It has been a while since I have written a telecom piece, but a recent experience with Rogers has left me with the desire to write an organized rant. Before I begin, I would like to say that all of the Rogers representatives I dealt with on the phone and in person were friendly, understanding, and easy to talk with. Because of this, I never had to raise my voice or get outwardly angry in any way.

The Pre-amble. When my girlfriend and I moved to London, Ontario back in August we signed up with Rogers on a 1-year term with the first three months being free. Yes, I understand that this was possibly the first mistake, but we Canadian’s have to deal with telecommunications term contacts all of the time. We signed up with a a local Rogers representative that acts as a liaison for out apartment building. For the first three months the service was excellent with no downtime and no issues.

The Problem. The local representative had put us on a premium (and unnecessary, for us) Internet plan that could be easily downgraded after the free three months concluded. We were assured by the representative that he would perform this task on our behalf and that we should expect a Rogers technician to come by with new hardware. As it turns out, the representative did no such thing. Countless emails and phone calls to him (Rogers support was reluctant to help us at first because it was a local rep that set up the account) yielded no response. Maybe he is no longer a Rogers employee or maybe he doesn’t like to deal with frustrated customers – I am not sure.

Anyways, after a few reluctant CSR’s I managed to get through to someone that understood our situation and was able to process the downgrades. The only catch was a long wait for a technician, but the CSR took care of that by saying that we could go to a local Rogers Plus to manually exchange the hardware. I was assured that the new hardware would be plug-and-play and should not pose any issues.

The Exchange. The next day I proceeded to go to the local Rogers Plus to carry out the exchange. After a short-wait in line I was greeted by a very friendly young woman that appeared to be relatively new to the exchange process. She took my old hardware to the back and brought up a new cable box, but had a concerned look on her face. I was advised that they were out of modems and that I would have to venture elsewhere. Not the biggest deal in the world, but I would have to venture to the other end of the city to find a store that actually had stock (yes, three stores in city greater than 350 000 people did not have modems in stock). She processed the cable box and gave me back the old modem to take to the new store.

It was at this point that either an experienced employee or manager stopped me and proceeded to give her grief regarding the new cable box as apparently both items needed to be exchanged at the same time. Back to the end of the line it was for me. When it was my turn again, the young woman attempted to return the new box, but the system would not allow her for some reason and after another awkward exchange between the other employee and the young woman I was sharply and indirectly told by the experienced employee that I should have called ahead and gone somewhere that had both items in stock. At this point the girl just gave me back the new cable box, old modem and advised that I go to the other store.

At the next store I  encountered no wait time and was quickly serviced by a very capably employee. He and his fellow worker cracked some jokes about the store I was at before and even went on to show me that they gave me an incompatible (and actually more expensive) cable box by mistake. After less than five minutes I was out of that store with the correct hardware and was again ensured that these items would be plug-and-play.

Plug-and-play. First up, the new cable box! Coax in. Power in. Hooked up to TV. Crystal clear cable! That’s right, no issue here! Now it was time for some delicious Internet. Coax in. Power in. Ethernet connected to laptop (always bypass a router to ensure service is working). Blink. Blink. Blink. No connection. Power cycle. Nothing. Hard-reset. Nothing. Tech-support time!

Tech support. There have been a number of calls to tech support, so let’s break this into individual calls. All of the techs I spoke with were super-friendly and understanding, so I won’t repeat that for each call. Also, I must say that I was only had to wait for a tech once (maybe 5 minutes) and was pleasantly surprised how how easy the Rogers automated system performed.

First call. Explained that I just received a new modem, plugged it in, and had no service. Tech performed the usual tests to ensure I had it hooked up correctly and he seemed to be impressed that I had all of the information (MAC, S/N, etc.) ready for quick communication. I was advised that the router was not properly provisioned (this will come up again…and…again…) so replication might take up to 24 hours, but usually occurs within a few hours.

