Updating a Garmin Nuvi? Got "No detailed maps found that support routing. The nuvi cannot be used without them"?

Then you are probably really *(%^ off right now!  And you have probably found that when connected to your computer, the Nuvi does not show as an attached device.

However, I have a solution for you.

The update to your Nuvi failed, and the maps are not on it.

Take your Nuvi, and press on the message (which nearly fills the screen) for about 5-10 seconds.  The message will then disappear.  At this point you (if you have a password on it) will have to unlock the device.

Then attach it to your computer, it should now appear, and the updates (using garmin express probably) will then continue and complete.

Your brick should now be functional again.

#NetGear, #ReadyNAS, virtualisation and it's support penalties (a draft from a few months ago)

I'm writing as a technician in the US is fixing a NetGear ReadyNAS. At 2:28 in the morning.

We don't yet know what went wrong, but we do know it stopped talking to the LAN for management and the Private SAN about 21 1/2 hours ago.

I got it working again by lunchtime, but then about 90 minutes later it dropped out. Permanently it seemed, so it was time to call out the big guns.

A tech support call later had someone on the phone from Holland to help sort things out, but that introduced some fun.

As the NAS supported the infrastructure at this site, including the gateway server, and email - there was to be no email, and no remote control sessions in the normal course of events,

And, as the ADSL links are in the other building a physical link into the back of the router was not possible.

This is what I needed to have working:
-1. A tablet working and connected to the Internet without using the main LAN
0. An email account (outlook.com at the moment) through which I can send and receive emails outside the infrastructure to the support team.
1. A laptop connected to the DMZ directly (which is physical, not virtual) and able to connect to the Internet.
2. A wireless connection to the internal LAN that could attempt to talk to the management interface of the ReadyNAS.
3. A serial cable to plug into the ReadyNAS for telnet connection and direct management.
4. A USB to serial UART converter
5. The drivers for the converter!!!
6. Network cables that would reach from the laptop to the ReadyNAS, from the laptop to the DM'S Hub, and from the ReadyNAS to the DMZ hub.
7. Patience (there was a nearly 4 hour break in communications with support when they did not answer my updates or emails #fail
8. Access to http://www.readynas.com/kb/faq/boot/how_do_i_use_the_boot_menu for instructions on how to reboot the ReadyNAS into different modes (watch out for factory reset!!!)

So, would you be able to get this running in under an hour?
Do you even have a serial cable in the office now?
If you do, do you have a computer (that you can then connect to the Internet) with a serial port on it?

Thankfully I did, but I might easily not have.

#Microsoft, your .NET patching is really beginning to annoy

You know the score, you install or update something within the .NET framework and that friendly mscorsvw.exe kicks off recompiling assemblies for you (a good thing) and takes up nearly all your CPU.

But when you have an occasionally used machine, it might be nice if it did not do it for each of 10-20 patches for the framework.  And not in turn for each one.  It’s bloody annoying, especially when that machine has been turned on especially for an unplanned piece of work.

Is there a good reason it cannot be run once, after the last patch is applied?  Or is that just too sensible…

(added later)

Yes I know you can park the jobs, or run them later, or drop the priority.  But the whole point of the patching is to be done under the covers, and just done seamlessly and easily.  Not to intrude so much!

London 2012 - a decent app, but wasting valuable screen space for this...

Strewth, what a bad idea. I have the app,why prompt me to get it?

A bank's definition of crime

Last week one of my pieces of plastic was compromised.  More will come out later, but in the meantime I thought you might enjoy this.

During the course of a 2 hours on the phone today trying to sort out issues, I was advised that the bank does not regard a fraud as having taken place if their systems prevent (or their customers prevent) a fraudulent transaction from reaching a transaction on your bank statement.

So that’s it then, a crime is only a crime when it is successful.  We can kiss goodbye to all convictions for conspiracy to rob a bank.

