There ought to be laws against what Best Buy is doing.

I am currently helping acquaintances with their new computer. The plan is to set-up the new one and transfer the files from the old one. So they decided to pick one up from Best Buy for there was one nearby and they needed to get it before they left for vacations. Best Buy is definitely not my first choice to buy computers and I prefer not to recommend it to anyone.

There are many reasons why I do not like Best Buy and this is one of them:


Best Buy breaks the seal from the box, takes the computer out, turns the computer on, installs some Best Buy programs and reseals the box. All of these are done before the computers are sold to customers. Best Buy tries to sell the already opened computers to customers as new and adding some extra fees. Customers can always refuse to pay the extra fees.

The problem is that Best Buy does all these before the computers are being made available for sale. Best Buy breaks the seal. Best Buy turns on the computers and agreeing to the license agreement imposed by manufacturers and Microsoft. When an end user buys a computer from Best Buy, the same computer that Best Buy took out of the box and agreed to the license agreement without user’s consent. Doesn’t it mean that the end user never agrees to those license agreement?

What would the manufacturers such as Lenovo say if you call them?

I will call Lenovo and ask them the question.

 

Adobe Executives are really excited over RIM PlayBook and Motorola Xoom.

According to a highly unreliable source, Adobe Executives are really about either RIM PlayBook and Motorola Xoom. I would guess Adobe is excited about both products for one main reason: Flash Player.

I had a brief encounter with one of the Adobe Executives in 2010 and he was not a fan of Apple iPad at all.

We will see if both RIM PlayBook and Motorola Xoom can deliver great Adobe Flash experience.

Editor’s note:
The information was received back in November 2010.

Apple seeds iOS 4.3 beta to Developers.

Following the availability of iPhone on Verizon Wireless network, Apple seeds iOS 4.3 bete to Developers. Many Apple news-centric sites reported the release of iOS 4.3 beta earlier today.

iOS 4.3 beta is available for:

  • iPad
  • iPhone 4 (GSM)
  • iPhone 3GS
  • iPod touch 4th generation
  • iPod touch 3rd generation
  • Apple TV

iOS 4.3 is said to bring new features including the ability to stream video to Apple TV using AirPlay, iAd full screen banners, and HTTP Live Streaming statistics.

iOS beta 4.3 access is only available to registered Developers. Sign up at Apple Developer Center.

Google to remove h.264 support from Chrome.

According to The Chromium Blog:

…we are changing Chrome’s HTML5 <video> support to make it consistent with the codecs already supported by the open Chromium project. Specifically, we are supporting the WebM (VP8) and Theora video codecs, and will consider adding support for other high-quality open codecs in the future. Though H.264 plays an important role in video, as our goal is to enable open innovation, support for the codec will be removed and our resources directed towards completely open codec technologies.

So will Chrome still support Flash Player? Flash Player is the container for many video formats including h.264.

Does this mean Google would not support non-open/proprietary codec like h.264 but support a non-open/proprietary container like Flash?