After being picked up on Wednesday, I see the computer arrived at the repair place in Germany at about 10am today. (The UPS tracking website works, in contrast to Sony's).

That's 2 days to transport a laptop from the capital of Austria to Germany! That's hardly quick, or the overnight delivery they always advertise on TV!

So presumably Sony chose to save some money when selecting which UPS delivery speed to use.

OK It's all gone well. It's 14:43 and the UPS guy has come and collected my notebook.

He didn't seem to have any packaging materials with him (in contrast to what the woman said on the phone). So he took my unscratched laptop and just carried it off without packing it. Presumably he has some packing stuff in his van? Or maybe he'll just not pack it so it gets really scratched? Well, I'll see when I get it back.

OK Tuesday was much better.

The girl from Monday said she'd (try to) ring me, even if nothing happened. She did ring me, at about 5pm (which made me a little worried that she wasn't going to call), and said that the laptop could be collected the next day. They hadn't resolved the warranty issue, but they were prepared to accept that I had one (on the grounds of the invoice that I faxed to them, which they sent to me originally confirming my purchase), so were prepared to pick up and repair the laptop for free.

Concerning the pick-up,

• Obviously they couldn't give me an exact time, only 9am-5pm.
• So I chose my office address. It's not easy to find me in this office, so I told her to tell them to go to the address and give me a call. She said they have a limit on how many calls they can make, so they might not be able to call me.
• So I gave an incredibly detailed and complex description of how to find me. Then she said she only had a small text field to type the instructions in, so she'll abbreviate them, and hope the guy understands.

Someone really has decided to make this as challenging as possible!

So here I am, Wednesday, Day 3, in the office, at 9am, waiting for the laptop to be picked up. How do people do this every day?

So my laptop is broken. No problem, when I bought it, about a year and a half ago, I paid about €150 extra to get the warranty extended from 1 year to 3 years, and them pick it up if something goes wrong. I'm glad I did that; now it's time to use it.

Hmm, not as simple to use the warranty as it was to order it, it turns out. (Although, to be honest, ordering it wasn't very easy either.)

Here's what happened:

1. At 11am, I call Sony for the first time. I could only find their sales number on the web and on the invoice, so I called that. Helpful sales person informed me "I'm only a sales person" and gave me a support number.
2. I called the number. Automated system wanted the serial number of the Laptop. No problem. Then it informed me I had to "register" the laptop either over their website or via a 0900 premium number. I tried the website.
3. Nowhere could I find how to register.
4. Trying the "site map" on the website, I found some register page. I enter my data.
5. Then it wants an (optional) "warranty number". I typed in all the numbers I found on the invoice, none of them were accepted. I was worried there might have been some extra document which I'd lost. I searched everywhere. Couldn't find it. So left the field blank.
6. Rang the number again, it said the same as it said last time: I wasn't registered, I should either go to the website or use the premium number.
7. Tried to register again.
8. This time I saw some link "open a support issue online". I tried that. It informed me I was not registered. It had a big friendly "register" button. Clicking it went to the same registration page I'd been on before, with all my data filled out. So the registration page knew I was registered, but the "open a support issue" page could not continue as I was not.
9. So I called the 0900 number. Got through to a human. Very helpful. He also noted I was not "registered" and tried to register me on his computer system. It didn't really work, he noted. But no matter.
10. He wanted the guarantee number. He told me where it should be on the invoice (thankfully there was no lost extra document!). But it wasn't there. I jokingly said I could scan the invoice and email it to him. He said no he believed me; we chatted some more.
11. He said he needed the guarantee number. He suggested I scan it and send it to him. Once that had been done, courier people would ring me in the afternoon to arrange a pick-up. That call was 17 minutes long.
12. I emailed it to him. It was a central email address, but he assured me if I put the case number in the subject line, it would get to him.
13. No reply. And no telephone call in the afternoon. And no way to contact him.
14. I go online and find some "information on your support case" page. I enter my name, the laptop's serial number and the case number. Click submit. Results page is an advertisement for Windows Vista and nothing else.
15. Thinking I must have done something wrong, I go back and do it again, same result.
16. I ring the telephone number (the non-premium one). Automated voice asks me for my case number. I enter it. Automated voice informs me that I'm outside the warranty period (presumably the free one) and hangs up on me.
17. What to do now? Only option is the 0900 number. I ring it. Wait listening to music. Then it hangs up on me. That was 5 minutes.
18. What to do now? Only option is the 0900 number. I ring it. This time get through to someone after about 10 minutes of waiting. (I put it on speakerphone so that my colleagues know I am wasting my time listening to canned music while paying nearly €1/minute, to access the support I paid €150 for).
19. Finally I get through to someone. They say that the email with the invoice wouldn't have worked (so I'm glad I rang and didn't just wait for them to ring me). I should fax the invoice to them. She gives me a fax number. I ask her to ring me in about an hour to tell me if she got it or not (as I have no way to contact her). That call was 20 minutes.
20. I fax her the document, and write her name on it, to try and maximize the chance she gets it.
21. Note that this document, which I am trying to communicate to them, is the invoice. This document comes from them, not me. I am trying to fax them back their own document.
22. She calls me back (I was pleased about that). Tells me she got the fax, and that she has to speak to a colleague. I ask her when that will be. Well, she says, she posted a post-it note on her monitor.
23. I ask her to call me back tomorrow in any case, even if there is no progress. I have no way to contact them, and if they just don't contact me, I'm stuck.
24. She freely admitted that, until the warranty issue was resolved, I had no option than to use the 0900 phone number. The other cheaper number was only for laptops "in warranty". The fact that the laptop is in warranty, the only way in which it's not is that their system seems to have forgotten it, and that is something which is neither my fault nor over which I have any control, seemed not to alter the situation much in her opinion.
25. She said she'd try to call me tomorrow. I said "what do you mean try?". She said she can try to contact me if I'm available. I said I'm available. OK, she said, then she'll try.

