dannay - Slashdot User

Submission + - Cheapest way to UK Vista is through WGA

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 19, 2007 @02:27AM

An anonymous reader writes: Details of Windows Vista's UK prices can be found here http://www.techworld.com/applications/news/index.c fm?newsid=7668 According to techworld Vista Prices are significantly marked up in the UK compared to the US, as much as 80% for some versions. Ironically in the UK apart from buying abroad, and hoping customs doesnt add VAT to your order... the cheapest way to get a legal copy of Vista in the UK is to first get WGA to flag your copy of XP as illegal. Then UK users can purchase legitimate copies of XP for about £53 for the XP Home version and £92 for the XP Pro version. http://www.itweek.co.uk/itweek/news/2154729/micros oft-increases-checks From Here they can download the form for an upgrade for only £10 http://download.microsoft.com/download/A/D/1/AD102 E9D-2DCF-4552-ADE3-68C02F0938E8/unitedkingdom.pdf That means the total for Vista Home Basic = £63 Vista Bussiness = £102 Still expensive by US standards but cheaper than buying from a UK retailer.

Submission + - CompUSA Gives Customer 4+ Month Run-around

Submitted by

Andy

on Monday February 19, 2007 @01:29AM

Andy writes: "I've had an ongoing...adventure...with CompUSA's repair and customer service departments for the last four months, the short version of which is that — two years in a row — they damaged my laptop while repairing it (this second time more than once!) and are dragging their feet in responding to me and replacing the computer their service center damaged. I've tried to handle it privately for four months, but at this point, I'm running out of options and hope that Slashdot can help bring some attention to my troubles and turn the heat up on CompUSA a bit so they'll do the right thing!

In October 2005 I brought my Sony laptop to them for service, and it came back with all the case screws in the wrong places, causing physical damage to the case and a big loose gap in the front edge. Then, a year later, they again returned my laptop to me with incorrect screws, and with a wad of tape wedged between the keyboard and the cooling fan!

That started a saga, still ongoing, with more missing screws, a heat-related video problem, a damaged hinge cover, missing protective covers for the LCD's screws, and four months of broken promises, abysmal customer disservice, and lack of returned calls on all levels from the local store's tech services manager, operations manager, and GM up to the corporate manager of customer service and chief of escalation.

I've posted my story on my blog at http://www.onefromtheroad.com/index.php?cat=11 (posts are in reverse order, since it's a blog!)

Please help me spread my story, and hold CompUSA responsible for mistreating their customers like this!

— Andy

P.S.-For futher episodes of CompUSA being involved in grossly mishandling repairs, see http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=28004 5"

Submission + - How do you change careers into programming?

Submitted by on Sunday February 18, 2007 @09:14PM

An anonymous reader writes: I have worked in tech support for the last several years, but find myself wanting to move on to something else — programming. I've written some small programs in my limited spare time but nothing particularly impressive; just functional stuff to make my life easier. I've spent a lot of time recently working through programming books, and feel I'm ready to make the switch in my career. That said, I don't have a CS degree, and find that responses to my resume have been along the lines of "Thanks, but we aren't hiring for tech support positions." Surely someone from the slashdot crowd has been in the same position — what would you recommend?

Feed Cleaning Up After a Dirty Bomb (wired.com)

From feed by wiredfeed on Sunday February 18, 2007 @08:12PM

Scientists develop an absorbant gel that can remove radioactivity from concrete, but don't count on the government hearing aid. Bodyhack reports from AAAS.

Submission + - World's largest tropical glacier is vanishing.

Submitted by Socguy on Sunday February 18, 2007 @06:20PM

Socguy writes: "Ohio State glaciologist Lonnie Thompson and a team of scientists said they have found evidence the Qori Kalis glacier of the Quelccaya ice cap in the Peruvian Andes could lose half its mass in 12 months and could be gone five years from now."
http://www.cbc.ca/technology/story/2007/02/16/scie nce-glacier.html

Submission + - Most Comprehensive Reverse Hash Lookup (MD5, etc)

Submitted by

Dustin Fineout

on Sunday February 18, 2007 @04:29PM

Dustin Fineout writes: "A new reverse hash look-up web site has been launched which conglomerates the separate efforts of many such sites into a single resource. http://md5.dustinfineout.com/ searches both local databases and several remote servers to create the most comprehensive reverse hash look-up available anywhere, and in under ten seconds.

The initial version, launched yesterday, offers reverse hash look-up for the MD5 algorithm on a total of six servers' databases. By the end of the week, support for SHA1, MD2, MD4, LanMan, and NTLM algorithms have been promised, as well as expanding the server pool to at least 10 different data sources. The web application also allows visitors to add entries to the datapool by checking for their existence in all servers in the datapool before adding to a local database. The source code for both the online PHP application and several Java programs are also scheduled to be released under the BSD license by the end of this week."

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