vent vent vent

[alonewiththemoon]

As mentioned in a previous entry, I bought a Palm Zire 31 this weekend, only to discover that it was missing its software CD.  On a Palm user forum, I read that Palm is now aware that it screwed up on the special packages sent to Circuit City and that if you called their help line, you would be mailed the CD.  Yay, I thought, I'm all set.  So I called, and after going through an interminable phone menu I get a charming yet difficult to understand Bangladeshi* woman, who tells me that Circuit City is being sent all the CDs and that I can go claim my CD with a number she will give me.  I am heartily annoyed.  Of course it is cheaper for Palm to send out a few cases of CDs to various Circuit Cities than to send individual CDs all over the place to individual customers, but that is not good customer service.  It's inconvenient for me to get to Circuit City in the first place, and in the second place, I have zero faith in the CC employees having any idea what I'm talking about when I show up with my claim number asking for my CD. >:-(

Also my dance performance DVD-R does not even play in an official, bona fide DVD-R player.  The only reason that is left for it not to work, apart from it hating me, is that the DVD-R does not have that little DVD-R seal of approval thing meaning that it meets industry standards.  At least, that's the reason the player manual comes up with, and it seems reasonable to me.  I'm royally pissed off at the guy in Argentina who made the DVDs for us who apparently couldn't be bothered to spend a tiny bit extra to get legitimate industry-standard DVDs.  It has been working in my troupemates' computers (but not mine, nor my work computer), which makes this all the more frustrating because I feel like the princess and the pea complaining about it--but it really doesn't work!  I should get what I paid for!

*the plus side of this was that she knew how to spell Badriya without my having to spell it out for her.

Comments

DVD-R

[jasonlizard.livejournal.com]

I think there are DVD-R and DVD+R discs (depending on who's hardware it was made with, Sony, I think does everything DVD-R, the rest of the world may use DVD+R).

Something like that. Perhaps you can get some video person to rip it to a more universal standard?

Re: DVD-R

[alonewiththemoon]

Sadly, the disc is a DVD-R (I have it with me, I just checked) and the player plays DVD-Rs--I think the +R kind is not that common.

I think what I'm going to end up doing is exchanging it for a videotape, and then recording the videotape to DVD myself, since part of the point of buying the DVD-R recorder was to clear up videotape clutter and make life more convenient :-/ This may be a better solution anyway since I am told that the performance DVD-R does not have separate chapters and a menu, and I can create those in the copying process.

What annoys me the most, I think, is that this was sold to me as a DVD. If I had known it was a DVD-R, I would not have paid so much for it knowing I was running the risk of it not working on my equipment.

[wsmith.livejournal.com]

The CD for your palm is mostly extra stuff that comes with it. Peripheral apps and whatnot.

I have a cd I can lend you when I'm back from Montreal or you can go to the palm website and download the palm desktop and hotsync software that'll get you going right away.

[alonewiththemoon]

Thanks--I did download the desktop already (the upgrade, actually, since I was running an earlier version), but I do really want the peripheral apps for silly photo and music stuff.

I got a customer satisfaction survey via email from Palm today, so I happily told them exactly how dissatisfied I am >:-)