[CCC News] Assorted News 28 - The only certain thing in life is Change? :)

[Michael Kean]

*In this edition:*
*
Good News Week 2
*    The mobile plan to end all mobile plans? $1 a month, 10c/min...

*Assorted News:
*    More Exetel Strangeness. (Ups some rates, kills PAYG on ADSL.)
     Busy again...
**
*General Ramblings:
*    Three people drop their landlines for Wireless VoIP...
     Internet TV in the future?
     Your New TV is a computer screen too :)

*Entertainment:
*    The Varnishing Act.
     The Kingswood Lives...
     Amusing Exam Cheating Stories
     Gruesome Shark Game.
*
*
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*The Mobile Plan to end all mobile plans?

*A company called TPG has released a new mobile plan. It is just $1 per 
month and 10 cents per minute to landlines and mobiles, with a 10 cent 
flagfall. No contract. No caps.

They use the Optus towers, so of course this may be an issue for some of 
you. I do have outdoor aerials that will fix this for some handsets and 
locations.

This is enough to make you wonder why you still have a landline. You'd 
have to spend at least four hours on the mobile phone a month before 
you'd even reach what you're paying just for basic line rental to Telstra.

Oh, and as I've said before - if you need Telstra's superior mobile 
coverage, why not have a Telstra mobile on a $15 or $20 a month plan, 
use them for incoming calls, and carry a second mobile for making calls 
on. The savings would surely be worth the extra hassle of carrying two 
phones :)

I am too small to be an agent for TPG unfortunately, so if you need help 
with signing up or setting up your phone, this would be at standard 
consulting rates.

More details are at http://tpg.com.au/mobile/plans.html - scroll down to 
find the $1 plan.

*Busy again...

*Work is back to being pretty busy. This has meant some delays in 
getting back to some people. My apologies for those affected.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

*More Exetel Strangeness...*

As most of you know, I'm an agent for Exetel. This is because they're 
normally the best value ISP.

Unfortunately this appears to be changing a little...

They put a number of people's plans up by $5 a month this week, 
explaining that this was necessary because on average, people are 
downloading more now than they were a few years ago. This mainly 
affected long-time customers on older plans, and this was probably a 
legitimate need.

They also went and changed their plan offerings two days after this 
announcement, along with introducing a $10 plan change fee - without 
warning.

Charging $10 to change a plan is a simple money grab. Exetel brags about 
having an automated system so changing a plan should have no cost to 
them if it doesn't involve changing line speeds, etc. They don't see it 
this way. They did a similar thing a couple of years ago when they 
introduced an 'administrative fee' of $3 so they seem to be starting to 
want to make money just because they can rather than by providing a 
service to match that expense.

The plans they have introduced are aimed at moderate to heavy 
downloaders; so the 'pay for what you use' type plans are now history. 
This is a shame because it wipes out the most popular plan I was 
selling, making the nearest equivalent $10 a month higher, making them 
equivalent to pretty much every other reasonably-priced 
reasonably-reliable ISP out there for light to moderate users.

Fortunately, Wireless Broadband plans remain unchanged and are still 
good value within their own limits of usage.

Since most plans these days have no contract requirement, the good news 
is that if something really unexpected and catastrophic happened at 
Exetel, the time to recover would be quite short :) I am confused by 
what's going on there at the moment. I think it's related to growing 
pains as they have grown bigger than they had planned to in a relatively 
short time; but there's a sort of schizophrenic feel to it all.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

*Three customers ditch their landlines...*

I have three customers in Guyra who have ditched their landlines since 
moving to an Exetel wireless broadband with VoIP setup, saving 
themselves about $40 to $60 a month plus an estimated $50 in calls per 
month in the process. (You could do similar without using Exetel.)

This isn't for everyone, but it works well for some.

The good bits:
  - no landline rental any more - bye bye Telstra
  - still use a standard landline phone
  - call costs 10c untimed to landlines, 15c/min to mobiles
  - still have a landline number of sorts*
  - Internet costs between $20 and $37.50 per month roughly.

The bad bits
  - requires strong coverage.
  - requires $175 router plus $90 modem
  - might require outdoor antenna $45 to $250
  - will cost about $75 to have installed - quoted first.
  - not guaranteed to always work
  - *the landline number is not a Guyra / Armidale number,
  - calling 000 won't tell them where you are, so not great for emergencies.
  - doesn't work without power unless you hook it to a car battery or UPS :)
  - fax machines don't particularly like it, but will usually work.
  - sometimes has echoes when calling mobiles, partially fixable.
  - Limited to 5GB per month.

The single biggest problem with doing this is that the wireless 
broadband system is not designed to do phone calls over the Internet. It 
will work, mostly, but if the tower is busy or the reception wavers, it 
will give you some rather weird results.  However, if you're saving $60 
or more a month then maybe you wouldn't care about the occasional problem.

Of course, combine it with the $1 per month TPG mobile and it hardly 
matters anyway since the mobile phone calls always have priority over 
internet users, and it's even cheaper than VoIP for calling other mobiles.

I can't really recommend it for Armidale as the Armidale towers are 
overloaded. Generally speaking, if Skype works well on your connection, 
then VoIP will probably work too.

*Internet TV in the future?

*Despite being way behind the US in what we have in the way of Internet 
TV services; I have a suspicion that they will become somewhat more 
important to people over time. For example, if there's "nothing on" on 
TV, it's quite convenient to go to http://abc.net.au/iview/ and watch 
something. All the shows are categorised so documentary-fans for example 
can find something to watch quickly.