Second call. After resetting the modem ever couple of hours with no luck I decided to call back (this was approximately 24 hours after the first call). This tech advised that improperly provisioned modems take 24 to 48 hours to replicate and that the previous tech was incorrect. I was advised that someone would call me when the issue was fixed so that I wouldn’t have to bother resetting the modem all day and night. Not happy, but my iPhone tethering had been tying me over and could do so for another 24 hours.

Third call. This was a quick one after 48 hours in hopes of ensuring my ticket would still be worked on. This tech was very apologetic but said that no work had been done yet. With the next day being Sunday I wasn’t overly concerned about a further delay as the cable was flowing with some football. At the conclusion of this call the tech advised that when the issue is resolved I should call billing and try to get a refund on the days without service. I had previously assumed I would be refunded for the time as well as credited for the inconvenience, but no, I would have to fight for credit.

Fourth call. 72 hours with no call and no connection. As a web-designer, gamer and online rental addict my tethering was quite limiting so my patience was wearing thin. Called again with a short wait before being connected with an amazing tech. He took the time to dig deep in hopes of seeing what was going on. As it turned out, my support ticket was still open, but the provisioning guys (I really don’t know who does what) had my ticket closed the day before because they saw no issues. Clearly this wasn’t true and I never received a call. At the conclusion of this call the tech took my number again and said that this time a tech would call WHILE they are performing the work on my modem.

Fifth call. With a new work-week starting I could no longer deal with tether speeds and bandwidth limitations. I called back to see if any progress had been made and if not ask for a technician to come by as soon as possible. Another great tech that dug into the previous tickets and provisioning issues to see that the ticket from before had ALSO been closed and that there were no issues with my modem. No call. No Internet. With this tech I was a little firmer with wanting service today as a new week was starting and the wait was starting to get ridiculous. This tech was very understanding and put me on hold a few times to find out what time a tech could get here. As it turns out the wait is more than two days, but my issue would be put in priority and a tech could show up anytime within the next day or two. At this point I asked if the modem could be faulty and asked if I could take it back and exchange it at the same store. The tech said that could be the best option as most likely the modem was DOA. Before the call ended the tech kindly provided the phone numbers of three local Rogers Plus locations where I could exchange the modem.

After the last call I proceeded to call these local stores to ensure a modem was in stock (as I ran into this problem before). As it turns out, none of the stores currently have stock. As I sat here pondering what to do I finally got an automated call from Rogers saying that my Internet issue had been fixed and that service was confirmed. Like a giddy child I quickly reset the modem in hopes of a solid cable light, but alas…blinking. No service. No Internet.

I have had a few piecemeal conversations with Rogers representatives on Twitter, but 140 characters is quite limiting. I will send them links to this post in hopes of receiving some sort of customer satisfaction, but my hopes are quite diminished. I have confirmed with billing that I can buy-out my current contract, but is the grass really greener on the other side? I will give Rogers the opportunity to make things right and sincerely hope they can do so.

I’ll keep you updated on what happens.

UPDATE: RogersElise has been in contact with me. Nice to see a responsive social media rep.

UPDATE #2: A Rogers technician came by today and after wanting to rewire the apartment I said that I thought it might just be a faulty modem. Somewhat reluctantly he replaced the modem and Internet access was back! As it turns out he did not have the correct information regarding the issue, so I am glad I was home to work through it.

UPDATE #3: I received a call from the Office of the President this evening (Rogers escalated customer service) by an extremely polite and discussion-oriented individual. We talked about what happened and a very apologetic Rogers representative offered to credit my account for the inconvenience.

While not having Internet access for almost five days is frustrating for someone working on the Web nearly 12 hours per day including weekends, all of the Rogers representatives were friendly and understanding of my situation. The issue seems to have been miscommunication on the technical side as none of the tickets submitted by those reps I spoke with were handled with care. Despite these issues I am quite happy with how Rogers made things right – by openly communicating the failures that occurred and offering incentive (nothing major, but that is besides the point) to remain a Rogers customer.

