DELL and My DVD Dilemma

January 22, 2008 General

This post was lying untouched and unedited in my notebook for the past 4 months until I decided to revive it today, for the sake of those who want to opt for a branded PC in India (especially DELL). After working on PCs ( both branded and assembled) I am of the opinion that the branded ones give you the best performance and value for your money.

Last year when it was time to upgrade the PC and I picked up a DELL without much ado. I had heard praises about its sales, service and quality of the machines from my bro-in-law in Hong Kong who’s a big admirer of DELL. Soon after the PC came home, I also wrote about the deplorable experience that I faced in one of my earlier post on this website. However, I discovered another issue this time with the DVD RW/ROM that came along with the configured machine. According to a sales rep, I was the first customer reporting this problem and that shocked me even further because the issue was with my region locked DVD RW/ROM that shipped with my DELL Inspiron 530s and I swear to god, I was had no knowledge of this issue prior to settling for this configuration. My contention was that just like any other component including the monitor, the RAM, the processor, etc., I should have been given a choice by the company to select from a region locked or a region free DVD RW/ROM drive and I was completely clueless about the same. I have not received a satisfactory reply from the makers and hence this article.

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TCS and Mumbai Marathon 2008 : Will you join us?

January 17, 2008 General

The annual Standard Chartered Mumbai Marathon 2008 is just a few days away – 20th January 2008 to be precise. This year Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) is the associate sponsor of this mega event which is unarguably Asia’s largest marathon. TCSers are preparing wholeheartedly to run for their organization and many of my colleagues will be participating for an NGO (non-government organization) or a cause which is closer to their heart. It’s obvious that winning or competing is the last thing on their minds.

On the other hand, I had the privilege of offering my creative skills to the official TCS Mumbai Marathon 2008 website on the Indiatimes.com portal, which has details on our association with the event and more. One can submit stories, pictures and videos from the marathon which would be showcased in the galleries post event. Happy surfing and hoping to see you at the Mumbai Marathon 2008 this time.

Tata Launches 'Nano'

January 10, 2008 Happenings

As I was focusing on some work of the day, my colleague came running towards me and announced the launch of the much hyped Tata Motor’s 1 lakh car aptly named ‘Nano’. I was waiting for the event for a long time to come. It was being shown Live on TV from 11:30am onwards but by the time I reached, the ceremony had got over and the journalists and photographers had started crowding around the small car (I could only see the rooftop). After few minutes, I got the first glimpse of the white ‘Nano’ which was driven by Mr. Ratan Tata himself (coincidentally in Gujarati ‘Nanu’ means small although pronounced differently). Just yesterday some channels were busy speculating the name of the small care – Atom, Jeh, etc.

Post the car launch there are discussions on the effect on the environment and the stress that it will put on India’s infrastructure, etc. On one hand I am happy that the Tata’s have launched a product which specific to a particular segment of the society. On the other, I shudder to think about when the car would flood the roads of Mumbai and the high possibility of a traffic snafu that it will generate. For this moment though, I am waiting to see the car run on the road pretty soon.

» Visit the Tata Nano Website

Taare Zameen Par (2007)

December 25, 2007 Movies

There cannot be a perfect culmination to my long Christmas break then watching Taare Zameen Par (TZP) in the theatre. Before I begin talking about the movie itself, I must first congratulate Aamir Khan who has taken a grave risk (as always) by opting to produce, direct and act in what seems to be a complete non-commercial storyline. In other words, to a lay man this project would have looked good in a book or a short story somewhere in a children’s magazine. But it only proves that Aamir is (who else?) the only commercial actor in the Hindi film industry in a class of his own who believes in making meaningful cinema — one you can easily relate yourself with.

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Personas from Firefox

December 18, 2007 Design

In what I consider to be a breakthrough feat, Mozilla has released the Persona extension that should revolutionize the skinning of browsers in the coming days. The extension uses the JSON feed to dynamically load the URLs remotely to skin the Firefox browser. Moreover, besides making the browser lightweight it does not require a restart anymore to see the theme in action. For all Firefox fans.