Depressed Rants Part 1: Asus Transformer Infinity

When someone is depressed everything can AND WILL get on their nerves, and my depression is no different. While some problems can be blown completely out of proportion while in this state, "normal" people might share my same gripes so why not put it out there.  These rants are not scheduled and are provided "as is" so little to no proof reading go into them. I'm just saying what I feel as I feel it because it helps me. And nobody else is gonna do that...

Any other day I would sing this tablet's praises but I am constantly forced to face the facts that, while on paper, this should STILL be on of the best tablets on the market, the Transformer Infinty had instead been a tablet full of frustration and shattered dreams, (literally.)

This tablet replaced a first generation iPad, an awesome tablet that I had since day one of it's release. I'm not going into a Apple vs Android debate because in the end I could really care less what popular preference or trends are. I get what works for me, that is all. I was much more impressed with the tablet-keyboard combo of the Transformer tablets after buying my wife a Transformer Prime for our anniversary. So I did a little additional research and began looking forward to the release of the Transformer Infinity, the, at the time, soon to be released HD tablet from Asus.

I waited, and waited, and waited, and waited some more for the thing to finally be released and after finally getting a hold of one I was both happy and disappointed. The tablet looked great! The screen was gorgeous, especially compared to my wife's Transformer Prime. But then as I looked closer I could see a small piece of debris underneath the screen near the center. At first I thought it was a dead pixel but no, some piece of dust managed to find it's way UNDER the screen during production. What do I do? Do I send it back complaining about a minuscule imperfection that only I would probably notice or do I live with it. I chose to live with it...

Aside from that I was impressed with its speed, and and was a huge step up from a 1st gen iPad. Also it sported the ever impressive "Ice Cream Sandwich" android update so that was a plus. I was looking forward to even more performance upgrades in the future as newer, more optimized OS updates were released.

Beginning rant...

What on earth is up with the screen flickering!! My wife doesn't experience this on her tablet. Swiping from screen to screen was a unpolished mess. "Was" being the key word, thankfully as Asus FINALLY did something about it months later. Or so I thought. Asus promises all these updates and delivers, whenever the heck they feel like it! I would assume that, at the time, the Infinity was their flagship device. For $500 it sure should have been. But then why is the cheap plastic is Transformer Tf300 the first to get updated top Jelly Bean OS while Infinity users waited, and waited, and waited.

What burns me up even more about this is that Asus has done it again! The Tf300 has the 4.2.2 Android update and Infinity users are still sitting at 4.1.1, with performance issues like screen flickering and force closings.

I have to give Asus a little credit though, because they at least act like they care by announcing updates. I was almost under the impression that they completely abandoned their product. Why? Just one month after the release of the Transformer Infinity I could bet you 5 dollars you couldn't find info on the tablet from Asus website in under 5 minutes. Instead it looked like they turned all their attention to the Google Nexus 7. Then all their attention went to the Windows 8 tablets. Ok, I get it from a advertising standpoint but that doesn't mean that a 2 month old product should be as buried on your website as it is.

My already strained relationship with this device was further tested when the screen cracked from a drop no more than 2 feet from the ground! That's Corning's Gorilla Glass 2 for you!! Impact resistant my behind!!

But fortunately I had a Zagg invisible shield (for protection!) on it, so despite giant visible cracks on my screen it is all held together nicely so that I can continue to use it until I shell out 200 dollars (which at the way things are going, I will never have) at the mall screen repair kiosk. It was by the grace of god that I even discovered that place because I searched everywhere on Asus' website for some kind of service center and I still can't find any kind of help from their site.

Lets just fast forward 4 months. (Don't worry, you wont miss much) Like I mentioned earlier the 4.2.2 update is on the tf300 and I anxiously await fixes for my Infinity, but now, I grow tired of waiting. After much searching and suggestions I decide that it may help my situation to start from scratch, by way of a system restore. It seems like an easy task, all I have to do is copy all my pictures and videos and documents to my sd card. Then I can use the backup app from Asus to backup all my apps. After a reset things should be better right?

Well... I don't know... So far so good I guess...

Then I open SuperNotes...

WHERE ARE ALL THE NOTES THAT I HAVE TAKEN WITH THIS APP!!!

(Insert about 5 curse words from every language known to man here)

Okay I was never expecting the stupid Asus Backup utility to back up EVERYTHING I put on my tablet. I knew that it would be impossible for them to anticipate all the files necessary from different apps by different programmers. But gee whiz, don't you think that a Asus backup program should be able to, I don't know, back up a app that came with the tablet!

The answer is NO. And now I lost 6 months of notes, reminders, and generally anything else that my brain can't remember, WHICH IS EVERYTHING!!! Thank you ASUS for making such a awful product!

In the end if I can get some decent functionality out of this thing i'll be happy (a seriously poor choice of words considering how I feel.) But I will never support Asus again. They sadly go on my list alongside Bestbuy, Verizon, and McDonalds that claim to be open 24 hours but need 2 hours to "reset the system for breakfast"...

Farewell Vicephotos.com

This is a blog that I have been meaning to write about for a year now.

Ever since the announcement of Apple's iCloud service, Mobileme users were made aware that their current iWeb services would be discontinued. Each member was given a free years extension of the service as well as sufficient time to find a new web host to migrate their website to. Sounds simple huh? Well here was my problem.

My Site was designed from the ground up using iWeb. That is, no existing template was used. To update my site, I had to make whatever changes I wanted through iWeb and whatever was on my mac would then replace what was once on the site. There was no way to edit your pages outside of iWeb, so if you lose the template files you created on your mac then you lose those pages on your site.

Knowing this, the smartest thing to do would be to make a back up of the files in case something was to happen. That is exactly what I did, utilizing Apple's "Time Machine" back up system. Or so I thought.

Tragedy struck late last year when the hard drive on my Mac needed to be replaced. For the first time ever I could breath a sigh of relief knowing all my important files were safe. Well, everything BUT my iWeb files. I am not the first victim of this but apparently Time Machine does not know how to back up iWeb's files.

There was no way to know this would be the case, as the idea behind Time Machine recovery is to recover your Mac to the exact moment that was backed up. No other files or programs were lost during recovery. Sadly, this meant that if I wanted to update my site I would have to redesign each page and overwrite the existing ones. This proved to be too time consuming for a site that already was going to need to be changed since I no longer provide photography services.

I figured the best option would be to let the old site expire and build a new site, focusing my film services, on a new web host. That's why June 30th will be the last day of www.vicephotos.com. If you've never been there have a peek before it's too late.

Be sure to keep a eye out for the new site, which will officially go live on Thanksgiving night 2012...

Please note: while Time Machine may have failed horribly when it came to iWeb, I can, in no way, feel justified to give a angry rant about it due to how awesome a job it did with everything else. This is one of the best ways to protect important files on a Mac and should definitely be used to its fullest. You win this round Apple... HOWEVER! I will be discussing what can happen to your iPad and iPod files after aforementioned back up takes place in the near future.

See ya next blog!