Posts Tagged ‘Bad Technology’

Grr. Now I remember my last USB MIDI experience… Last time was with XP in beta, even then it was the same deal. No bloody drivers because XP wasn’t released. Now 7, though its RTM’d isn’t out on the street yet; so no bloody drivers for the just unboxed Axiom Pro 49.

What gets annoying is when you have a phone call earlier in the day where a customer complains about crap not working that used to work or relatively new stuff not working. No drivers, bad drivers, whatever.

I mean come on, it’s not Microsoft’s fault. It’s not like Vista wasn’t in beta for 6 years and 7 for 2+. Hell Microsoft even helps people write their drivers. Still, we get crap drivers way too late which just pisses people off.

I’m not blaming M-Audio here. I’m just frustrated at the statu quo. I’ve not completed my search for updates bits yet so for all I know it’ll be working in 5 minutes. I’m a bit miffed it’s not just a simple plug and play. Or updated drivers off Microsoft Update. My philosophy would be to release early at every point of the process. It’s understandable if the stuff doesn’t work perfectly during the beta. But at least you won’t have customers out in the cold come RTM.

And I do have to say, Vista’s only failure was in its public perception. Yes UAC was overblown, yes they failed to deliver half what they promised at PDC03, but at the same time it was a huge improvement over XP. People will forget that XP was considered crap until SP2 made it what it is. Vista is the same deal. SP2 is amazing most of the time.

Now with Windows 7 people are finally saying it’s what Vista should’ve been, this is rather funny really because even with 7 being as awesome as it is, there’s still a lot left that was still promised and shown at PDC03.

Perhaps Microsoft’s priorities have shifted, for example multitouch wasn’t as huge as it is now. Perhaps Microsoft’s resources haven’t quite been allocated as well as they could be. Or maybe what’s actually being engineered is just a little more complicated than we expected.

I’m still thinking of that amazingly good demo from PDC03 with the millions of photos and albums shown in 3D that was completely fluid, all driven by meta data in a WinFS powered back end. The reality unfortunately is that despite what Microsoft is delivering in 7 and Apple has been delivering in Snow Leopard really doesn’t match up to demos.

Still, 7 is pretty awesome, it’s definitely the best OS Microsoft has yet to release.

You know, it could just be a consequence of trying to move technology so quickly. On both the hardware and software side.

Example, 1080p 56″ LED DLP about 3 years ago was about $3400. Now you could probably find one for $900. LED LCD purchased about two months ago, $3200, at a steep discount no less. Now, $2500, via Amazon.

That’s a pretty fast progression in both price and obsolescence. Maybe everyone just expects too much too quickly .

Maybe Michael Moore has hit on something with Capitalism, I’ve not even seen it yet but I get the feeling we in general have expected exponential growth but have the lack of widespread focus to actually get anything accomplished. And this is due to the current state of Capitalism in the US. It doesn’t seem like everyone is as focused on a singular task as they were when getting to the moon or fighting the Axis powers.

It’s not just technology either, where’s the focus on health, energy, and sustainability? I think Dawkins and Maher might agree that to some extent the lack of focus is exacerbated in part by the lack of reason and the divisiveness of US politics and religion.

But anyway, I just want to make some music damn it .

I bought my Roku SoundBridge Radio on 5/14/2007 for $300. About a month ago now in the middle of the night it just kept rebooting. It woke me up so I just unplugged it. The next day I go to plug it in again and it refuses to turn on. First thing I did was check the warranty, sadly it was only 1 year long. Next thing I did was check the Roku Forums…

Within 10 seconds it became apparent why the warranty was only 1 year and not 3 or 5. The first 5 threads on the forum were all for dead SoundBridge Radio’s, total view count on these threads is about 50K. The root cause of the problem? Faulty PSU’s which were inadequately designed. What’s amazing is just how many people really truly loved this product, including me. So much so that when they all started failing people tried fixing the units themselves and tried helping others figure out the problems. Some hardcore electrical engineering geekiness too. Hell, one guy even provided a Flickr page showing the fault capacitor. What’s depressing is that this WiFi network audio alarm radio costs a full $300, and yet they couldn’t even spare an extra 20 cents of profit per unit to use higher quality components to ensure customer satisfaction and product longevity. WTF!?

As a professional engineer with many years experience I consider that the Soundbridge radio is a unit where the power supply is bound to fail on a regular basis. Because of the total lack of thermal management which is mainly due to the plastic box and tape around the box the components on the PSU, which is always on, run at an excessive temperature. Back of the envelope calculations suggest the mean time to failure will be in the order of 7 months! Even with the higher rated replacements I have only improved this figure by about a factor of three.

I really loved my Roku, in fact I used to say how it was the one piece of technology in my life that “just worked”. It did exactly what I wanted and worked perfectly, sounded great too. Then this… What a shame. I’m guessing the little Roku’s aren’t as susceptible to this kind of failure, mainly because they’re much simpler in design and don’t require the same power. But I’m sure they’re just as poorly engineered none the less.

With that, let me say, I will never recommend or buy a Roku product again. I highly suggest you don’t either. Even if that $100 Roku Player looks tempting.