]]> http://ruraltechnocrat.com/2010/11/29/rogers-a-coherent-rant/feed/ 5 http://ruraltechnocrat.com/2009/12/03/cogeco-and-bandwidth-charges/ http://ruraltechnocrat.com/2009/12/03/cogeco-and-bandwidth-charges/#comments Thu, 03 Dec 2009 22:39:53 +0000 Cole http://ruraltechnocrat.com/?p=197

Thanks to the advancement of the Web, it is possible for anyone to share their experience with the corporate world – be it positive or negative. Many of my posts in the past have focused on the positive, but sadly it is time to turn the table.

Last week, we received the monthly cable/Internet statement, but this time something was different. Cogeco, a Canadian telecommunications firm, had charged us $31.50 for exceeding our bandwidth limit by 40.74GB in October of this year. I scrambled to the Internet usage section of the Cogeco Web portal to see that the statement did match their records. What was more interesting was that the usage did not fit our bandwidth patterns. For instance, in August of ’09 we used 37GB with 31GB in September, 100GB in October and 50GB in November.

Earlier this year Cogeco instituted an automated service that would send email warnings to customers as they reached both 85% and 100% of the monthly bandwidth cap – in May we received such a warning regarding 85% so we adjusted our usage to accommodate. I should note at this point that in May the online bandwidth monitoring tool was not functional. While I am personally against bandwidth caps, I think that such notifications are a realistic necessity for implementing a bandwidth cap. Unfortunately, after going through old emails, no notification from the month of October was found.

Let’s move forward to today, December 3 2009, when we called Cogeco support to dispute the charge as the October overage did not reflect our monthly pattern nor were we notified. The agent was firm in stating that there was nothing that could be done as it was our responsibility to monitor the bandwidth. Furthermore, we were unsuccessful at convincing the agent to let us converse with a supervisor regarding the matter.

While I respect the firmness of the agent, I see a few fundamental business mistakes in the approach:

Loyal customer. We have been loyal Cogeco customers for 11 years with both high-speed Internet and cable service subscriptions throughout our tenure. At the moment our monthly bill is $123.94, but let’s assume we have had an average bill (conservatively) of $100 over the 11 years. This represents $13 200 in revenue to Cogeco over that time period. Surely the agent must have known our tenure and the number of services we use from the telecom firm.

In fact, we have been on the fence with adding an additional service, Cogeco Phone, which would add an additional $39.99+ to our monthly bill.

Internal education. The agent repeatedly said that nothing could be done in regards to the charge. Anyone with that has either worked in a call centre or has business experience always knows that something can be done. If the agent could not do anything to further explain the situation, they should have passed the call onto someone more experienced with such an issue – perhaps a supervisor.

Beware of churn. Throughout the conversation with the agent, we said that if this is how they treat their loyal customers we would have to consider switching both of our services to Bell. One of the basic principles in business is that it is far more cost effective to maintain a current customer than gain a new one. Does Cogeco really want to lose our business over a $31.50 charge? Additionally, in the telecom business it is not only that one firm loses a customer, but that a competitor will gain one.

Fun fact – my employment at Bell, a direct Cogeco competitor

I worked as a product analyst with Bell Internet (then Sympatico) with much of my work focusing on bandwidth analysis. While we were concerned with bandwidth usage, we rarely pursued action against customers unless they were grossly abusing the service. Say, downloading more than 1TB on a 60GB/month plan – even then it was generally a warning the first time. *Please note that I am currently note employed by Bell and they very well may be charging for bandwidth overages regularly now*

Additionally, when call centre agents conversed with customers over billing issues the ARPU (average revenue per user) and years of continual service were always present so that the agent could determine how important that customer is to the business – essentially, a measure of loyalty. I firmly believe that a $31.50 charge would have been quickly dropped by other telecoms.

What should have been done. If I were a manager/director with Cogeco involved in implementing bandwidth overage charges I would have focused on notifying/educating first-time offenders. Rather than charging those that exceed the limits the first time, notify them on the monthly statement that they could have been charged $xx.xx for going over the limit by xxGB, but that the charges will be dropped as this was the first time going over.

