So a couple weeks ago I had one of my printers go down with a fairly common routine problem, the rubber drive belt for the carriage assembly wore out.  No big deal, they only last so long and need to be swapped every couple years or so depending on use, and mine certainly gets a lot of use!

HP offers an exceptional on-site warranty service program, but it’s also an exceptionally large amount of money starting at several hundred dollars per year.  If I was running the printer a lot more say in a dedicated production environment this would be a no brainer deal, sign me up!  However I only print for myself and a relatively small selection of clients so I can’t justify that kind of expense, especially when I am capable of doing just about everything myself.  For giggles I checked how much this one repair would cost, and it was nearly $1,000!  It included an on-site HP tech, repair, replacement, cleaning and calibration and would take a few hours to complete.

The service manual is available online for free download so I grabbed that and started reading.  Looks like it’s no big deal, let’s find the part.  The replacement belt turned out to be only $50 so that’s not bad.  While sourcing the part I found a site called LPS Computer that not only sells the belt, but also a ‘Replacement Kit’ that also gives you, according to the product page, ‘All the tools needed to do the job right’ including ‘calibration material’, oil, pads, a CD of the service manual and step by step instructions.  I almost just bought the belt, but thinking if there’s just one special tool I don’t have that’s in this kit, or there is a calibration test I can’t do without this material, I’m in for a greater headache than the additional $50 for the kit is worth, so I bought the $109 to my door kit.

At the same time I decided it would be helpful to others if I made a how-to video of the repair, since it affects a great number of printers and plotters out there, and this family of printers is very popular.  I was one of the very first in the world to receive one, and also happen to have gone through some beta testing with HP to design and redesign parts for it.  Mine has about the longest service life of the general supply so many more people are going to be needing this repair very soon if not already.  The idea hit me due to the fact I found no help whatsoever on the net about the repair, and I like to fill needs!

iPhone in hand to take video (love this thing!) I started the project with the arrival and breakdown of the Kit I had ordered a few days prior.  It arrived and I was a little disappointed, in that it only included about $15 of actual stuff, for the $50.  The Special Tools were nothing more than a $5 bit driver set and the Calibration Material was a 2×2 sheet of blank paper (I have hundreds of feet already here).  OK live and learn – don’t buy out of fear, at least I have what I need, no big deal.  Wrong.

There were two major problems with the kit, two truly special tools that were needed to complete the repair, and not included.  In fact the company didn’t even know they were needed because at their own admission, they had never tried it.

The specific problem was there are two locations on the printer that require a dedicated T8 and T10 driver to remove some screws.  They are located through very small slots in the printer itself and a bit driver such as was included is too large to fit, and reach the screws.  Anyone that actually tried this would know this instantly.

Upon finding the first such screw I had to use another set of tools to get the job done.  The next morning when they opened, I called LPS and told them what the problem was.  I spoke to a very nice gal who immediately stated ‘Oh, I haven’t heard that before, let me go ask!’ OK.  My first reaction, having worked in technical support positions for better than 15 years is – either she’s brand new, or this kit is BS.  She came right back on the phone and before I could even ask, she says I would like to give you a $12 refund for the missing tool.  I thought, great, that’s what I wanted, thank you very much!  I hung up, the refund was credited to me within the hour and all was right with the world.  Until 3 hours later.

When I reached another part of the process and found a similar situation, this time a different size Torx driver required, I again had to use another tool and called the company back.  I requested the same thing, a $12 refund as obviously now this kit was NOT tested and it wasn’t an accident that a part was left out, this was falsely advertised, plain and simple.  This time I got a man who was presumably the owner by the way he acted and later wrote.  During the phone conversation he denied that the refund just hours earlier was for a missing tool, but tried to say it was a courtesy refund for the trouble!  I explained to him that there is no way this job can be done with his kit, read him his description and he agreed that the kit does not work.  He also admitted that his technicians there have never actually used the kit, instead use (his words) the ‘better tools’.  AKA the RIGHT tools.  After getting no where and being accused of trying to ‘work him for money’ I stated that I am aware that I can at any time go through PayPal for a refund, but am choosing not to as I want to work it out directly.  That set him off on a tirade after which he hung up on me!

I then did have to contact PayPal (it’s a matter of principle at this point, it’s not about $12) and filed a dispute.  I entered this same story and the facts, and entered that I would settle the dispute for $12 (I could have asked for a complete refund as the item was not described correctly against PayPal policy).  Not one hour later this guy replies to the dispute, denies the refund offer and posts this:

“The tool kit sent to the customer has a value of $12. That was refunded. He tried to bully me into a second refund for his claim of another problem with the tools. I don’t respond well to bullying, whining or professional victims. He was made whole.”

Yes, he really did post that about a customer.  Nice.  So to recap, he puts together a product that’s not tested, it’s faulty, a customer pays for it and finds the faults, then points them out and that constitutes being the above.  Yeah sorry, buddy, that doesn’t fly.  I then called PayPal who promptly agreed with me and issues me the additional $12 refund.  So I guess I should thank this arrogant jerk for running his business so unprofessionally, it helped prove my case with very little effort.

