Filed under: en/Mobile
When I visited Indonesia this month I was close to achieving mobile connectivity that is equivalent to the one I am having in Japan. In Japan almost all cellular phones provide excellent email access. I started with getting Nokia 3100 while in Indonesia and managed to succesfully set its GPRS after numerous calls to operators and friends there. I was thinking of using web-based mail but there were two problems: the GPRS cost was too expensive and Nokia 3100 could not display Japanese websites I was using to get my web-based mail. Last year I got a Japanese Sony Ericsson V802SE (known outside Japan as V800) but this phone is locked to Japan in many aspects so it was hard to make this phone works, and moreover this phone is very buggy, and for some reason I am not aware of it could not get any signal in Indonesia (I worked flawlessly in Malaysia and Singapore though). I also got Motorola A1000, which does not support Japanese natively, and I could access only Unicode-coded Japanese web sites, not the more native Shift-JIS or EUC. I managed to used this A1000 with Telkomsel’s HALO card to use GPRS and ran Agile Messenger. 
This month I got Samsung 804SS (known outside Japan as Samsung Z540) and after visit to Indosat service center I suceeded in using Matrix card for GPRS access for the first time. I could access native Japanese websites for the first time too (since 802SE failed to work in Indonesia last year) . The last remaining problem was MMS, which with I was supposed to be able to access my mails with cellular phone with Indosat’s I-Memova service. But I did not succeed in getting MMS to work while I was in Indonesia, even after sending activation SMS. After arriving back in Japan, however, after tweaking I succeeded in setting the Samsung 804SS to use I-Memova.
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Now I am supposed to be able to get and send emails on cellular phone while in Indonesia.
Filed under: en/Mobile
This blog is written live from Korean Air flight 788. The connection is via "Connexion by Boeing" over WiFi, but the plane is Airbus 330-300. 
The speed to certain speed test site in Japan is about 120Kbps, not bad considering that this is over 10,000 meters above earth. 
Filed under: notes/General
This is the tale of the two repairs.
The iPod Nano was broken first. Then, Canon LBP-2300 color laser printer was broken.
When the iPod Nano was broken, I went to Apple Japan web site and made a repair request. It was very simple, and Apple sent delivery service to pick up the broken iPod. But the result was very dissapointing, as the iPod returned with a mass produced letter saying that the iPod’s repair cannot be covered by the warranty.
There is no explanation as to what went wrong with the iPod, instead there is a pricelist of new iPod Nano, because Apple is suggesting users to replace the broken iPod with new ones! Ridiculous.
Similar inappropriate action by manufacturer happened when the LBP-2300 is broken.
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Canon says the broken part must be replaced, and it can only be done by their service staff. And the total price for repair was about 70,000 yen. This includes expensive “visit charge” and “technical expertise”, eventhough the service staff is located in this small city and the part is designed to be easily put into place. Ridiculous.
Fortunately, I am smarter than Canon. I bought a used LBP-2300 from Yahoo Auction for 10,000 yen (plus 7,000 yen shipping).
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I transfered the network module from our broken LBP-2300 to it, voila, we now have a perfectly working LBP-2300 again for much cheaper cost.
Now, of course I did no abuse I am aware of to my iPod, yet Apple is treating me ridiculously, so I wonder if I can be smarter than Apple too in looking a solution to get my iPod working again.