Verified By Visa - a security joke. But, by the way, their normal UK landline is 0247 684 2063

If you use a credit or debit card online you’ll probably have come up against Verified by Visa or MasterCard’s equivalent.  It’s a scheme to have a frame in a browser page managed by the credit card provider (instead of the retail outlet) to do a password check.

I’ve always thought it security theatre.

It pretty much is.

Today a card of mine was compromised.  I performed a legitimate online transaction at easyJet at 12:02, with a card that has not been used online (other than at the Bank’s own banking site, and the DVLA) in over three months, or in an ATM since 25^th October – it’s specifically for riskier online transactions which are few and far between for me.  Within a few minutes someone had my card details and the following transactions were attempted

• 12:04pm (2 minutes later!!!) £5 at a wildlife park – this went through
• At 12:07 just under £2k to a Barclaycard account (not mine) – this was blocked
• At 12:20 86p at Experian – this went through
• At 12:36 a second attempt at the Barclaycard account – still blocked

As this is the second time a card has been compromised so soon after using easyJet I’ll leave it to your imagination what I think of them.  Of course it is conceivable that some other route to compromise may have occurred – but this is the *second* time exactly the same thing has happened with a rarely used card used at easyJet.  So I know where I think it’s happening.

However, whilst this was going on I received an email from Verified By Visa at 12:35 saying my password had been changed – and if not to contact them on a premium rate number (which various internet reports indicate an extension hold time for profit).   See below (a couple of details removed) - would you think this was a genuine email or a scam?  Note especially the unmatched domain name, and the over 2 years old BT call fee statement!

So I binged the number (0870 156 6485) and found a normal landline number to call (and also verified it at Barclays own website).  The double advantage of the 0247 number is that I can use free mobile phone minutes as well.

The net result was that the card was eventually blocked.  But honestly – what is the point of a secondary layer of security on a system that can be completely compromised by someone with only the already used credit card details?

OK, receiving the email did give me a prompt that something was up, but very poorly due to the format, content and address.  But the fraud detection at the bank had already done that in effect by blocking transactions.  Shouldn’t the reset of the password at least require email confirmation or a known fact BEFORE completing?

FWIW the security question at the bank’s call centre were better – they picked a random DD or 2 that I pay and made me confirm details about the recipient/amount.  Now that was sensible.

Hacked off.

No #Symantec, I don't want to find the original ISO file right now #fail

After a somewhat traumatic 24 hours recovering from an unexpected 15 hours power outage at the office (when of course, I wasn’t there). Stuff™ needed to be done.

 

One of these was catching up with why the Backup Exec 2010 R3 installation wasn’t patching on my last physical server (the one with the tape drive attached).

 

So I ran LiveUpdate and it just failed.  No meaningful reasons, just failed.

 

So I ran the update again, but this time checked out the Patch ID’s that were needed.  Then, headed over to Symantec’s site to download them.  Both were there, and took only a short time to download. 

 

So first the latest Hotfix. About halfway through up popped a dialog box requesting the location of a file to copy.  The bad news is that it didn’t state either the file name or the location.  It was just the usual location dropdown and a browse button (apologies for no screen shot – forgot to do it).  So I browsed around and nowt worked.  So eventually I left the dropdown blank, and then hit OK.

Off it went to try to do some work, and then – hallelujah – came back with an error message that “Symantec Backup Exec for Servers.msi” was not available.

 

This MSI is, of course, on the original DVD or ISO.  So off I went and grabbed that, and got the fix to work.  Then the service pack rolled just right in.

 

I understand that at times the some files might be missing or wanted, but, why Symantec – why the hell can you not tell me the file name or the fact that it’s on the original DVD?

 

And secondly, and much more importantly – what is the use of LiveUpdate if it cannot inform the user of files/DVD/ISO that is required so that this “Automatic Patching” can actually patch, automatically.

 

Device upgrade - how #Apple was a #Fail and #Microsoft was a #Success

So yesterday was a bad day with apple.  You can read more – see the links below.  But I think the title of the post says most of it.