One last interesting note, just after I filed the PayPal claim, he pulled the product off his website.  Unfortunately for him I had already done a screen capture for PayPal which came in handy to prove my case.

Unfortunately for this guy, what he didn’t have the chance to find out since he hung up on me, was that I am a professional photographer, and am making the how-to video, which will get quite a bit of exposure, and now this story goes along with it.

For those that want to see the video, here you go!

What is this all about you ask?  Simple.  I just spent the better part of a day setting up, configuring, customizing, etc. my new iPhone 4, coming from a non-smartphone.  Most of that could have been better spent had certain things been better explained or designed and this is an accounting of my experience with solutions, should anyone else happen upon it.

First a little background on me, lest you think I’m just some idiot rambling about how I couldn’t figure out how to install iTunes (kidding).  I was an IT Manager for a decade, quit years ago to follow my dream of being a full time commercial and wedding photographer, owning BGPictures.com and CigarObsession.com.  Our household consists of a desktop PC, an uber desktop PC, a PC laptop, a Macbook, a couple iPhones and a smattering of gadgets and gizmos like AppleTV,Wii, etc.  I have some very custom goings on such as a home made kaleidescape system utilizing a 4TB Drobo and the AppleTV, my main editing rig with 9TB of mixed RAID storage, all watercooled, etc.  I know my way around technology to say the least.

All that being said, the iPhone experience left me with some strange looks, a lot of Google searches and then some expletives directed at Apple.  This is going to be in no particular order, just as things come to mind, so my aim is that someone somewhere will save some hassle in going through the same thing!

Battery life. I chose the iPhone over all the other choices based on a select few points that are very important to me, as a business owner.  First and foremost battery life.  I use the crap out of my phone.  Notice I said – PHONE.  Yes I realize that the phone is probably the last part of this handheld computer people are concerned with these days but to me, that’s what I need most.  The iPhone has excellent battery life and has awesome call quality – not only on my end but on the client end as well.  Especially the speakerphone!   Using certain features of the phone has taught me what does and does not need to be used in certain situations to preserve that great battery life.  I played around with navigation/GPS the first night.  After a 1 hour drive, the battery had expired 25%! OK revelation #1 – to use the navigation/GPS for anything more than a spot check – the phone should be plugged in to a car charger.

Network speed. My previous phone had a browser, but alas no keyboard or touchscreen, making surfing a chore to say the least.  It was a rarely used feature by me due to utter frustration.  Now, obviously, I have at my disposal the entire world on a palm sized platter with my choice of connection options.  On wi-fi here at home I get blazingly fast test numbers, instant surfing results, etc. – all the good stuff I’m used to on my normal devices.  I thought for sure that wi-fi was the way to go here at home, due to the excellent nature of the connection speed.  Also on the first day I played with those connections and quickly realized that having wi-fi on drained my battery at an eye opening rate, almost as much as GPS did!  After switching back to 3G, which gives me 3-5 bars in the house nominally, I discovered that while the numbers were not surprisingly lower than wi-fi, the end results were almost indistinguishable.  Still great surfing and usage speeds, with none of the battery hit.  OK revelation #2 – wi-fi off when not absolutely needed – 3G is great!

Navigation requires money. Something truly lacking is a free in-car turn-by-turn navigation app for the iPhone.  Everyone else has it especially Android devices.  Google maps and the GPS give you 1/2 of what you need in an annoying and possibly dangerous combo when navigating in-route.  Navigon, TomTom or the like is simply required to match the offerings of other companies.  Disappointing for sure and surprising giving the maturity of the iOS platform and the device market share.

Apple still doesn’t play well with others. Especially Adobe and Google.  How does the old saying go?  You don’t know what you had until it’s gone?  Alas poor Flash, I knew him, Apple.  Yes I knew going in that iOS still doesn’t have Flash support.  I didn’t realize just how much of the web still uses it.  I made a decision last year to revamp my own sites to remove as much as possible, to make sure everyone with a iPhone/iPad could still view them.  Most others can not say the same as I have found out.  It will take some time to go through all my favorite sites and figure out which I can relegate to my PCs for viewing.  Something I use frequently as a business tool are Google Apps.  Some have nifty free apps for download to my iPhone, others require jumping through hoops such as getting Google Calendar working with your iPhone Calendar app.  While the solution is not that difficult by any means – figuring out that solution was one of those times I wondered if a decision was made purposefully out of spite.  How hard would it have been to have a button in the calendar app/setup/somewhere for major services like Google?  After realizing that I wasn’t missing anything I found the instructions I needed on Google here.

