Category Archives: Technology

Dell, Technology, Techsupport

Dell Sets New Landspeed Record

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With all of the negative stories about Dell tech support (plenty of which eminate from a co-worker’s general direction), I thought I’d post a tale of service that to some may seem to be nothing short of astonishing.

The other day, I noticed that my latop’s DVD combo drive was taking longer to recognize newly-inserted discs, making increasingly louder noises, and the clincher: stuttering on DVD playback. I checked the warenty after logging into Dell’s support site, and opened a ticket online (I’m told that’s the key). The ticket was opened just before 2pm, I got the automated response immediately, and the reply from the tech at 4:17pm. The reply didn’t try to take me through the usual diagnosis proceedure they usually want you to do, it simply apologized for the problem, and said they were shipping the replacement. And ship it they did: it was hand-delivered to my desk by a DHL courier the next morning, around 9:00am! Not bad at all, Dell! Hopefully that’s more the rule than the exception!

Music Gear

The New Addition

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As I had blogged earlier, my plan of adding a new board to my rig happened literally hours before I left for the gig on Friday: I bought a CME UF7.


click for a larger image, but be warned: it’s big!

As I said, I was after a new controller that gave me a better piano feel, without going all the way to hammer-action. This 76-note, semi-weighted keyboard has a beautiful feel to it, and I’m liking the control surface (9 sliders, 8 knobs, both with buttons that change what they control) more and more. The important thing here was that I literally went from the store to packing it in a van, set it up onstage, and using it live (ok, there *was* a soundcheck)! I know, nuts, right? Well, I survived, and where I was using it for piano parts (triggering an Alesis Nanopiano), it was great (the sound being impacted by the velocity curve of the controller, in case you were wondering how a controller could change the sound of something!).Last night, I finally had the opportunity to plug it into my computer (it has USB) and trigger some softsynths. One of the cool things there was playing organs with the UF7’s sliders in “drawbar” mode: very nice.

One of the unexpected bonuses was the addition of a software editor (Windows, but it runs in Wine) for the board, which, among everything else, allows you to edit the velocity curves, something I didn’t think would be possbile.

Overall, this was a great purchase and addition to my rig, both on-stage and studio. This is going to see a lot of use.

Technology

Wake Up, People!

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From CNET News.com: SanDisk stakes its future on TrustedFlash

This is really rich: the tag line states “SanDisk is planning to launch new mini storage card technology that it says will let people play or view secured content on multiple devices, including smart phones and portable digital players.”

Note the spin on the wording: the new technology “will let people”. Wow, that’s great! This will let me… What they really mean is “will take away your right to play the stuff you own on anything you want”. I’m not sure what I hate more: that companies are doing this (maybe they’re not being given a choice?), or that people are buying it (both with what’s left of their brains and their wallets).

I would like to think that a world full of stuff that tells you what you can and cannot do isn’t inevitable, and I’m happy to see stuff like Make: out there, but stuff like this is getting more and more common.

Music Gear

Good Karma, Bad Steve

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Hmmm…well, turns out the Karma wasn’t the problem…it was the cable. Ooops. I’ve never had one go bad like that before. Glad I figured it out before I had to drive all over the place to find a repair shop (oh, yeah, that one I said was close to me? Haven’t been certified with Korg for 3 years, but Korg hasn’t taken them off the printed repair list.) Anyway, glad to see Korg QA still in my good books. 🙂