how about the "BatterySaver" feature?

Fresh boot on the mint factory pre-installed system, I press the dedicated button on the top right side of the base above the keyboard:




What the heck? A "Blue Screen of Death?" Can't be.
Let's try that again.

Well, I most consistently get a screen lockup similar to this with fuzzy vertical lines and total lockup. (non-responsive system) As pictured below.




On occasion it is the BSOD above. ( Note. The Norton splash screen to sign up (comes back after factory reset, and I haven't activated it yet) was moved a little to the left by me to further illustrate the lockup. By default it sits more centered. )

I can clearly repeat the steps & crashes.

Time to document it and get back to Averatec. This is where it gets more interesting.

With RMA #3 I was referred to Advanced Customer Care. I was told to get back in touch if things were not resolved. So, I write my contact person a detailed email describing the symptoms with some screenshots. I also request to be escalated further and referred to a manager or a person in a decision making level that can help us out for a refund since after all these months of troubleshooting and 3 RMAs in 3 months where we saw the machine not even a handful of days; we still have a dead pixel, very short battery life and now power management issues on top of it. I don't have the energy to test real-life performance and DVD burning speed. It seems to work snappier, but that's without any load, no antivirus, firewall, ... nothing. So who knows?

My contact advises me promptly that I have to call the regular tech support hotline again, report the issues, get a new ticket / RMA number and request to be escalated. What? Sure enough. Another call to tech support where I have to explain the whole situation and give them the instructions from Advanced Customer Care. How backwards is that? I was at the second support level, need to get the level three but I have to go back to square one, wait for escalation, wait for level two to get in touch with me and then hopefully be escalated further.

And so the saga continues. I am not surprised any more. We're just both very very disappointed by the lack of professionalism. Technicians don't test their repairs and ship machines back which clearly were not re-assembled correctly. They do not include repair notes. We don't understand their organization. One hand does not know what the other does. You're bounced up and down the support chain.

We can only hope that with patience this will get resolved at some point.

PS: Unfortunately this all too clearly reminds us of the huge struggle we had with Fedex' insurance a few years ago. But that is another story.

It is February already? Time sure does fly just as fast as last year.

Between moving snow, DIY projects, iBlog 2 and a little bit of other stuff; I apparently did not blog much. Maybe I can use this entry to bring everybody up to speed.

DIY projects. We started work on the master bathroom. What initially was planned to be a resurface floors + new electrical + new bathroom fixtures + paint job; quickly became a lot more. Peeling wallpaper & paneling away revealed cracked horsehair plaster beyond repair. Solution: 3 days of plaster & lathe removal followed by new drywall. To tie into the old plumbing we had to get underneath the hardwood floors. Unfortunate but that meant we would have some extra flooring work. And, to make matters worse, back in the days they took some bad shortcuts in terms of structural support. Solution: Rip 1/5th of the floor up. Build a support frame in there + subfloor + hardwood floors. For the hardwood floors - to make up for lost pieces - I had recycle maple hardwood flooring from the hallway. If cleaning it up was not enough work, those boards turned out to be milled different. Then the boards were not straight ... Long story short. It was a long stressful & painful week to work on that floor.

Kiwi / Averatec. The story continues. After dealing with Averatec Customer Care in the past, our issue was upgraded to "Advanced Customer Care". After reading through the notes & listening to the issues we have; Kiwi had to be sent back in for it's third RMA. Our request for a new replacement machine was denied. A machine has to go in for service three times, this time with expedited shipping to avoid the 2 weeks East - West trip. Strangely enough, Advanced Customer Care requires you to hang up, call the customer care # to get an RMA number, then call advanced customer care back with that number to set up expedited shipping. I can think of easier ways to handle this. While overnight shipping was promised (on a Friday) it was 4 business days (Thursday) later when I received the call with the shipping number. Thunderbird had not automatically downloaded the email from my spare email account on Tuesday, but that didn't change anything really, as it didn't have instructions or a shipping number anyway. Oh, and I had vigilantly tried calling Advanced Customer Care on Tuesday, Wednesday & Thursday; but could not get through at any time. I could only leave a voice mail; none of which were returned with a call-back by their department as promised. Kiwi should return to us next week. We'll see how things go.

Car repair. On Monday we finally should have our car back. It was legally parked out in front of our house, as it often is. One of our neighbor's friends backed his vehicle up some 20 feet or so at a rather fast pace and smashed into the front. I heard the crash. Saw that our car was moved some & the front was severely damaged. Jumped out the house, saw two cars taking off in different directions and spotted the driver who drove into our car making a U-turn 2/3 down our dead-end street with his big pickup. Called the police. Then the insurance. Damage repair: short of $4500. Time to fix: 6 business days. I'll be glad when I see Valentine fully repaired, with no damage down the road and I get a check for our deductible.

iBlog 2. Some may wonder why it has been quiet after Preview / beta 1. Well, it is not that we all sat still. Quite a bit of midnight oil has been burnt by the alpha team on reaching an integrated 2 & 3 column design with a GUI interface so the user checks a few options and iBlog works the master template set. We did come up with one easy and quite transparent solution. So we are currently waiting on the next iBlog build to support some of the necessities to make it work. Then we can hopefully test, debug, improve, validate ... and Lifli can bring beta 2 forward.

