I'm playing with Firefox 3 in its current beta form. On the surface I really like the new ui, its a nice refresh. I've had a couple of pages that seem to have compatibility issues and there seems to be a few bugs in the download tool when pausing and resuming the downloads, but hey! Its beta.There is a noticeable improvement in browsing speed, this thing is fast!

I'd love to hear your thoughts on this important new browser. Please hit the comments link below and tell me how Firefox 3 is working for you.

There are so many times on a regular basis where I am disappointed with the customer or technical support provided by someone who has sold me something. It's almost as big of a source of frustration to me that these customer service failures happen than the original problem! So, here's a few suggestions on how these issue can be handled better and perhaps you can find a bit more service from those you buy from.

Patient persistence

When something goes wrong, don't start yelling and cussing. Its the quickest way to get zero support from those you are talking to. In fact, many companies will allow their reps to discontinue even talking to you if you are behaving in an abusive manner by cussing or yelling. So, keep your cool and you'll do much better. In fact, its nearly impossible to get better service if you aren't fully rationalal and calm.

Document everything

I'd love to tell you that we live in an honest world and your word was enough to get you what you deserve. But, thats not true. The fact is if you can't prove it then it never happened. So, whenever you talk to someone in a customer service position and you feel that things may not be going well just make a note of the rep's name and contact information. A lot of times they will not give you their last name but if you get a badge or extension number and a first name they can be tracked down later if things go wrong. A lot of times you will not be able to contact that person back but the mere fact that you have their information means they will take just a little more care in dealing with you and also that you can enough information to pursue a legal case if needed. Sometimes this is enough to get the person you are working with's attention and get that service you deserve.

 Don't be afraid to be tough

Here's a woman who paid quite a bit of money for her laptop and received the worst possible customer service. Note, she documented everything, followed up on time and when she wasn't satisfied she took stronger actions to get her message to more people. Woman Sues Best Buy For $54M Over Lost Laptop. I know, you are thinking $54m is a crazy amount of money and she admits she has no hope of winning the money, rather she's trying to get her message out to force Best Buy to improve their policies. 

I know another person who wasn't happy with the service he got after a big screen tv purchase and spent the rest of the day at the front door of the store telling people how upset he was and all the details about what went wrong. Wouldn't you believe that within a few hours the store's management invited him back in and fixed his problem the right way.

You've got to remember that any company is going to push the full legal envelope and stretch that to make sure that they are not doing anything that will cost them money, even if it means they are dishonest or misleading to their customers. So, you've got to push the full, legal envelope too. If you stay within the law and the company does not you've got a fighting chance of earning proper customer service. 

Benchmarking the Benchmarks

It is time to put your money where your mouth is, or maybe where your keyboard is. HardOCP sets out to prove that real world video card testing is where it’s at. Beware, we may make you feel dirty every time your run a benchmark from here out!

Yes, the whole internet.

Do you remember the computer that beat Garry Kasparov about 11 years ago? Well, its all grown up now and it thinks that beating the entire system of webhosting is its next trick. Seriously, these IBM folks did the math and believe that their Blue Gene\P system is powerful enough, effecient enough and reliable enough to make it happen. 

I'll admit that getting 4096 processor cores into a single rack is extremely impressive but I'm not entirely sure I want the whole internet in the hands of one company. Read on for the links.

BitMicro announced a 1.6TB (thats Terabyte) solid state drive in a 3.5" size. We're talking about a drive that absolutely eclipses anything on the market both in size and in performance by a huge margin. Since this drive is being marketed at the military you can only imagine how much it will cost. 230MB\sec is the transfer rate, roughly double an average high end harddrive. 

But, seriously, I want one of these! 

Potential for 4 GPUs in one system

This just in, it looks like Apple has decided to increase the capacity of two of their hottest products, the iPhone and the iPod Touch. That makes the iPhone available in two varieties, 8 gb for $399 and 16GB for $499. The iPod Touch is now available at up to 32GB for $499 or as little as 8GB for $299 with the middle ground being taken by the 16GB iPod Touch for $399.

 I think these new release make a ton of sense when you are getting double the capacity for a modest increase in price. 

Intel announced today that their new processor, Tukwila, has surpassed the 2 billion transistor mark. The 2.0 Ghz processor is going to be a server chip rather then a desktop chip. Intel states that most of the transistors in this chip are dedicated to use in the cache rather then increased processor speed which they claim is more efficient and consumes less power then processors of higher clock speeds.

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