Apple hates your ringtones. OK this one made me scratch my head for a good 10 minutes, looking for buttons, features, instructions SOMEWHERE in this dang thing I HAD to be missing.  HOW do I make my ringtone one of my songs?  Every single other phone I’ve had/used/know about lets you simply pick one of your mp3′s and use it as your ringtone.  Simple, easy, cool.  iPhone?  Nope, sorry,pick one of our lame built in tones and like it.  OR search Google again and figure out how to make your own in a stupid multi-step process that WILL confuse plenty of people and piss off the rest like me.  In an absolutely ridiculous series of steps you can, through iTunes, copy a shortened clip of one of your mp3s, save it as a new file type, manually rename it to yet another, then add it back in to iTunes and get it to your phone though a sync.  Apple, you really suck at some really simple things that make people happy, this is a big one.  There aren’t official instructions that I could find for doing this but if you search Google (again) for iPhone mp3 ringtone you will find plenty of up to date instructions detailing the steps.

The Retina display is GORGEOUS.  This was the first thing I noticed when I started playing with the phone, and it is still making me smile and drool over photos!  Not just the contrast and saturation, but most importantly the PPI of the screen – it’s truly game changing/mind-blowing/other cliche!  Especially as a professional photographer, this is a feature that speaks to my heart.  When I work on my photos during my editing process, I do so on a very good professional grade monitor with an impressive PPI of about 100, which is great as far as current monitor technology goes for large screens.  For those that are asking themselves wtf is PPI – it’s pixels per inch – how dense the display is.  The more dense, the more detail you see, to a point.  Roughly 300 PPI is the human eye limit for discerning that detail, and the iPhone is OVER that point coming in at 326!  That’s more than 3x professional monitors!  The main reason photographers like myself LOVE seeing our work in print, is because hard copies are often around 300 DPI (dots per inch, same thing, new term when talking about printing) and for the first time we can actually SEE our work.  We can IMAGINE what it really looks like, on our monitor – but we are still missing the big picture until we see it in full detail.  Well, needless to say when I started moving some of my photos on to the iPhone it took my breath away, literally.  Most of my work I have never seen printed, there is simply too much of it and most has no output purpose except for myself, so I don’t spend the money.  Now I really do have a proof book in my hand at ALL times, it’s simply fabulous!  One other thing – if there were monitors out there with this screen technology and at large 27+ sizes, they would sell in a HEARTBEAT.  A 10k pricepoint would set them on fire flying off the shelf!  Some reading this may think I’m kidding but I’m not.  Good professional photo gear is far more expensive than that, with current digital backs alone selling for $45k, plus camera, lenses, etc. pushing investments to the 100k+ mark easily.  I carry 20k in gear on my shoulder to every wedding alone.

Apple loves messy people. Or at least people that love keeping everything they ever run, open even if you don’t need it any more.  I think this mentality started with the Apple OS, and the funky way of ‘closing’ programs.  I admit, I still don’t get it whatsoever.  Windows has it right, hands down in my book.  Close.  Minimize.  Open.  That’s IT.  That’s all you need, that’s all there should be.  Now, iOS let’s see.  I run things.  I go back to the home screen.  Oh, everything is still running.  But wait, not everything is running the same?  I don’t get this at ALL.  I want an easy way to CLOSE an application from IN the application or at the very least ONE button to do so.  I don’t want the convoluted combinations of background tasks in conjunction with push/no-push, standby, full running etc.  I still have not found a single definitive explanation for how things run or are supposed to run in the background.  I installed and ran a police scanner app to test out.  I switch out of it and it’s still running in the background, broadcasting through the speaker.  I play a game and switch out, it stops.  I still don’t know what happens when I leave Facebook – am I online, offline, away, etc.?  I have no idea.  All I know is, I want control and I want to have an easy way of exacting it.  As it stands it’s a multi step process to get that control and it doesn’t need to be.  Android has ‘App Killer’ apps.  A single button to close open apps.  iPhone?  Oh no, sorry – you get to double tap the home button, hold down an app, then manually close each app, then tap the home button two more times to get back to the normal phone screen.  Apple needs to better inform you of the app behavior and common/best practice for using/closing apps, it’s simply confusing from a common sense point.  Perhaps it’s easy to those that have grown up with the various iOS versions, but from a new comer it makes little sense.

Speed is key. I said I had my reasons for not going to a smartphone in the past and this was my #1.  I’m an impatient person.  I like to be fast and efficient.  Using other phones left me frustrated and dumbfounded why anyone would actually want to use such things.  Finding information, doing work, whatever – was excruciatingly slow and cumbersome on past devices compared to a laptop/desktop/etc.  This iPhone simply works.  Even with the things mentioned above, they are just road bumps to an overall excellent platform and experience.  The device is instantly responsive, more so than any Android device, it simply WORKS when needed.  Browsing is easy fast and pleasant.  Using apps, navigating the phone itself is common sensical, real time and never lets you lose focus of what you are doing, it passes the speed point of becoming an extension of your thoughts rather than making you play the click-wait game.  That’s something I require in a device and it delivers, period.  Is it the ‘best’?  That’s a relative question, only each user can answer that for themselves.  It is for me, at this point in time.  It has everything I need and most of what I want, bottom line.

So I hope these ramblings can at least help some new user out there, maybe save you a little time and frustration as you transition to the iPhone.  I know I’m going to enjoy it for years to come!

Prints are available in any size, mounted and matted on Ilford Gold Fibre Silk Fine Art paper, starting at $30.

Fountain