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	<title>MikeDVB.com</title>
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	<link>http://www.mikedvb.com</link>
	<description>Technology, Hosting, Software, and more!</description>
	<lastBuildDate>Sat, 18 Feb 2012 03:52:15 +0000</lastBuildDate>
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		<title>[Updated] &#8211; EzeeLogin Customers Beware &#8211; License and Pricing Changes without Notification (Admod.com)</title>
		<link>http://www.mikedvb.com/2012/02/15/ezeelogin-customers-beware-license-and-pricing-changes-without-notification-admod-com/</link>
		<comments>http://www.mikedvb.com/2012/02/15/ezeelogin-customers-beware-license-and-pricing-changes-without-notification-admod-com/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 15 Feb 2012 21:08:05 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>MikeDVB</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Business]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Hosting]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[News]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Technology]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.mikedvb.com/?p=499</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Update 02/17/12 at 10:42 PM EST We&#8217;ve worked all of the issues we faced out with Admod/EzeeLogin.  I&#8217;m going to leave this post live as a reminder for Admod/EzeeLogin and other companies who read this post to be as open and transparent about their actions that affect customers as possible.  Had Admod/EzeeLogin gotten in touch [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<h2>Update 02/17/12 at 10:42 PM EST</h2>
<p>We&#8217;ve worked all of the issues we faced out with Admod/EzeeLogin.  I&#8217;m going to leave this post live as a reminder for Admod/EzeeLogin and other companies who read this post to be as open and transparent about their actions that affect customers as possible.  Had Admod/EzeeLogin gotten in touch with us, and their other customers, and explained the change-over and how it does or does not affect them &#8211; this entire post could have been avoided.  On another note, had Admod /EzeeLogin responded to our ticket quickly &#8211; this post would have been avoided.  If you have any questions, comments, or concerns &#8211; feel free to make them known in the comments.</p>
<p>Continue reading if you desire, but our issues that resulted in this post have been fully rectified.</p>
<hr />
<p>If you&#8217;re currently using EzeeLogin and you signed up before the new &#8220;EzeeLogin.com&#8221; &#8211; be aware that when your current license expires there will be no option to renew it at Admod.com leaving you with no gateway.  This is apparently due them moving all of the EzeeLogin functionality / billing / licensing over to their new EzeeLogin.com domain.  While this is not a major issue in and of itself, it does require action by customers using their service prior to the new domain &#8211; and <strong><em>they sent no notices out making their existing customers aware of action required on their part.</em></strong></p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><strong><em></em></strong>When you try to log in at EzeeLogin.com using your email address from Admod.com, your address will not be found (i.e. they did not migrate over your license *or* your billing account).  This means when your license does expire &#8211; your EzeeLogin Gateway will effectively be rendered useless with no way to renew.  Had Admod/EzeeLogin contacted their existing client base to let them know they needed to sign up for a new billing account at EzeeLogin.com &#8211; then this post wouldn&#8217;t exist.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">Upon searching Admod.com for any public notices of action required by their clients, the only information I could come across was less than detailed and did not indicate that any action was required:</p>
<blockquote><p> 2011-08-08 07:07:54<br />
New website for Ezeelogin<br />
New website lauched @ www.ezeelogin.com</p></blockquote>
<p style="text-align: justify;">Taking this all a step further pricing has also increased without notice.  Prior you could get a license to connect to up to 50 servers for $42/quarter where as now $40 will only get you 10 servers on a monthly lease.  Increasing pricing is not a problem &#8211; when you let your existing customers aware of the price change.  When you increase prices without prior notice for existing customers it has the side-effect of pissing them off.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">In my personal opinion, EzeeLogin/Admod are taking these steps because they&#8217;re too comfortable.  Their actions (and lack of notifications) alone have resulted in at least three larger providers I&#8217;m aware of saying &#8220;Hell, we&#8217;ll just develop and market our own product for less then EzeeLogin.&#8221;  While Admod/EzeeLogin likely had a monopoly on this niche need due to their product working well, their apparent failure at customer notification and public relations may very well have cost them their top spot in this market.  The providers that I know of that are going to develop their own gateways have the funds and capabilities to push a product out very quickly that not only is superior, but will be priced lower.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">We reached out to Adod/EzeeLogin over 2.5 hours ago and have yet to receive a response from representatives of either site.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">Admod/Ezee &#8211; you&#8217;ve made a seriously glaring error by not notifying your (previously) quite loyal customer base of these changes.  We ourselves have been customers since July 1st, 2010.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">&#8230;. /facepalm</p>