Weather. By one degree we failed to have the warmest January on record in Maine (which was 2002). Right now it is 48F out. Every few days to a week, we go through a cycle of freezing temperatures with mild snow, followed by a serious thaw & rain. Historically we can expect a few big thaws, maybe one every month. But every week?

We enjoyed our first snow for 2006. Nothing major. About 3-4 inches. Just enough to put everything under a nice white blanket again.

Thank you all for the happy birthday wishes, cards & gifts. They are very much appreciated.




" Hey, icerabbit, what's that thing with an Apple logo on?" Oh, that! ;-) Say hello to " icecream " (ijsje). A cream of the crop PowerBook with upgraded faster hard drive & expanded memory. Yummie!

She is my first mobile mac. I have been sitting on the fence for a very long time debating if I should get an iBook perhaps - but I find those to have a few limitations (mainly the # of pixels of the screens) At one point I almost decided to buy a 12" PowerBook, but I liked the 15" better. And now with their recent updates Santa & Carolyn worked together to get me a 15" PowerBook as Christmas & Birthday & New Year's present. And there was custom protection sleeve too. Thank you darling! I am really delighted.

Now the only detail is Carolyn's hot tub I haven't unloaded from Santa's sleigh. Will it wait 'til spring, when the ground thaws and I can build the deck? That is the other part of the gift ;-)

Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, Vrolijk Kerstfeest, Hyvaa Joulua, God Jul, Joyeux Noel, Frohliche Weichnachten, Feliz Navidad, ... :)

Fedex delivered Kiwi - our Averatec 4200 series notebook model AV4265-EH1 (fabrication 04/2005) - this afternoon.

The initial excitement wore off really fast when I opened the accessory box only to find that the battery had not been replaced. Same little scuff marks, same secret little pen mark and the same serial number. So much for the promised battery replacement under warranty. Btw. their battery warranty is only 6 months and has now expired during this 5 week repair trip.

But it gets worse. In the main system box there is another surprise: the DVD drive protrudes 3mm outside of the case? Now, that is strange. At first I thought perhaps it was just the tray that wasn't fully closed, but no, it's all the way in?! Not good.




Well, let's fire her up. Insert battery. Power up. Pushing the eject button does not eject the tray, which most likely means it is not powered. Before Windows is completely loaded I'm greeted with some pre-installed software's warning that no writer can be found. My suspicion is confirmed when the device manager does not list the drive. Either it is not hooked up or he/she pinched one or more wires.




Absolutely fabulous! At least before the repair session it still worked! Even if it was only at 1x vs 6x. What a waste of time. Basically they had this machine for two weeks and the only visible thing they did is a totally failed DVD-burner replacement, after which they shipped it to the wrong address.

The thing I can't wrap my head around is, how in the world can you not mount it properly? As far as I know there are no adjustable guides in notebooks. Everything fits in its place or it doesn't. But, even if nothing were to stick outside of the case, you'd still make sure it works, right?

Time to calmly call Averatec. I asked to know which repairs were performed. But, that information is not available. There should be a note in the box. I double-checked. No note. After a long calm talk ... the best Averatec can do is have it picked up at my place tomorrow via Fedex Ground and look into fixing their repair. I am not happy with the shipping method, given that the notebook was shipped out by me on 11/12. The guy explains that there is no other option. Averatec's corporate policy is that they only use ground. So we are looking at another 3 weeks without this notebook. ( 1 week ground to California, 1 week to repair it, 1 week return shipping ) Hopefully at least they will not hand it over to the same tech.

Adding up all the time we spent on troubleshooting this machine that means it will total > 2 months of troubleshooting, repair & shipping, versus 5 months of use.

Way to go Averatec. This is not customer service. You just lost a few customers and I'm not recommending your products any more.

Some of you (mainly those who have been at our place) will notice that the monitors on my desk have been moved towards the edges, causing a spacious gap. That, and the fact that my desk looks quite a bit neater then it often (usually?) does. Yes, I admit it. I cleared it in anticipation of ... the mystery item = my Xmas & birthday present.

Any thoughts or guesses?

Maybe I should have a prize in case somebody guesses it.

After the unfortunate incident with M&M (which passed away) * things weren't quite the same for the cats. They were bored beyond words. All they would do is sleep, eat, drink, go to the bathroom, return to sleep ... A very high contrast with how they routinely patrol the house for mice, monitor certain places in the house, try to sneak into the computer room to check on the mice cage, etc. Seven & Wizard clearly know it has been virtually impossible for mice to enter the house for a number of months, as they haven't caught anything for the longest time. The disadvantage of properly insulating this old house.