At this point I would like to say that I am aware that some readers will ask why I am going this far over a measly $31.50 charge. Essentially, I have issues with their business practices regarding bandwidth caps. I have been on the other side before and there is definitely a better way to handle bandwidth limits. This is not a matter of $31.50, it is a matter of being a loyal customer with an very negative experience.

It is time that organizations understand that it takes a lot to gain new customers, but it takes very little to lose those most loyal. Cogeco, now is your time to make it right before it’s too late.

Apple.com is now taking advantage of HTML 5 in various WebKit-based browsers! This is fantastic news for the proliferation of HTML 5 – the replacement for HTML 4.01. I will shy away from jumping into all of the differences between HTML 4.01/DOM/XHTML and HTML 5 but the main difference, on the surface, is the multimedia capabilities of HTML 5 – most notably video. Rather than using browser plug-ins, such as Flash, to render video the browser itself will be responsible for the rendering and controls. Not only does this provide a performance increase, it also allows objects to be layered and presented in a much cleaner manner.

Geek Technica recently posted a great article, complete with the relevant screenshots, discussing Apple’s recent decision to take advantage of HTML 5 on capable browsers. I gave the videos a shot with both Firefox and Safari, and now I am even more excited for HTML 5. Exciting times are ahead!

It has been a while since I have talked about my love affair with the Canadian wireless industry, but it is time to praise WIND Mobile, yet again. In a previous post titled New Wireless – WIND Mobile, I discussed how Globalive is using the WIND brand to change the wireless industry in Canada – a great relief for many of us that are passionate about the industry.

Not only is WIND trying to change wireless, they are also changing the hiring process. A major new entity, such as WIND, must have a strong focus on quality recruiting in order to become successful in an already established industry. How are they doing this? The recruiting team has been using the power of social media to reach out to motivated and passionate job-seekers. Specifically WIND has employed the use of Facebook, Twitter and a community-focused website to establish amazing two-way communication.

Check them out!
WIND on Facebook
WIND on Twitter
WIND CEO, Ken Campbell, on Twitter
Globalive CEO, Tony Lacavera, on Twitter
WIND Careers on Twitter
WIND community site

Here is to hoping that WIND starts to hire for marketing/product/analysis roles soon!

I have received quite a number of questions regarding my move from shared hosting to a VPS, so I would like to take the time to go into a little more detail in how I justified the move and the overall process.

What is a VPS? Virtual private servers enable users to experience dedicated server-like performance, but at a discounted cost. Essentially, multiple VPS’s will exist on the same server hardware, but are each run independently thanks to operating system virtualization. For a more detailed explanation, hit up Wikipedia.

Why did I move to VPS? Cost efficiency and control were the two main reasons for the transition. On a monthly basis, I was paying $12.40 to Squarespace and a combined $11 for my two shared hosting accounts. While I am now paying over double that sum, I have a superior level of control and room to grow. When it comes to control, I am referring to the ability to install applications, enable features and reboot the server on my own. When my shared host of choice could not offer SSH, FFMPEG or Ruby, I knew that it was time to move on.

Read on for a list of things to consider when shopping around for a VPS!

Things to consider when shopping for a VPS

When you start your search for a VPS, you will most likely be overwhelmed by the differences in both resources and cost. Some VPS’s can be found at under $20, while others cost many hundreds, yet they claim to offer the same resources (bandwidth, RAM, processors, etc). The main difference between many VPS hosts is the level of service. This does not just mean responding to trouble tickets. For instance, is the VPS managed or unmanaged? How much do the little extras cost? How many IP addresses are included? Do they own the data centre themselves and where is it located? What SLA (service level agreement) is in place?

Okay, maybe that was a little too much too quickly, so let me break it down.

Managed vs unmanaged. Are you an expert when it comes to running a server from the command line? If not, then managed is the only way to go in my opinion. With a managed server, the hosts’ support staff will take care of software updates and security patching as well as help you install necessary software. Personally, I am very comfortable with the command line and have been using Linux for quite a while, but a managed host that would proactively care for my VPS was the only thing I considered. Managed hosting comes at an increased cost but, in my opinion, it is well worth it for most consumers.