So that's it. So what has happened?

1. I have spent 42 minutes on a premium phone line, costing €0,71/minute, that's €29.82.
2. I spent €150 on a warranty (that was a while ago)
3. I spent over €2000 on the laptop in the first place (that was a while ago)
4. The laptop is still in my possession, broken.
5. One day has passed, so the duration of me not being able to use my laptop has, thanks to Sony, been increased by (at least) one day.

I've really never heard of using an 0900 number as the only way of contacting support, after one has paid for a warranty. I mean it's so outrageous. And the website doesn't work (registration didn't work, viewing ones support case didn't work). One is so powerless.

Sony is not doing well especially in the laptop market. They must be wondering why. I bet the top management don't know that this sort of thing is going on. It's just because their company, apart from producing great products, is just completely broken.

Let's see what happens tomorrow…

Where are the "…" on the "Advanced" button of "Display Properties"? This has annoyed me for ages. In fact I'm sure this was the case on Windows 2000, XP, and Windows 98 (but I might be wrong).

And of course on Windows you have to use this button each time you plug your laptop into a new monitor, as it will randomly (not even consistently) choose a resolution for you. And once you've changed that to a higher resolution, it chooses the lowest possible frequency for you, like 60Hz, even though it knows (demonstrable via the "hide modes that this monitor cannot display") that the monitor can support a higher frequency: so you have to change that via the "Advanced" button.

Ah and in researching this post, it seems to be that Windows Vista has got it right! Amazing. A good reason to upgrade!

In many ways, apart from the "…", that panel doesn't seem to have changed that much in the years since Windows XP (or Windows 2000) came out.

Traditionally one does business documents, diagrams, and in fact all other things, in black and white. But colour allows one to express more things.

• Headings stand out from the rest of the text much better when they're in colour.
• You can communicate much more in diagrams if you use e.g. blue text for an explanation, red text for method names, and so on.
• You can augment existing diagram notations, e.g. UML, with extra information using colour

There's no reason to only use black and white these days.

• Colour printers are very affordable. Everyone and every office has one. I bought one for €50 recently.
• Nobody uses black and white monitors or laptops any more.
• All electronic formats support colour: bitmap formats like GIF, PDF, Word, emails.

I've just arrived at Heathrow airport, Terminal 1, from Hong Kong.

• The way to the terminal from the aircraft was not clear: then I saw some temporary photocopied sign stuck up with tape that showed the way.
• There is no wireless internet here, in contrast to all the other airports I use: Hong Kong, Dubai and Vienna.
• As I am sitting here, inside in a terminal building, there is a pigeon walking around on the carpet.
• One guy already complained to me surprised that "there is no complimentary telephone service here, in contrast to Hong Kong" (although I've never heard of that before!)

When I first went to Egypt I was amazed at the chaos in the airport. But we really shouldn't think that Heathrow is much different.

This really is the worst feature in the world.

Windows XP downloads updates for you automatically, then installs them, then asserts your computer has to be restarted. You can click "restart later" but the assertion is simply repeated later. That's quite annoying, but I suppose one can get used to it.

But the most outrageous thing is that if you don't click "restart later" in time, it restarts your computer for you. If you take a short break for the computer – go for a coffee – and come back, you find your computer has no open windows. What about all those websites and documents and other things one was working on? Gone.

Windows really is so bad, one shouldn't use it.

It's amazing how they can't even get the simplest things of usability right (in this case: usability through consistency).

During Windows Updates, an icon appears on the icon tray. If you click it, you get this window.

How do you get it back on the task tray?

• The minimize button simply does nothing. When you click on it, the button shows its "pressed" icon, as if it would do something, but when you release the mouse, the button returns to its normal state, and nothing has happened.
• The close button, does not close the window in either the sense of a) stopping the process described in the window b) making the window go away altogether, but instead does indeed minimize the window to the task tray.

I'm sure more people worked on this feature than comprise the entire team of most of the projects I work on. But they still couldn't get it right.

One really does appreciate things that work elegantly.

My girlfriend insisted we bought the following kettle, on account of its colour.

It was quite an expensive kettle but it did look so good, I thought well, OK.

But with its expense comes more than just its beauty.

• After the water has boiled, to open the spout, to pour the water, there is an extra plastic bit (looking like an ear) which stays cold. Meaning you don't burn your hands or need to use a dish cloth.
• The purple handle is designed in such a way that it too doesn't get hot.
• You can lift the lid of the kettle off without having to move the handle to any special angle (as was the case with the previous kettle)
• The water pours beautifully. No spillage whatsoever.
• Without water, it's light (ideal for the ladies for whom it was presumably designed).
• It's the right size. There's no point making a kettle holding only one cup of water but most families don't need industrial sized kettles which can cook 34 cups of water either. This kettle is physically small but can boil 3-4 cups of water.
• The spout is big enough that one can poor water in it, without having to lift the lid off, if that's one's preferred method of filling the kettle (it is mine)

If only all things in life were made as well as this kettle.