Comments for Martin Wolf's weblog

Comment on Running Ubuntu on the Sony VAIO SZ2XP by Martin Wolf

Martin Wolf — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 06:06:46 +0000

Extended warranties are usually a bad deal for the customer (and a good deal for the vendor, which is why they tend to hard-sell them). Especially for laptops, since a) most of the kinds of damage which you can expect to get after the default warranty period, are very easy for the manufacturer to blame on “normal wear and tear”, and b) by the time the extended warranty period kicks in, you may be tempted to simply get a new laptop anyway.

IANAL, but my understanding is that by European law, consumers are entitled to products which fulfil the “reasonable expectations” which a normal person would have of them, even in the absence of a warranty. Since most people would expect a $2000 laptop to last for more than a year, this means that Sony should fix it even without the extended warranty. Good luck getting any them to honor that law, of course..

Comment on Running Ubuntu on the Sony VAIO SZ2XP by MTChaudhry

MTChaudhry — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 05:56:25 +0000

Do not buy Sony Laptop or notebook warranty.If you buy it,let’s say 4 year plan,and you have have few problems,they will tell you that they won’t service it.Even htough you still have two years left on your warranty.They will give you a lot of run around.I am dealing with it right now.I bought VGN-SZ430N for almost $2000 plus $400 for premium extended onsite service.It does not mean anything.They do not abide by the term of the contract.I would highly recommend,as a victim of this ,do not buy Vaio or atleast don’t waste your money on the extended warranty.You would be sorry>

Comment on I’m a runner! by Martin Wolf's weblog » Blog Archive » LASEK

Martin Wolf's weblog » Blog Archive » LASEK — Sun, 07 Feb 2010 14:48:36 +0000

[...] glasses served nicely to complete that picture. Over the last couple of years, however, I have been running and working out a bit, and while I will never have a movie star physique I am actually fairly [...]

Comment on Scripting Excel: can it really be this horrible? by Martin Wolf

Martin Wolf — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 23:02:30 +0000

That is a very evil trick indeed. I may just have to resort to it..

Comment on Scripting Excel: can it really be this horrible? by Superborsuk

Superborsuk — Mon, 18 Jan 2010 15:27:19 +0000

Have you ever tried to use bit masks in VBA or convert numbers?

There is very stupid trick for crappy lists in VBA. I used to put data in UI widge (combo box, etc.)t and take sorted data from it. It worked well if you have less than few thousand items and widget don’t have to be visible to do it’s work.

Comment on Running Ubuntu on the Sony VAIO SZ2XP by link wheel

link wheel — Mon, 04 Jan 2010 07:53:49 +0000

The Sony Vaio VGN SZ61 is very useful for the power saving purposes and for its intense light quality.Running Ubuntu on Sony VAIO SZ2XP provides all the good features to use it at world wide level.

Comment on Arco rocks by Preore : informations, photos, carte, vue satellite

Preore : informations, photos, carte, vue satellite — Thu, 31 Dec 2009 08:07:06 +0000

[...] (Italie)BagolinoBersoneBesenelloBezzecca Liens connexes : arco rocks(tip: if you have a car, go to croz de le niere, just outside the village of preore at a bit less [...]

Comment on Scripting Excel: can it really be this horrible? by djcb

djcb — Wed, 30 Dec 2009 17:22:29 +0000

If I remember correctly, one business reason for disallowing other languages was that MS was (is) actively licensing VBA to other companies to use as a scripting language, and they did not want to threaten that by allowing access through e.g. the Scripting Host tech.

The weird way to return function results is probably influenced by Pascal; thankfully, it’s proved to be an evolutionary dead-end.

Strangely guile (GNU’s Scheme) has never been able to catch that market. It has made some big leaps in recent times though, but I digress…