Apple upgrade woes

Where do itunes backups go on windows

With Apple it doesn't just work, in fact...

Oh and if you independantly download the IPSW

3 hours on tech support phone call

7 hours+ to do upgrade

Upgrade incomplete

Data lost

Result: Misery

Microsoft Upgrade works a treat

Want mango wp7 now but your network connection is not easy to get to?

0 hours on tech support

3 hours to upgrade

Upgrade complete

No data lost

Result: Happiness

Oh, PS I upgrade both of the family Satnav’s last night, Garmin’s upgrade tools worked a treat.

With #Apple it doesn't "just work", in fact it can fail and they can't help you. Don't upgrade to iOS5 without reading this.

Leaving aside the links they send you to fixes that will probably fix things, but they won’t support…

 

The iOS upgrade process is fundamentatally flawed.  At the beginning it wants to backup your device – good idea.  However (as I have discovered) it makes some pretty weird decisions about how much disk space is required – in my case it claims 20GB is required, but in fact only used about 500MB.  What I didn’t know it would do is do the backup, not verify it, and then perform the upgrade anyway.  So despite knowing the backup was smaller than expected my iPad was being upgraded anyway…

 

Because of the situation I was in, I was on the phone to Apple support when the upgrade process was finally made to start – so the backup happened and then the upgrade took place under their guidance, and then I got my iPad back.  But it was somewhat stark – no applications at all.  And no documents of in application data either.  Then the automatic restore of the iPad post upgrade failed.

 

 

So I got back onto Apple support.  The long and short of it is:

• Backups are hidden away in your application data folders on Windows machines.
• Backups may demand 20GB, but then only consume a few MB, but even if they only need a few MB you need that 20GB free first.
• The backup before an iOS upgrade may remove all previous backups so that you have no fall back to iOS 4.x
• The backup before an iOS upgrade is necessary (and if you cannot do it – you get a warning that it is a risk), however it is not verified, may fail, and you’ll not be told that the backup is bad before the Upgrade continues anywa, overwriting your setup.
• Whilst Apple completely control the environemtn (hardware, software, app admission) their Tech Support says that in-app data or settings may corrupt a backup and make recovery impossible. And that’s not their fault, or their problem to fix.  Apparantly it’s mine.

 

If you have any in application content on your apple device then you need to make sure you have alternative arrangements for its protection:

• some (like iA Writer, PhatPad etc) backup into the cloud with DropBox
• some (like Pages etc) can backup through the File Sharing in iTunes (although in my experience not all your documents are exposed and therefore available to backup under iOS 4.x)
• some will have iCloud backup after you get to iOS 5
• some have the means to email yourself settings or data (and I do this)
• some apps will store your settings in the cloud at their own services (Echofon, Feeddler using Google Reader for instance…)

 

In the end I have to accept that my iPad is little more than a factory reset, and I have to start again.  Many of my apps have settings in the cloud, or docs in the cloud so I should be OK, any that are not – I probably won’t miss (as I had been anticipating this issue and had been creating content defensively).

 

So my fix is to force App sync from iTunes to the iPad, overwriting anything there, and potentially any app data.  Once that is done, I then have the horror of rebuilding all my app group icons so that instead of 10 or more screens, I have 2 sensibly organised windows of apps that I can easily find, with the occasional exception where I use search instead.

 

I’m not stupid enough to believe that a backup should never fail and that Apple should be entirely responsible for the security and protection of my device.  But I am clever enough to know that that when a backup is a required step in an upgrade then a) the backup should be verified, b) the user should be advised of backup or verification failure and c) the user should be allowed to make an informed decision to go ahead without such a backup.

 

So – you should regard an Apple device as something that even the Apple tools may not protect, and in their own words, do not rely on a “courtesy tool” and instead make alternative arrangements for backup of app content and settings.  In the main, look for apps that allow you to use tools like DropBox et al for content, and apps like Feeddler or Echofon that can synchronise settings around the devices.