Why am I bringing this up again? Well, because it's the one thing that 
makes me feel a little uncertain about recommending wireless broadband 
to people. Each show is about 250 megabytes on average, so they can chew 
through even the biggest 5000MB plan appreciably over a month. (Of 
course, many people don't want to do this, ..yet...)

This means it's largely out of reach of people who can only get 
Satellite. It's doable on wireless but risky if you don't know your 
limits; and it's of no consequence at all to people who can get ADSL. It 
should soon get to the point where it is better to spend your money on a 
decent Internet connection rather than paying for Austar, etc.

In the US, it is apparently becoming common for people to not even have 
a TV, as they watch http://www.hulu.com/ instead. To watch Hulu in 
Australia requires some creative cheating that I have not yet felt the 
need to work out - there are other ways to get what you want :)

*Your New TV is a Computer Screen Too :)

*Many people still don't know this.

Pretty much all flat screen TVs these days have one or two different 
connectors on the back that let you use them as a huge computer screen.

Just yesterday I helped a customer to hook her laptop to her TV after 
she had been decidedly hard on her laptop by dropping it, breaking off a 
corner, smashing the screen by mistake and melting some of the keys 
somehow. (Fortunately the TV has not yet been melted, smashed, or 
dropped, but I fear for the remote!)

If your computer and TV both have a socket labeled HDMI, then all you 
need is one cable to connect the two.

If instead your TV has something labeled VGA or D-SUB, then you'll need 
two cables if you want both picture and sound.

Someone has written a more comprehensive guide at 
http://www.reevoo.com/decidewhattobuy/2009/08/how-to-connect-a-computer-to-a-tv/

For both options, I usually have the required cables.

This will of course let you watch anything from the Internet or on a 
hard drive on your TV set. That's things like iView, YouTube, etc; and 
those hard drives full of movies that kids have these days - much to the 
chagrin of traditional media companies! Oh, and of course if you have 
Skype and a webcam, you can have a live wall into someone elses house! 
(With a decent broadband connection, you could actually do this 24/7 so 
you'd never be separated from your loved ones - SciFi becoming reality...)

------------------------------------------------------------------------

*The Varnishing Act.

*OK, you all know I'm a bit mad. This won't help you with that assessment!

The '86 Bluebird had developed a problem. It was starting to go grey - 
like an old man's beard. Worse, the paint on the bonnet was turning 
white and spotty, and has been disappearing little by little, tiny flake 
by tiny flake. No amount of waxing would satiate its thirst.

An '86 Bluebird is not a particularly valuable car; so paying $2,000 or 
so to respray it would be hard to justify.

.. I bet you can see where this is going can't you ;-)

Some years ago I stumbled on a can of Marine Varnish hiding in the 
laundry. A year ago a small amount of this went on the roof to fix a 
small spot of clearcoat cancer. Now, a good deal more of it covers the 
entire bonnet and one of the mirrors too.

It will be interesting to see how this product ages. Certainly the bit 
that's been on the roof for a year hasn't deteriorated at all... It was 
particularly surprising how it turned the whitish plastic mirrors back 
to black.

Pictures are at http://picasaweb.google.com.au/CCCMikey/VarnishingTheNissan#

One customer said I should have seen an Armidale business who can match 
colours etc, and sells a clearcoat product. Perhaps later I will. For 
now, at least the deterioration has been halted.

*The Kingswood Lives...

*It's back from its brake, engine mount and gearbox seal repair. So far 
I am sticking with the Nissan because of the cheaper running costs, 
steering that doesn't wander around with tiny camber changes, likely 
increased safety and the ability to speed through a roundabout if 
something doesn't go to plan. (Not that it's perfect - it has its own 
cold weather quirks.) The Kingswood is now 39 years old, so perhaps it's 
time to give it lighter duties, and hope its value appreciates. (No I 
won't be varnishing it ;-) )

*Amusing Exam Cheating Stories...

*http://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/b7a5u/whats_the_most_clever_way_youve_ever_heard_of/*

*Another page that will take a few hours of life :) Find out all the 
ingenious ways people cheated in exams. A couple of favourites...
/
/

    /It is funny that this should come up, only last week, on the radio,
    a guy was on saying how when he was at college doing a marine
    engineering course (or something in that field) part of the course
    was Morse Code./

    /When they had external examiners in for exams on non morse parts of
    the course, he and his class mates would of course tap out not just
    the answers but have whole conversations./

    /A few times the whole exam room would erupt in laughter and leave
    the examiner clueless./

    ---

    /I went to a Catholic high school, and one of the nuns that taught
    there was pretty far toward senility. She'd always walk up and down
    the aisles during tests to make sure people weren't cheating, so a
    couple of kids started putting post-it notes on her as she walked
    by. Kid in the front corner would ask "What did you get for number
    7?" Kid in the back corner would snag the note, write an answer, and
    put it back when she came by next. It went on like that all semester./

*Gruesome but Simple Shark Game.

*http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/513760*

*A ridiculous game that you play in your browser. (Nothing to install.)

---

Well that's it for another newsletter. I guess I better get back to 
work! I have some more time consuming projects on the boil, which 
explains why the December and January invoices were only sent last week!

Cheers, Mike

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-- 
Cool Country Consulting & Auzzie Internet
http://www.auzzie.net/ccc
MSN: michael at auzzie.net
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