02 May 2002

I received a call from a Netvigator (one of the two ISPs I use) salesperson about half an hour ago, about my ADSL broadband subscription (HK$298 for around 50/100? hours a month). It appears that my commitment contract has expired. I am now free to discontinue the service. They would however be glad to sell me another contract of 14 months for HK$298 per month unlimited usage. In additional, it will be free for four of these 14 months. I told her that I thought 14 months of commitment was just too long, and other ISPs were doing much better deals (I was pulling her leg of course. i-Cable and HKBN are both cheaper, but as a part-time SOHO I wouldn't want to be with them), and she immediately went on to another option: 12 months contract, HK$198 per month unlimited usage, also with some free months thrown in. I immediately complained that it wasn't the right way to do business and I felt cheated. I have been with Netvigator BB for over two years now, and since it goes onto my credit card, I haven't missed a single month of subscription, so I consider myself a good customer. As a part-time computer consultant myself, I value customer relations highly. I am more willing to give my good old customers special deals and bend over backwards for them than newer customers who are not as committed. Quite the reverse with Netvigator. If I had accepted their first offer, I would have accepted the less-favourable offer. So I called up the fine folks at HKNet (the other ISP I use) and signed up for the special offer of a 12 months contract for upgrading my line to 3MB. 11:14:59 PM

I have been checking out the website of the Hong Kong Public Libraries. The Chinese version of the website has one major problem: it doesn't contain the proper encoding type, so non-Chinese browsers would see lots of garbage on the website unless the character encoding is manually set. Silly mistake. However, I'll leave the general layout/organization and usabilty comments for another time. The library system itself is quite impressive, and is a very valuable resource for self-improvement. In the Tuen Mun Public Library there is a computer room with about a few dozen Internet-connected computers for public access. This is a good thing(TM). However, it is so popular that the room is always full. I think the Chief Librarian should consider installing 802.11b wireless ethernet in all public libraries. Laptops are getting cheaper these days and the cost for a 802.11b wireless ethernet card is very reasonable. A lot of people could afford them. It would not be unreasonable for someone to walk in a public library with his/her laptop and start working, taking advantage of all the resources the public library has to offer. It would be good if this person could access the Internet from his/her laptop. A good reliable access point with an omnidirectional antenna is around HK$2.5K to HK$3K. I suspect that 2 access points would be good for covering the whole area of one floor of the Tuen Mun Public Library. We can have as many as 253 computers attached to the library wireless network on each floor, and the total cost for the installation should be no more than HK$10K for the two access points for each floor. HK$10K would buy two new computers, but we all know that the maintenance for public-access computers are expensive: keyboards don't last very long, and they go obsolete relatively quickly. OTOH maintenance for the wireless network should be easy and inexpensive, and the network itself should have a much longer life. A wireless ethernet network at the Public Library would no doubt strengthen it as a centre for self-improvement. Public access computers should of course still be available for those without laptops, or under-privileged folks. Who do I speak to for this? 12:45:30 AM