 

Finally?  I reckon if this story had been a Microsoft story instead of an Apple story…  imagine:

• Paid for Microsoft support
• An upgrade to an OS that fails
• Microsoft support talk you through using Microsoft supplied tools to backup the system and implement the upgrade
• The upgrade fails and you cannot restore your computer
• Microsoft say that the failure is no longer their responsibility and that you are on your own, and wish you good luck with it.

I think some of the media and Microsoft ecosystem might have something to say.

 

Where do iTunes backups go on a Windows PC with redirected folders? After 70 minutes with #apple support iTunes for Windows #fail again. #Mobius

Time for the iOS 5 update to hit the iPad and wanting to have the vanilla user experience I elected to wait until Apple’s servers and my middle of the rural blackout zone ISP connection to hold up long enough for iTunes to complete the download of the iOS update.

 

So, backup the pad, transfer the purchases, sync up and hit the magic Update button.

 

Despite having ½TB of free disk space the pre-upgrade backup would not proceed because there was insufficient disk space.

 

Turns out that despite Apple support's certainty that the backups should be on the C: drive, if you have redirected AppData and home folders (an entirely reasonable business decision), then iTunes insists on backups to the redirected folder.  Apple support then suggested that as iTunes and the device is more of a domestic device that this is sensible.

 

OH, SO APPLE SUPPORT THINKS AN IPAD IS NOT REALLY A BUSINESS DEVICE?????

 

So then it turns out that iTunes does not have the capability to redirect the backups anywhere.  So they send me a link to a fudge.  Thus:

Dear P J,

Thank you for contacting Apple.

Your support Advisor, <name removed>, has a follow-up message for you:

http://www.theiphoneguru.net/2010/12/30/change-itunes-backup-location/

 

Based on the details you provided, we think you might find the following information helpful:

https://appleid.apple.com

We want to help you get the best service and support for your Apple product. Please visit our award-winning Support website to find product information, tutorials, troubleshooting steps, and much more.

One catch – this is not supported by Apple.  So should I take a backup, and redirect it this way, then Apple cannot help me sort things out.  How to turn an iPad into an expensive paperweight.

 

Not acceptable.

 

We discuss it further.

 

Apple Support suggest I do my backup to iCloud (assuming I have purchased enough capacity there).  I (not so gently) observe that he is suggested I upgrade to iOS 5 to do a backup to iCloud so that I can then upgrade to iOS 5.  I am now fully on the Apple Support Mobius Strip

 

So, where does the backup go? I ask.  Some scurrying around on their information systems and eventually we discover it is not the home drive as previously stated (I knew that because I’d already looked), but the redirect Application Data folder.  There I find the backups.

 

Eventually, after further discussion we come to the conclusion that after backup I can move the folders (<redirected appdata location>\Apple Computer\MobileSync\Backup) to my local disk.  This will save my server from having an extra 20GB or so to backup each night.

 

Apple support then went on to suggest that the obfuscated location is good for security and this is why the location of the backups cannot be changed within the iTunes interface.  A red rag to a bull, we discuss.  Apple support eventually come to the conclusion that password protection of the backup might be a better security approach.  But maybe I could make a suggestion at their website.  I do, the webpage does not exist…

 

When the page works, enchantingly the only OS I can report problems on is OSX.  It seems for feedback purposes, Windows does not exist to Apple.

 

#VMware #vSA appliance, the stupidest pricing decision I've seen in a long time...

On the face of it the VMware Storage Appliance is a really good idea.

Many installations of virtualisation have a bunch of servers, but no separately installed network storage on which the VM's can be stored.  This means that VM's are tied to the host on which they are running.  Amongst other disadvantages, it means that if the host fails, the VM's go.  It's a bit like the old physical days, lose the server, lose the service.

In a decently configured SAN setup, HA will cause any guest servers to be restarted on other hosts, subject to certain conditions - but in principal provided you have both a) the capacity and b) configured it correctly; then your network servers will be back quite quickly.