Little extras. Does the hosting plan come with cPanel/WHM or Fantastico? If not, how much do the licenses cost? If you are not given more than one IP how much do additional IP’s cost? These are critical questions when pricing out the true monthly cost of a VPS. If you are looking to run your own name servers you should have at least two IP addresses. From my research, most reputable VPS hosts offer four+ dedicated IP’s with their VPS plans.

Another critical question is how overages are charged. How much is extra bandwidth? Is there “burstable” RAM available? Many hosts are fairly lenient when it comes to first-time bandwidth overages, but ask if you will be warned when you approach your cap and what happens when you do reach the top. Is the service simply disabled or does the tab start running?

Data centre. If you are looking at signing on with a major hosting company chances are that they own the data centres (location where servers are run) themselves, while smaller hosts will lease servers within large data centres. There are benefits to both – for example, a smaller host can generally offer cheaper hosting as they do not experience the overhead involved in maintaining the facility. The benefit of host-owned data centres is generally speed and support – no middlemen are required when it comes to replacing hardware.

Additionally, where is the data centre located? If most of your site visitors are from North America, it is useful to have your server located in a US or Canadian-based facility. If you are serving Europe, consider a server either in Europe or the North American East Coast. Likewise, with Asia and the West Coast.

Service level agreement (SLA). Servers do go down and hardware does fail, but how does the hosting company deal with such issues? You will see hosts brag about 99.99% up-time guarantees, but do they back up their claims? Be sure to read their SLA to see what compensation they provided to downed servers. Some hosts will offer a free month of hosting if your server is down for more than thirty minutes, while others will require the server to be down for a day before compensation kicks in. Once you narrow your decision to a few hosts, read and compare their SLA’s.

Ticket response and overall client support. As I said above, things do go wrong, but how quick is the support staff when it comes to fixing the issue? The speed at which an issue is fixed has become the main selling point for many hosts with most claiming response times of under half an hour. Is the support staff informative and friendly? For me, this is more important than response time. I have asked WiredTree a couple of questions that stemmed from general curiosity and they have been fantastic in their responses.

Before I conclude, I have had two requests to discuss how to setup a VPS. As I went with a managed solution, most of the setup was already done for me, but I do have a few pieces of advice. Updating the DNS can be a bit of a pain if you are not quite sure what you are doing. I was able to figure it out in the end, but this was the most difficult process I encountered. The host should have a control panel, outside of cPanel/WHM, that allows you do edit the DNS records for the IP’s assigned and they will most likely be able to guide you through the process. Remember that DNS updates take up to 48 hours to complete so try to not be as impatient as I was.

When it comes to maintaining your VPS, most work, assuming you are on a Linux-based VPS, is done through WebHost Manager (WHM). If you have used cPanel before you will feel right at home. I have very limited experience with WHM, but I have taken advantage of the various forums and Google Groups that discuss common WHM administration.

To those wanting to share their experiences or information and those with questions, please post your comments below.

Have a great weekend everyone!

Can you smell it? The competitive landscape of the Canadian wireless industry is finally changing. It has been no secret that Globalive has been aggressively working to bring competition to the existing mix of Bell, Telus and Rogers (and subsidiaries therein), but yesterday brought a fantastic development – the launch of the WIND brand.

For years, the Canadian wireless industry has lagged behind nearly all developed countries when it comes to wireless offerings – specifically price. WIND is hoping to innovate the way that wireless service is carried out across Canada by listening to consumers and understanding what the Canadian public wants from a wireless provider. To best facilitate this, WIND has launched a beautifully designed community-focused website that allows the public to voice their suggestions and comments. I have become an active member in the discussions and it truly appears that the WIND team cares about what is being communicated.