<h2 style="text-align: justify;">Update 02/15/12 at 10:00 PM EST</h2>
<p>We finally did hear back from them, the representative that responded seems to believe that the &#8220;login&#8221; feature being removed from the old site is an oversight. They stated that we could maintain our old license through the old site although we would not be able to upgrade through the old site. Any changes to the plan would require moving to the new site/pricing (at roughly a 1500% increase).</p>
<p>I&#8217;m waiting to hear from a higher member of management to confirm this and to get some additional details as well as waiting to see if the &#8220;login&#8221; button does come back to the old site.</p>
<h2></h2>
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		<item>
		<title>iPhone 4 S, and Siri</title>
		<link>http://www.mikedvb.com/2011/10/18/iphone-4-s-and-siri/</link>
		<comments>http://www.mikedvb.com/2011/10/18/iphone-4-s-and-siri/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 19 Oct 2011 01:34:51 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>MikeDVB</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Mobile Electronics]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Technology]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.mikedvb.com/?p=488</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[I went to the Keystone Apple Store on the north side of Indianapolis, Indiana today to have them check the battery on my iPhone 4.  I felt as though the battery had been lasting me less and less time throughout the day and knowing that lithium ion batteries degrade over time I figured the battery [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://www.mikedvb.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/iPhone4S.png" rel="lightbox[488]"><img class="alignleft size-thumbnail wp-image-491" style="margin-left: 10px; margin-right: 10px; margin-top: 5px; margin-bottom: 5px;" title="iPhone 4 S" src="http://www.mikedvb.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/iPhone4S-89x150.png" alt="iPhone 4 S" width="89" height="150" /></a>I went to the Keystone Apple Store on the north side of Indianapolis, Indiana today to have them check the battery on my iPhone 4.  I felt as though the battery had been lasting me less and less time throughout the day and knowing that lithium ion batteries degrade over time I figured the battery life was just getting short.  It turns out that the battery was fine ( well within spec, considering it&#8217;s age ) and I opted not to pay $79 to have it replaced.</p>
<p>While talking with the technician I was informed that at 6 P.M. they were going to be releasing any pre-ordered iPhone 4 S&#8217; that had not been picked up and that the line was starting by the door.  At this point it was only 5:15 PM so I walked to the outer door to find that I was only second in line.  I chatted with the person in front of me whom was a very nice woman and over the next 30 minutes the line behind me grew quite quickly up to about 45 individuals.<span id="more-488"></span></p>
<p>One of the Apple Store representatives came out and started at the beginning of the line asking us what <em>flavor</em> of the iPhone 4 S we wanted (AT&amp;T, Sprint, Verizon, 16GB, 32GB, 64GB), and I was disappointed to hear that I likely would not get my hands on a 64 GB Black AT&amp;T iPhone 4 S.  My, now previous, 32 GB iPhone 4 was getting full with only around 1 GB of free space so I was looking forward to upgrading.</p>
<p>At around 6:30 PM the Apple store representatives actually started pulling us in one at a time to sell us our devices and to my surprise they had <strong>one</strong> 64 GB Black AT&amp;T iPhone 4 S which I quickly snapped up.  Overall I will be honest that I did not expect much of an improved experience but overall so far I am absolutely loving Siri and the iPhone 4 S.  The phone itself feels a bit snappier, although the iPhone 4 itself was already quite fast but the selling point for me is Siri.</p>
<p>On my 45 minute drive home I found myself using Siri to communicate with friends via text without ever having to actually look at what they said or type a single letter myself.  I&#8217;ve also found it&#8217;s extremely accurate at understanding my voice and I&#8217;ve found myself using it to enter more and more data as I&#8217;ve been using the phone.  I have to say, Siri alone, is a valid reason to move from an iPhone 4 to an iPhone 4 S.</p>
<p>At the end of the day, I wish it was an iPhone 5 with a larger screen as well as a laundry list of other upgrade and feature requests, but I can honestly say I am happy with my iPhone 4 S.</p>
