Archive

Archive for the ‘Quality Control’ Category

TOT Squid caching proxy failures

September 20th, 2009

TOT squid caching proxy error

Getting a lot of these errors today, looks like the connections limit is too low on TOT server?

admin Phuket IT Events, Quality Control , ,

Cisco Website Nightmare

August 6th, 2009

Congratulations, Cisco.

I just wanted to download a firmware update for our business switch. On your website you put me through a lot of messy windows to the excessive registration progress. I had to resubmit registration form 6 times. Congratulations! You made it absolutely sure we would never buy your products again. We prefer companie who made support EASY. Perhaps your company nose is pointing way too much upward. Goodbye…

admin Quality Control , ,

Cannot send email to self using TOT SMTP

May 27th, 2009

With several customers we are experiencing a problem when email sent to the same address as From: address through smtp.totisp.net (currently resolving to 118.175.8.10) never makes it to the destination. No errors are reported. One of these customers has both TOT and TT&T ADSL lines; sending through TT&T SMTP works and sending through TOT SMTP does not. We would like to hear from people who experience the same problem.

admin Quality Control, Technical , , ,

Some mail sent through TT&T Maxnet SMTP is delayed for many hours

April 27th, 2009

Today one of our Phuket customers asked us to investigate an email problem. They receive emails from two other Phuket companies with up to 17-hours delay. All other emails were received on time. After we checked the mail headers we saw what these two companies were sending through TT&T Maxnet SMTP server.

Excerpt (emails and some IPs changed to protect identities, times highlighted):

Received: from testing-out01.tttmaxnet.com ([202.69.137.169] helo=tttmaxnetpps.tttmaxnet.com)
by forever.phuketsolution.com with esmtp (Exim 4.69)
(envelope-from <xxx@yyy.com>)
id 1LxVlv-0000b1-O5
for aaa@bbb.com; Sat, 25 Apr 2009 07:29:38 +0700
Received: from pps.filterd (tttmaxnetpps [127.0.0.1])
by tttmaxnetpps.tttmaxnet.com (8.14.3/8.14.3) with SMTP id n3O6nxUE028614
for <aaa@bbb.com>; Fri, 24 Apr 2009 13:53:01 +0700
Received: from smtp-out01.tttmaxnet.com (smtp-out01.tttmaxnet.com [202.69.137.228])
by tttmaxnetpps.tttmaxnet.com with ESMTP id dtkmu0949-2
for <aaa@bbb.com>; Fri, 24 Apr 2009 13:53:01 +0700
Received: from aaa.bbb.ccc-ddd.dynamic.tttmaxnet.com (HELO MAIL) ([aaa.bbb.ccc.ddd])
by smtp.tttmaxnet.com with SMTP; 24 Apr 2009 13:53:00 +0700

If you experienced similar delays with TT&T Maxnet please let us know.

The proper solution for companies is to use the SMTP server from their hosting provider. Please feel free to contact us if you want to know how to set it up.

admin Quality Control, Technical , , , ,

Cheap power extenders as a fire hazard

February 17th, 2009

We see this hair-raising sights in many, many offices in Phuket. While buying expensive computer equipment, many people forget to take care about small simple things like the proper power connectors. Most of the power extender bars sold in Phuket are actually a real fire hazard. Their brass contacts are very weak and do not have enough spring action to hold the power adapters tightly. In many cases they are sparking with the slight movements of the cables. They are often located in dusty places behind the desks or cabinets; dust can be easily ignited by the spark.

People having this kind of connections at home or office are also usually suffering from constant equipment failures. Do I need to mention what most modems, routers or access points on the island are not connected to the UPS units, while they supposed to be? It’s difficult to find the proper connectors sometimes, especially for APC UPSes, but it must be done if you want your equipment to last…

Danger:

Power adapter in a cheap power extender
Power adapter hanging from the wall

Proper way:

Power adapter plugged in the proper way

The only power bars we found on Phuket what have good enough contacts are WonPro power bars sold in Home Pro:
WonPro power bar

admin Quality Control , , ,

Working conditions on keyboard factory in China

February 16th, 2009

High Tech Misery in China article describes the awful working conditions in one of the keyboard-making factories in China. This is one reason what the hardware is so inexpensive these days.

admin Quality Control , , , , , ,

Rusty notebooks

March 9th, 2008

Metal grilles beloved by Compaq/HP are not suitable for a tropical climate; this is a worst example as the grilles are contacting with the hands and the sweat make them rust very quickly.

admin Quality Control

Fake Kingston USB drive

March 9th, 2008

Was sold in China to one of our customers as 1Gb drive for a very low price; the actual capacity of the flash chip is just 64Mb. Controller is programmed to report 1Gb to the PC. Note what the markings on the flash chip are sanded off.

Fake Kingston USB Drive

admin Data Recovery, Quality Control

Tropical dangers for electronic devices

February 15th, 2008

Ants came in and ate the cooling gel on top of the chips inside this cd-rom. We saw three much worse cases, all with the Sony notebooks – probably Sony discovered some yummy recipe for the gel it is using?

Gel eaten by ants inside cd-rom

admin Quality Control

Fake Sony notebook power adapter

February 15th, 2008

The metal bars wrapped with masking tape (shown below the case) were put inside the case just to increase weight and make the adapter feel more “solid” in the hand.

Fake Sony notebook power adapter

admin Quality Control