I decided to give Apple a try about a year ago when Leopard came out and bought a brand new Macbook. From the moment I got it, I liked it -- the usere interface, the applications, etc. Now, I wouldn't go as far as to say that I was a complete "convert" joining the cult of Mac, or anything like that. Anyway, all was well until last weekend, I had the laptop sitting on my coffee table, doing nothing more than spitting out live Fantasy Football stats, when all of a sudden I hear a clicking noise. "Uh oh," I thought to myself, "This can't be good." Why isn't this good you may ask? Sure, if I was typing, or using the touch pad, some kind of clicking sound may be acceptable -- but in this case, I wasn't even touching the machine. So, if it's not something user-induced then it usually means one thing: your hard drive is about to die, or may already be dead.
I ended up using the nifty online reservation system for setting up an appointment at a local Apple store, so I was able to walk right in and get the problem taken care of... but it cost me about a day in re-configuring everything, reinstalling applications and transerring all of my data back on to it again. Luckily, I back up my music and photos in three different places, so I know I shouldn't have one of those really bad moments where "all is lost." It's just all kind of frustrating since I've owned the laptop for less than a year.... while my Dell laptop (going on 5 years old) has been going strong with anything I throw at it...
Tuesday, October 21, 2008
Monday, October 6, 2008
Convenient? I think not!
My wife and I decided that it might be a good idea to switch banks (thank you, financial institution melt down) and we finally settled on Bank of America for a couple reasons: 1) We figured it's stable enough to survive this market madness and 2) There's one about half a mile from our house. Last night, for the first time we decided to make a deposit into our Bank of America checking account at the ATM and we were blindsided. The startling fact: no envelopes required. Now, at first, this may seem like a great idea (as marketed by BoA): save the planet by not wasting paper on envelopes, it even scans your checks and uses OCR to determine the amount and then prints out a receipt with the scanned images of your checks as proof of deposit.
Yeah, that's all well and good -- but here's the problem: you can only put one check (or bill in the case that it's cash) in the machine at a time. It then goes on to scan what you inputted (assuming it didn't reject it like an old vending machine) and then asks you to verify the amount. Now, this is great if you have one check or a couple bills to deposit... but what about small-business owners, waiters/waitresses (let alone regular customers) who may have a decent number of checks or bills to deposit at once? I'll tell you: it's a bad experience. The whole time you're standing there (which ends up being the time it normally takes to make one deposit TIMES the number of checks/bills to deposit), the ATM starts making loud beeping noises like a video game or something... drawing even more attention to yourself. And then, if the ATM can't figure out (via OCR) the amount on the check, you have to type it in manually, from memory... so if you don't remember the amount of a particular check in a series of checks, you're in trouble, because you could then be looking at fines from the bank... yikes.
While I do think some of the new "features" are cool -- it really doesn't add up to being beneficial most of the time. My proposed solution:
1) Keep the new "no envelope" system as a "quick deposit" type feature that you can use when your deposits are minimal.
2) Bring back the envelope system for users who have a lot to deposit at once.... so we can do one deposit, instead of 10 or 15.
3) Display the scanned image of the check when OCR fails, so you can read the amount, rather than have to recall it from memory.
That shouldn't be too hard, should it?
Yeah, that's all well and good -- but here's the problem: you can only put one check (or bill in the case that it's cash) in the machine at a time. It then goes on to scan what you inputted (assuming it didn't reject it like an old vending machine) and then asks you to verify the amount. Now, this is great if you have one check or a couple bills to deposit... but what about small-business owners, waiters/waitresses (let alone regular customers) who may have a decent number of checks or bills to deposit at once? I'll tell you: it's a bad experience. The whole time you're standing there (which ends up being the time it normally takes to make one deposit TIMES the number of checks/bills to deposit), the ATM starts making loud beeping noises like a video game or something... drawing even more attention to yourself. And then, if the ATM can't figure out (via OCR) the amount on the check, you have to type it in manually, from memory... so if you don't remember the amount of a particular check in a series of checks, you're in trouble, because you could then be looking at fines from the bank... yikes.
While I do think some of the new "features" are cool -- it really doesn't add up to being beneficial most of the time. My proposed solution:
1) Keep the new "no envelope" system as a "quick deposit" type feature that you can use when your deposits are minimal.
2) Bring back the envelope system for users who have a lot to deposit at once.... so we can do one deposit, instead of 10 or 15.
3) Display the scanned image of the check when OCR fails, so you can read the amount, rather than have to recall it from memory.
That shouldn't be too hard, should it?
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