<p>Now there are two feature requests, that I would really love to see integrated into iOS for iPhone/iPad:</p>
<ol>
<li><strong>The ability to have a custom tone for emails based upon email ID. (i.e. from=&#8221;thewife@comcast.net&#8221; sound=&#8221;something custom&#8221;).</strong></li>
<li><strong>The ability to set a custom tone or contact to over-ride silence.</strong></li>
</ol>
<div>I won&#8217;t be holding my breath for the second request (and I can live with not using silence often), but the first would be an exceptionally easy feature to implement and would add a level of usability to my device for enterprise purposes that I could not even begin to explain.</div>
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		<item>
		<title>Intellectual Property, Copyright, and “HostYourDream.net” &#8211; Site Ripper and Thief</title>
		<link>http://www.mikedvb.com/2011/08/25/intellectual-property-copyright-and-%e2%80%9chostyourdream-net%e2%80%9d-site-ripper-and-thief/</link>
		<comments>http://www.mikedvb.com/2011/08/25/intellectual-property-copyright-and-%e2%80%9chostyourdream-net%e2%80%9d-site-ripper-and-thief/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 25 Aug 2011 22:24:33 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>MikeDVB</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Business]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Hosting]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[host your dream]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[host your dream.net]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[hostyourdream]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[hostyourdream.net]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[ripped]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[site rip]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[stolen]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[theme]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[thief]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.mikedvb.com/?p=474</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[It was just two weeks ago when I brought to light that the provider &#8220;Coomme Hosting&#8221; was using our design illegally and today I find another provider about to use our design, again, illegally.  While it is flattering that our design is so good that everybody else is deciding to use it without permission, it [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>It was just two weeks ago when I brought to light that the provider &#8220;<a title="Intellectual Property, Copyright, and “Coomme Hosting” – Updated August 11, 6:47 PM EDT" href="http://www.mikedvb.com/2011/08/11/intellectual-property-copyright-and-coome-hosting/" target="_blank">Coomme Hosting</a>&#8221; was using our design illegally and today I find another provider about to use our design, again, illegally.  While it is flattering that our design is so good that everybody else is deciding to use it without permission, it is very depressing that these &#8220;<a title="Seeing the big picture… Why most hosting providers fail." href="http://www.mikedvb.com/2011/06/25/seeing-the-big-picture-why-most-hosting-providers-fail/" target="_blank">providers</a>&#8221; would sink to the level of blatantly stealing a design rather than creating their own or having one created for them.</p>
<p>Here is the ripped version of our site (that is not live, yet, as of this posting), side-by-side with their current site, and the MDDHosting Site.  Click on the links for full-size.</p>
<table align="center">
<tbody>
<tr>
<td><a href="http://www.mikedvb.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/HostYourDream.net_.png" rel="none" target="_blank" rel="lightbox[474]"><img class="aligncenter size-thumbnail wp-image-475" title="HostYourDream.net" src="http://www.mikedvb.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/HostYourDream.net_-150x150.png" alt="" width="150" height="150" /></a></td>
<td><a href="http://www.mikedvb.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/HostYourDream.current.png" rel="none" target="_blank" rel="lightbox[474]"><img class="aligncenter size-thumbnail wp-image-476" title="HostYourDream.current" src="http://www.mikedvb.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/HostYourDream.current-150x150.png" alt="" width="150" height="150" /></a></td>
<td><a href="http://www.mikedvb.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/MDDHosting.com_.png" rel="none" target="_blank" rel="lightbox[474]"><img class="aligncenter size-thumbnail wp-image-479" title="MDDHosting.com" src="http://www.mikedvb.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/MDDHosting.com_-150x150.png" alt="" width="150" height="150" /></a></td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<p>While I sincerely hope that this &#8220;<em>provider</em>&#8221; chooses not to use our design illegally, if they do &#8211; I will do my best to make sure any of their potential clients are aware of their illegal use of our copyrighted intellectual property.</p>