If you factor in Fault Tolerance (or guest server level resilience like Exchange DAG's) then users might not even notice an outage. Perfect.

The vSA gives the owner of servers without a SAN the benefits.  Internal storage on the host servers is consolidated into a single space available to all hosts.  In the event of a host failure, the other hosts still have copies of the VM guests and can bring them back quickly.

But the conditions/requirements attached to this are somewhat, ahem, interesting,
1. You must have RAID10 configuration for the internal storage.
2. Each server must have 4 GB Ethernet ports to provide triangulated connections to the other 2 servers (the vSA is aligned with the SMB editions and only runs on 3 servers).
3. Best practice is that the vCentre should not run on the vSA.  VMware staff at VMworld suggested it run on a separate box outside the cluster - how 2008!!

The consequences of this:
1. To provide (say) 3TB of usable storage the installation will need 12TB of raw disk space.
2. You need to re-use an old box (hardware support contract anyone? RAID support anyone? Driver support anyone?) to run the vCentre server. And don't forget, this "old" box has to be 64bit!!
3. You need to invest in 6 dual port NIC's (you could get quads, but better to spread the physical risk across 2 cards per server).
4. You should have a separate GB switch to link up the vSA so that there is no LAN traffic impacting performance, and your SAN traffic is secure.

You then get an under the covers SAN running across all the hosts and provisioning storage for your VM guests.
Lets's say £100 for each dual NIC card, and £200 for each of 12 1TB drives.  That's £3,000 in total.

The alternative of say, a NetGear ReadyNAS 3200 (other SAN's are available!) with 6TB raw disk space providing about 3.5TB available in a RAID6 style configuration.  This can be got for around £3,000.  I'd put a second dual NIC card in the SAN to give resilience for the SAN connections, and another 2 resilient ports for a network management interface; say £175 (it's special, it's for a SAN).  You'd need the switch still, and I'd certainly consider two NIC cards in the server for physical resilience.  So let's say will still get the 6 dual NIC cards for £600 total again.  You might also want a pair of disks in each server to provide a RAID1 mirrored boot drive, but as you can boot ESXi from USB I'm going to say no (we are in an economy drive after all)

This means the SAN is going to set you back about £775 more than the vSA cost (or about 25%).

Oh, but wait, i forgot something. The vSA licence costs money. A shade under $8,000, or say (and I'm being generous) about £5,000.  But hold on, if you're a new customer and buying VMware for the project, they'll give you a whacking 40% discount.  So let's call it £3,000.

Your 25% saving by not buying the SAN has just turned into a 125% premium cost.

What the %^]{ were they smoking when they came up with that idea???

Not only are you paying more but:
1. Your ESX servers are spending valuable computing resources managing a virtual SAN across themselves.
2. Your ES servers are also spending valuable computing resources handling data from the virtual SAN.
3. The setup is so intertwined (vSA is managed by vCentre, as are the ESX hosts themselves) that VMware recommend you host it off the cluster - so the vCentre server is more exposed to risk, and an additional cost and burden (which I've not coated)
4. By recommending a physical vCentre server VMware are exposing you to all the problems of a physical server - which they would normally rubbish.
5. If you hosted the vCentre on the VMware cluster then if everything was shutdown, you might not be able to start your servers up again.  No risk there then :-)

I am appalled.

If the licence was a factor of 10 cheaper then it might be worth considering. But for any business looking at new kit for a virtualisation project, steer well clear.

If (as VMware said in targeting the product) you are worried about managing another box then a) you have to in this model - the vCentre and b) get some training or good support for the SAN.  If you truly think managing the SAN is going to be a problem, then managing the ESX farm as well will be. So get someone in to do it for you.

VMware - I expressed concerns directly to you this week about your perception and targeting of SMB's.  This proves it to me.

Peter

PS all numbers in the article are top of the head recollections not Internet searched latest figures. But they serve to prove the point.