So, we decided to give them something to think about and made a trip to the pet store.

Actually we made two trips. On the first trip we got a white boy and a grey girl from separate cages. After 20 minutes together they were not getting along any more. We were forced to keep them apart. The next day, back in the store, it turns out "Frostie" was girl and so was the smaller grey one. So, we traded they grey one in for a white sibling, and all is well.

Meet the Gerbils :)



They are actually a bit scared of the camera sounds (focus lock & shutter) and the flash is like a lightning strike to them, so for now we just let them adopt to their new home.

Of course they chose to nest outside the large plastic pet residence with treadmill etc as well as the small wooden house. And they love to chew! They go through the little cardboard roll from bathroom tissue in less than two hours. It's already clear I will have less cardboard to recycle the conventional way (as in take it to the city recycling center of course) Here you can see one working on part of a sheet of cardboard. Cardboard tastes better then the gerbil size 2x6 in the background.



And the cats? Only during their afternoon nap is when we don't see them around.

* (during our trip to Florida M&M ate part of some branches which I had placed in the cage for them to climb around on, and we believe that's how they met their end)

KIWI, our 13" Averatec 4265-EH1 notebook has been away for one month and one day now on a repair adventure.

A few months ago we decided our little 12" Averatec on-the-road computer / notebook named Sammy could use an update as C would like to use a notebook rather then a desktop as her primary system. We were happy with the 12" model, so we didn't hesitate to buy a better, faster & more versatile model from the same brand. 13" widescreen, 1.6GHz Pentium M 730, XP, 512MB RAM, 80GB HDD, 6x DVDr, wireless, etc. Sounds good. Price is fair.

The initial excitement wore off pretty quick when during the first weeks we noted very slow performance, 1.5hr battery life (can't finish viewing a DVD on the plane), 2 dead pixels (which were masked by their desktop background), 1x DVD burning (vs 6x regardless of DVD media) and function buttons not working. It literally is outlived and outperformed by the old model with half the RAM etc.

The store (Staples) of course was no option in terms of a return & exchange. (note to self, next time use Costco or Sam's again. Sam's Club did a no questions asked exchange on Sammy v1 who's keyboard was a little warped causing some keys to rub the LCD screen and leave rubbing marks on the panel within the first weeks ) I checked a few things. No change. A few emails and calls to Averatec customer support later, they advised to format the hard drive, reinstall the Operating System + drain & re-calibrate the battery.

You have to love how quick they say format the drive and re-install the operating system nowadays. It is the miracle cure! And, this guy basically wanted me to erase the drive over the phone right then and there. Euh ... hello!? Not so quick. This is my wife's notebook and she has her email, photos & documents on there! Before they would issue an RMA, the reinstall & battery thing had to be done, so, we backed up her documents (which we would have had to do anyway), did the battery thing, reinstalled everything and started testing it. Exactly the same battery life, slow performance, 1x burning, etc. Time to get an RMA number and mail it in for repair. Since we were a week away from going to Florida and still have Sammy, we figured that was a good time to get KIWI fixed. We weren't going to do anything besides checking email anyway.

Customer service said average repair time is only a few days, so based on that the notebook would be ready and re-delivered while we were on vacation. I wanted to avoid it being undeliverable up north and also avoid many daytrips bouncing on the delivery truck. He said I can keep an eye on the RMA status page and call in to update the shipping address when I think it is required. Sounds good. You can ship it to Florida.

Many days pass with an RMA status note along the lines of "Received. This system is being diagnosed etc". I call for a shipping address update, only to be told I couldn't do that. I explain the situation. Turns out they actually didn't know where the notebook was, as in: it might be shipped already. I get a story about how the customer service and repair facility computers only synchronize data overnight and they still have old information ... Anyway, they change my shipping address in the computer and would check on the repair. The next day I receive a call: no info on the repair, but it certainly has not shipped yet. The girl confirms that my shipping address is updated in the system. Well at least that is sorted out.

A few days pass before I check the RMA status page again. Oh, KIWI is repaired and shipped yesterday to ... Florida. Of course! Why am I not surprised? Now KIWI is going on a Fedex ground trip California to Florida. Only upon arrival there Fedex will read the address correction note and forward him ground from Florida to Maine. That only takes about two weeks. Yippie!

Hopefully C's patience will be rewarded and KIWI will work the way it should now.

Oh, by the way! Averatec's dead pixel policy is that there have to be "two dead pixels side by side" before they will replace a panel under warranty. No matter how many dead pixels you have. Generally I hear & read about 5 - 8 pixels or so. But two side by side?

He's still around with more than plenty to do. Sadly due to circumstances and some other obligations I haven't gotten around to blogging in the past weeks. Mea culpa. I really have to fix that.

See you in two weeks with renewed spirits when I get back, as we'll be off the grid recharging batteries. Hopefully the weather is nice and may I put in an order for a windsurfing breeze now and then? ;-)

For those interested: iBlog2 beta will be available early December :)