There is no doubt that WIND will have difficulties entering the market as Bell, Rogers and Telus (particularly Telus) are attempting to tie up Globalive’s efforts in court. Additionally, WIND is scheduled to begin rolling out their 3G network in the coming months – something that will take time, money and patience from consumers. I strongly hope that WIND will not only establish themselves as a premiere service-provider, but also bring competition and finally smarten-up the existing telecoms that have had a “free ride” for far too long.

I will be sure to post more information on Globalive and WIND as developments occur. All of the best to CEO Ken Campbell and his dedicated team!

A few days ago I upgraded to Firefox 3.5 and just yesterday I experienced some epic freezing when a poorly programmed script took over one of the tabs. Like many people, I generally have many tabs open on any given browser window so a freeze can be a big problem if the browser reloads all previous tabs, including those that are problematic. WELL, it appears that the new Firefox has a great fix for this! After the first freeze, I relaunched the browser, which restored all of the tabs and froze again. After relaunching the browser a second time I was presented with this menu.

Yes, Firefox allowed me to restore ALL of the tabs except for the one that was causing problems! I was aware that this technology was being implemented among various browser, but I was so impressed that I needed to share my experience.

Continuing from the previous post, lets move beyond the original Pentium systems and towards the era of laptops and dual core processors.

December 1999 – Celeron 433

After being jealous of friends and their Pentium II systems with the mysterious MMX instruction set we finally jumped ahead again, albeit not at the high end this time. We opted for the Celeron 433Mhz chip, a processor that was more than powerful enough for the computing we performed – largely the Internet, light media and document creation. The modem in this machine was 56K giving us slightly better speeds than the previous systems. I should also mention here that it did not take us long to switch from the image-less ‘net access to dial-up that was fully functional – this occurred around the end of 1996.

This system offered sufficient power for many of the games I wished to play, notably Age of Empires II, Roller Coast Tycoon and The Sims. Age of Empires became a popular game to play online amongst a small group of friends – there was nothing better than teaming up for a 3-on-1 assault from land and sea.

I was generally a system hog with this machine so, as my interest in programming and lack of challenge at school increased, my parents decided it was time for me to have my own system. Check out the original receipt for this Celeron 433.

September 2000 – Celeron 433 – MY FIRST COMPUTER

It was as if I were destined for a career in programming as nearly every waking moment I had was spent writing code on this machine. This was almost identical to the family computer with a slightly smaller hard drive and this time, a network card. As I recall, soon after receiving this computer, high speed Internet became available in the area and we jumped on board. For years the high speed was solely for my system with the rest of the family sharing dial-up access on the other computer.

I generally stuck to network programming with Visual Basic 6 using the then-glorious Winsock control for establishing connections and transferring data. There were definitely some “shady” programs created here, but there was also a cool program I made calledInfoChat that allowed users to create/mod/setup file transfers within a clean group chat interface. I wish that I knew where files and screenshots were as this was actually a pretty slick program that was only hampered by the terrible VB6run-time . Another cool program I made was a 3D simulator that complimented a physics project that I made for one of the teaching greats, Mr.Stover (Stovedog, if you read this email me…I haven’t been able to track you down).

Other than coding, I generally continued my previous usage pattern with occasional gaming, media hogging using eDonkey and chatting with friends. This system also marked another big step in my computer past as the installation of Corel Linux began my love for all things open source, particularly Debian – I suppose that you could say I was apt. While similar to the previous system, the receipt shows a few of the minor differences.

Fall 2001 – PIII 800

This was more-so an upgrade to the previous system, but with a substantial boost in power. This system took an absolute beating over the years, but was probably the most fun I have ever had with a computer. With the ability of the motherboard and power supply toaccommodate the Pentium III chip this upgrade made a lot of sense as the newly released Pentium 4′s were out of budget – of course, my good friend Mike had one of those P4′s and I still recall the jealousy.

Anyways, I gradually added a DVD drive, CD burner, more RAM and a top-of-the-line video card before realizing that this beautiful Coppermine chip could be overclocked like mad so I could run the chip beyond spec with an acceptable amount of heat. I continued my obsession with programming, but also go into much more graphic-intensive games like Medal of Honor: Allied Assault and my favourite video game ever, The Elders Scrolls III: Morrowind.