In case you missed my tweets yesterday from the #VMware Licencing session...

Message from #VMware ref licencing 6. Look, honestly, did you *really* think you'd bought it?

Message from #VMware ref licencing 5. It's so complex, we've written an plugin for it!

Message from #VMware ref licencing 4. We've introduced a paradigm shift where software can alert you to the need to send us lots of money...

Message from #VMware ref licencing 3. We really thought hard about making it easy, but thought you should have to think hard too.

Message from #VMware ref licencing 2. You really need to reduce the RAM assigned to your VM's until the pips in the guest squeak.

Message from #VMware ref licencing 1. We really want you to pay for your test labs/spare VM's that you spin up. Best minimise your VM farm.

Honestly #Apple are you seriously not letting me control content on an iPad

I've had an iPad for a while, and it's my first piece of apple kit. It does what I want it to do really well, but I'm struggling to achieve a couple of things now it's been in use for a while.

1. The iTunes PC that it connected to is no more. So now iTunes insists that the iPad is managed by another computer and my only option is to wipe and start again. No thanks.
Yes I can push most of my data into the cloud with the majority of my apps, but there are some that are on the iPad only, and they don't expose their documents to the download feature in iTunes. So unless I email content to myself from the iPad, I may lose data.

What is worse, I've no way of identifying what I shall lose until it is lost. I now need to laboriously go through apps to check content.
But I suppose at least the app store now identifies what apps I've not installed.

2. Volume of content. Photos and music I have a-plenty, too much in fact. So I wanted to remove some. Seems I'm not alone in wanting to do this, and not having the means.
It seems insanity itself, that if away from the PC/Mac that "owns" the iPad then I cannot remove photos I no longer want, remove albums that are only copies of CD's I own so that I can create free space for new content. Instead my device can just run out of space and the only route is to delete apps, which by comparison is a piece of cake.
Nanny state gone mad.

Add those two together and you get a seriously frustrated user whose previous jibes at the fanbois are going to take on a much more serious edge now.

It's ridiculous that the owner cannot exercise sufficient control of their device.

Hmmm #Windows8 #IE10 Certificate issues - anyone seen incorrect revoked

I've loaded the laptop (a touchscreen one) with the dev build of Windows 8.  So far so good.  The highlights have to be
a) it works!
b) it boots in under 20 seconds (and that's with a normal BIOS, not UEFI)
c) it installed in about 15 minutes from a blank disk to a logon screen

However, working from home, I was working with Outlook on the box and got some problems so thought I would hit the OWA site for my email, when I did so, I got this:

That was a bit of a showstopper!

So I've done the usual google thing, nowt.

I've tried the Outlook Anywhere connection - fails.

I then VPN'd into the network, and hit the Exchange CAS server with the local name and logged on fine. 

So the certificate is not revoked.

Further supporting evidence is the fact that ActiveSync is still working on the phones, and I can use OWA from the iPad.

So, anyone seen this?  Got a fix?  The only clue I can think of is that the certificate is for a non-standard name; it's not for www but owa.

Ta, Peter

A marketing decision that will probably not be a triumph of hope over expectation...

Programming errors everywhere

And no one in the petrol station knows how to clear it.

I kept schtum.

Update 21:31 22/9/2011 As James has pointed out in the comments, i was wrong, so have changed the title accordingly

#LFMF #PowerCLI Get-Folder contents #PowerShell

Because a “copy folder from the Datastore browser” backup of VM files is so inefficient, I’m writing a PowerShell process to improve my backups of the virtualised world.  Because I can move VM’s around onto different storage locations a hard coded “goto this datastore, download these VM’s” is going to need rewriting every time I do this.*

So I resolved to use as a starting point the Get-Folder command (and spawn a generic process for each Folder) that I have.

So I started to look at a folder (from the VMs and Templates view, not Hosts and Clusters) to do some testing on.  As the only, completely non active folder is Templates, I thought I’d start with that.

