Tao’s Blog

Today, I saw a PC Richard & Son advertisement flyer inside Daily News, showing a SanDisk 128 MB SD card (Model SDSDB128-781) with a final price of $20 after instant and mail-in rebates. It sounds really cheap.

So, in the balmy Sunday sunshine, I headed to the PC Richard & Son store near my home, which is located at 2143 Flatbush Avenue, Brooklyn, NY. I located the card, and asked the salesman about the rebate form. He said they just ran out of the form, and ensured me that I can download the form from their web site, http://www.pcrichard.com

Not totally convinced, I paid for the card, and hurried home to check out their web site. To my dismay, there is no such a form on their very non-professional looking web site. I searched, browsed, quite exhaustively, to no avail. I called the store, the girl who picked up the phone put me on eternal hold; and I tried the 800 number, I got a “sorry, we closed today”. I tried to send a message on their web site, but I must register on their shabby web site first. I even took the trouble to log in and wrote them an message, after I clicked “Submission", I still felt uneasy, especially after I checked out what the customer had said about the store at http://www.consumeraffairs.com

Finally, I decided to return the card if I cannot get the rebate form. If there is no rebate, the price is not particular good. I don’t have extra time and energy to deal with those rebate issue. So I decided to return it, since I cannot get the rebate form.

It is almost 5 pm, and the store closes at 7 pm. So I hurried to the store. When I asked for a return and refund, the clerk (I strongly suspect that it was she who put me on the eternal hold) told me they actually had the rebate form. Since all I need is a rebate form, I agreed to take the card if they can provide me with the proper paper work. However, after working at the photocopier for a while, the clerk gave me a 10th generation photocopy of what seems to be the original rebate form. It was hard to read the faded text, but finally I made out most of it: the first condition of the rebate is: “You must fill out and send this original form", and I have a strong gut feeling that 10th generation photocopy doesn’t count as a origial form. Finally, I told her that I insist a return instead of the remote descendent of the original rebate form.

Finally, I don’t need to worry about the rebate any more.

This morning, I tried to save some data on my Kingston Data Traveler USB drive from my old Mac OS 9 Macintosh. This is a Revision A first model iMac. Because I have a huge number of USB peripheral devices, I hooked up two USB hubs to the machine, both are powered. Let’s say, hub H1 is connected directly to the computer, and hub H2 is connected to the H1, so it is a cascade scheme. H1 is the first level, and H2 is downstream to H1.

I recently purchased the Kingston Data Traveler, and I have an old Lexar JumpDrive. I never tried the Kingston on my old iMac. Usually, I hook up the Lexar drive to the H2, it is mounted on the desktop without episode.

However, this morning, when I tried to copy something to the Kingston drive, I inserted it into the H2 hub, but the desktop just froze, and nothing appeared on the desktop. I was forced to use a paperclip to re-start the computer. I tried the Lexar drive, it worked fine on the same H2 hub. However, when I inserted the Kingston drive to the H1, everything is fine, it is mounted normally. Then I changed it back to the H2, the same symptom happened: the computer froze. I put the Lexar to the H1, it worked fine. Obviously the Kingston only works with H1, the higher level USB hub, while the Lexar drive works on both USB hubs. Kingston is rather picky, it seems.

I cannot find a plausible explaination for this kind strange behavior. Maybe the Kingston Data Traveler is a USB 2.0 device, so it has higher requirement for the signal quality? Anyway, it is good to know how to make it work with my iMac, even it is a little bit of quirty, as long as I know how to deal with it, it is fine. Meanwhile, the Lexar is more versatile, although sometimes I find it a little bit slower, compared with the Kingston Data Traveler.

In Palm address book, there are several contact fields: work, home, email, mobile, fax, other, etc. There is only one field displayed in the Palm list view, this field is called “Primary contact” on the Windows Palm Desktop, and is determined by the “Show in list” field when you tap “Detail” button while edit the contact on the handheld.

When you create a new contact on the Palm, the first field you write becomes the primary contact. You can change which field is primary contact on Palm or Windows Palm Desktop, but it seems you cannot change this field on Macintosh Palm Desktop. I am using Windows Palm Desktop 4.1 and Macintosh Palm Desktop 4.1 and a Palm Tungsten T2 running Palm OS 5.2.1.

Interestingly, you cannot manipulate this primary contact field by using Macintosh Palm Desktop 4.1. When you create a new contact record on the Mac Palm Desktop, you always have the first contact as the primary contact, until you change it on the handheld. On Macintosh, there is no user interface to control which field is the primary contact which will be listed in the handheld’s contact list view, even though on both Windows and Palm handheld, it is rather easy to modify the primary contact. Generally speaking, Palm’s Macintosh support is rather flimsy, a lot of features are available on Windows but not on Macintosh. Another example is AvantGo, and Palm determined to stop Macintosh support once for all.

Anyway, it is a Windows market. Fortunately, the most essential features of Palm is supported on Macintosh for now, even though overall the support is half-hearted. The ability to change primary contact on Macintosh is not of vital importance for me (and most of the users), and I have all the platforms in case I need them. Just think it is quirky to have this discrepency between Mac and Windows Palm Desktop of the same version number, from the same vendor.