This upgraded system was running on Windows XP, beta at the beginning, but I often used the Knoppix live CD Debian system for those times I needed to rock the ‘nux. Even as I bought new computers this system ran beautifully until one of my university roommates (yeah, YOU Andrew) did something that rendered it useless. Before Andrew’s ability to destroy everything he touched developed, my other roommate, Jody (now living in a forest in rural New York state), and I decided we needed to ruin the beautiful NASA paint job so that we could match the system to a lovely living room cabinet. I urge you to check out the photostream of the monstrosity we created – note the ninja drives, 2600 magazines and what we were told was an original painting that was really a copy of a default Windows background.

July 2003 – Inspiron 8500

The biggest purchase of my life was this $3500 15.4″ beast! This laptop was purchased just before heading off to university at a time when laptops were rarely seen on campus – due to the cost, I imagine. This was not just any laptop, this was a gaming laptop with 128MB video card, 1680×1050 screen, and a built-in wireless G card. The 2.4GHz Pentium 4 Mobile processor kicked out a ton of power that really took my gaming and media watching to the next level.

This computer was a huge help during those night-long group meetings and allowed me to avoid the Andrew-ridden campus computer labs.

August 2005 – AMD 64

Built to be a gaming and number crunching machine, this computer was created using inheritance money, sweat and tears. Built from the best parts affordable at the time, including a sweet 20″widescreen LCD monitor (only to be outdone by two friends shortly after), this beast still sits beside me today, albeit headless, to serve my media on demand.

This computer has been beaten and abused by 12-hour Maple calculations, serving websites, extended periods of intense gaming (Battledfield 2 and The Elders Scrolls IV: Oblivion this time around), hundred day up-times and intense overclocking. I have treated the system well by providing it with the best peripherals (Logitech MX 5000 keyboard and mouse, G5 mouse, G15 keyboard, Z5300 5.1 speakers and terabytes of hard drives) and triple boots. Hopefully I can continue to use this computer for many years to come.

March 2008 – MacBook

While the AMD 64 was running like a beast, it began to have performance issues resulting in occasional, and unwelcomed, shutdowns – this was not acceptable while doing school work, notably a massive coding project involving moving object databases and data loaders. It was time for a change and after using Linux religiously for years I opted to take my first step into the Mac world with a refurbished 13″ white MacBook. After booting the MacBook for the first time I quickly shut it down and upgraded the RAM to a full 4GB.

When choosing a system I really just wanted to experience something new – it didn’t have to be a graphics powerhouse as I already owned an Xbox 360 so I wanted something that just worked and was quiet in the classroom. Since becoming a Mac owner I have flip-flopped between OSX and Ubuntu and have been very satisfied with how media is shared from my desktop to the MacBook (and the 360, I should add) regardless of the OS I run. With the 4GB of RAM I have absolutely no complaints about power or memory usage and shutdown only when operating system updates require.

There you have it, I have encountered a lot of computers in my life time and look forward to seeing what comes next. I encourage anyone to post your early and recent experiences with computers. Thanks for reading!

I am a 25 year old that has been lucky enough to have been raised in a fairly technocentric household that was among the first to adopt computers and the Internet in our area. I should note that our house is largely surrounded by fields and did not have cable access until 1999 so this was quite the feat.

I should note that while we often had computers, the systems were never the focus of our being. When it was not raining I could not be found sitting at a desk, but would be in the nearby forests building tree forts, climbing trees to ridiculous heights, playing in a homemade quinzee or spending countless days on the golf course. I look forward to hearing the computer experiences of others.

1980 – Commodore PET

Many years before I was born, my family entered the world of computing with the Commodore PET. This was not a family-owned system, but one that my father, a grade eight teacher, would bring home on weekends and in the summer. The PET was largely used by my father who was taking a course on computers in the classroom and would write programs to do complex calculations – you know, like the circumference of a circle. Interestingly, I have been told that this was the only computer in the entire school. Quite the all-in-one system for 1980 if you ask me.