So the line of code I was looking at was something like:

Get-VM -Location (Get-Folder Templates) | Sort Name)

However I was getting nothing back, the code would run (there’s a lot more, but I won’t bore you with it until it’s all working), and there was a null result.  I didn’t quite spend days and days looking at it (see King Crimson - Indiscipline, Lyrics here), but I did spend quite a while thinking I’d got something wrong.

Then I had a thought – isn’t there a Get-Template command too?

Coded like this:
Get-Template -Location (Get-Folder Templates) | Sort Name)

I get some results.  Stupid of me to test a folder with wholly atypical contents

More later!

*I know some will wonder why I take flat file backups of VM’s.  It’s because I’m paranoid OK?  I copy them to external USB/FireWire drives for complete recoverability.  It’s not like I do it every day or anything

What are #HP support returns smoking?

Yesterday I confirmed a diagnosis of a failed disk in a server. As it was under extended warranty I placed the call, got speedy agreement that the disk was U/S (the controller was reporting imminent failure); and the NBD replacement was arranged. So far, so good.

So today we are expecting the replacement which will, amongst other things, provide the returns packaging.

So I why, I wonder, did HP support email at 9:41 this morning complaining that the failed disk had not yet been returned? Their own call records should show that delivery is scheduled sometime today.

So soon after the TouchPad debacle, strategy changes, et al; HP's reputation at Corylus Towers is falling more rapidly than TouchPad stocks.

Look what HP tried to sell to me last night #FAIL

To: Peter Bryant
Subject: Instant savings & instant productivity from HP

Huge savings on the newest products from HP--including the all-new HP TouchPad!

HP Business Promotions for you

_______________________________________________

PERFORM, PRODUCE & PRINT
THE PRICES ARE RIGHT

_______________________________________________

NEW! HP TouchPad with webOS

WiFi 16GB
$399

WiFi 32GB
$499

Add 50GB in free storage from Box(1) and view, share & store files on-the-go

Save 15% on TouchPad accessories(2)

FREE SHIPPING

<snipped>

_______________________________________________

Talk to a U.S.-based sales specialist:
1-866-625-0242 (option 2)

_______________________________________________

Why #Amazon's #WP7 #Kindle app is a #Fail for me

Having just wasted 54 minutes on the phone to Amazon (albeit at their expense), I am no further forward.

It seems one of the books I have bought (the complete works of Charles Dickens) is one of the biggest in their library (about 22MB).  It has downloaded satisfactorily to the Kindle and the iPad app, but on the Windows Phone 7 app it repeatedly barfs.  After you have requested the download, every time you start the Kindle app (or worse – switch away and then back to it) it restarts the download.  In the wilds on 3G that could get very expensive.

Having bypassed tiers 1 and 2 in technical support by explaining I had already tried turning it off and on again, and also deregistered the device, removed the app, rebooted the phone (on more than 1 cycle) I hit a brick wall.

Firstly, explaining how the app works to technical support strikes me as a bit unprepared of Amazon.

Secondly, repeating the same diagnostics seems unlikely to suddenly fix things (when they admit they are doing nothing on their side of the fence to change the experience).

Thirdly, stating that there are so many variables in the equation that the developers might not be able to sort it out (whilst failing to acknowledge the successful download of the book on devices other than their own Kindle hardware) is not really on.

I’m sure Amazon has deep enough pockets that it could get a UK Orange HTC 7 Mozart, connect it to a Wi-Fi circuit on a 1.5Mb ADSL line (or thereabouts), and attempt to reproduce the problem.

It’s also a bit frustrating that as an IT Pro and an occasional developer they won’t permit a willing customer to engage with the next tier to help them track down and resolve the problem.

Lastly, in the modern era, it really isn’t on for them to say that I’ll “just have to hope that it gets fixed, and a future download attempt will work”.  I want to be told it is fixed, and know my next download of the book will work.

End of.