Late 1982 – Commodore 64

A system that has been near and dear to my heart, but I recently found out that I did not really experience it as a child. My parents, along with another family, came together to purchase the recently released wonder that was the Commodore 64 . The system was purchased for around $600 along with a tape drive that looks like a cassette recorder (well, that is basically what it is, I suppose).

Soon after, the Commodore 1541 floppy drive was purchased at tremendous cost, but expanding the capabilities of the system substantially. The C64 meticulously switched between the two families every couple of weeks, but, after a while, interest in the system was lost – perhaps due to the loading times or television hookup requirement.

Funny enough, the system now lives in my closet in its original box with three 1541 floppy drives, hundreds of floppy disks and a box full of accessories. It has been about five years since I gave the system a run, but it is always interesting to pull out the box to show visitors this piece of computer history. One of these days I will have to boot the system up.

1984 – Various Systems

This period of seven years is where I began my love for computers. While we did not have a permanent computer at home (although I swear I used that C64 as a wee lad), my father did bring home various systems from school for use in the summer. I recall playing games like Dig Dug, Frogger, and Pitfall on the systems, some of which may have been game systems borrowed from friends rather than full-out computers. While this period is somewhat a blur, I do remember playing games like Cross Country Canada, Midnight Rescue and What’s My Angle at school as well as at home in the summer.

December 1991 – 286

A family Christmas present in 1991, this is the first system I remember using on my own and where my passion for computing began. From navigating DOS Shell to create banners in Banner Mania, to playing Links: The Challenge of Golf and the original Duke Nukem – this system was a beast with the upgraded 90 megabyte hard drive, an extra 1 megabyte of RAM and the before-its-time 1.44 inch floppy drive. Be sure to check out the original receipt.

The 286 was upgraded a fair number of times before the next major purchase. Such upgrades include the move to Windows 3.1, the addition of more storage and other upgrades that have since been forgotten.

December 1995 – 486 DX4

The next major system bypassed the 386 era and went right to the ultra-high-end 486 DX4. I recall, although I may be wrong, that this was a Windows 3.1 system from the start, but was relatively quickly converted to the awe-inspiring Windows 95. The biggest changes between this system and the 286 was how multimedia was handled. I would spend hours researching and watching videos that were included on the Groliers Encyclopedia CD-ROM, listening to music CD’s and recording sounds that I could then assign to system actions.

The 486 period presented us with an opportunity to use free Internet that could be accessed by Ontario teachers. We purchased a used external 14.4k modem that after a short period of time burnt out so we upgraded to a 28.8k modem, again external. The Internet access we had blocked all images to save bandwidth, but this text-only network provided us with plenty of information, news, and most importantly, email.

On the games side of things, I rocked Rise of the Triads (often with the God mode cheat), Links LS golf, NASCAR Racing, and the bane of my early computing existence, NHL 1996. Our computer was capable of playing the game, but it took boot disks and tweaks to get it to work as it should. Overall, a great system that really expanded our ability to gather information thanks to Groliers and the Internet. Again, the original receipt has been salvaged.

Late 1997 – Pentium 166

A system that I remember quite well, but have not found any paperwork regarding the specifications. This was a Windows 95 system from the beginning and was largely used by me for school work, music and the Internet, notably ICQ and Napster. Countless fights with my sister, whose phone line was used for Internet access, and replacing modem after modem as they died off made this system a joy to use. Downloading music at terribly slow speeds and playing it back in Winamp while chatting with high school friends on ICQ (#30788392) and Microsoft Comic Chat was what filled my nights. Having a computer with Internet acess at this time allowed me to take advantage of the growing number of applications that used the baud to connect individuals world-wide.

That concludes the first part of this series and the history of computing within my family. The next part will go further into my personal development with computers and should be out in a couple of days. In the meantime, I encourage you to comment on your experiences with early computing.

CHECK OUT PART 2!