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		<title>Intellectual Property, Copyright, and &#8220;Coomme Hosting&#8221; &#8211; Updated August 11, 6:47 PM EDT</title>
		<link>http://www.mikedvb.com/2011/08/11/intellectual-property-copyright-and-coome-hosting/</link>
		<comments>http://www.mikedvb.com/2011/08/11/intellectual-property-copyright-and-coome-hosting/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 11 Aug 2011 05:27:07 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>MikeDVB</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Business]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Hosting]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Comme Hosting]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Coome Hosting]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Coomme Hosting]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Coommee Hosting Review]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Copyright]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Intellectual Property]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[KraToS]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Theft]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[xthosts]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[xthosts.com]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.mikedvb.com/?p=451</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[At MDDHosting we have worked hard over the years to build our reputation and we always put quality of service and support above appearances.  We eventually, after over 3 years in business, hired a designer to professionally create a new design for us.  The design itself was very expensive and was created by vReplay.com over [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>At MDDHosting we have worked hard over the years to build our reputation and we always put quality of service and support above appearances.  We eventually, after over 3 years in business, hired a designer to professionally create a new design for us.  The design itself was very expensive and was created by <a href="http://www.vReplay.com/" target="_blank">vReplay.com</a> over the course of several months.</p>
<p>Recently an individual associated with the domain &#8220;xthosts.com&#8221; decided to rip a copy of our design and make it available for public download.  While they haven&#8217;t realistically done anything that anybody with basic skills couldn&#8217;t do if they spent some time doing it, they did make our copyrighted intellectual property illegally available to others in a fashion which proliferates the illegal use of our design.<span id="more-451"></span></p>
<p>We knew it was only a matter of time before we would have to go on the offensive to protect our intellectual property, and that time has passed.  The &#8220;provider&#8221; going by the name &#8220;Coomme&#8221; is using an illegal copy of our design and, as such, is violating international copyright laws.  What scares me the most about this, isn&#8217;t the fact that they could damage our reputation and corporate image, but that if they couldn&#8217;t take the time to come up with their own design and they did such a horrible job of editing in their own logos, what kind of service can their &#8220;customers&#8221; expect?</p>
<p>I can only hope that anybody looking into potentially signing up with &#8220;Coomme Hosting&#8221; can come across this post and realize that the provider they were considering is knowingly using stolen property.</p>
<p>Here is a current view of MDDHosting.com and Coomee.com as of this writing.  Click on the images for full size.</p>
<table border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0">
<tbody>
<tr>
<td><a href="http://www.mikedvb.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/MDDHosting.png" rel="lightbox[451]"><img title="MDDHosting" src="http://www.mikedvb.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/MDDHosting-300x189.png" alt="" width="300" height="189" /> </a></td>
<td><a href="http://www.mikedvb.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/coommehosting.png" rel="lightbox[451]"><img class="size-medium wp-image-453 alignnone" title="coommehosting" src="http://www.mikedvb.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/coommehosting-300x189.png" alt="" width="300" height="189" /></a></td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<p>If you look closely at the logo and the arrow that begins with &#8220;Secure &amp; reliable hosting&#8221; you will see the obvious marks from the design being edited.  It sickens me to know that there are individuals who will steal so blatantly.</p>
<h2><a href="http://www.mikedvb.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/mddhosting-rip.png" rel="lightbox[451]"><img class="aligncenter size-large wp-image-456" title="mddhosting-rip" src="http://www.mikedvb.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/mddhosting-rip-565x1024.png" alt="" width="565" height="1024" /></a><strong></strong></h2>
<h2><strong>Update 08/11/2011 &#8211; 1:27 PM EDT<br />
</strong></h2>
<p>It seems that they think that simply changing some of the colors, but yet still stealing the design itself makes the site &#8220;legal&#8221;&#8230; Seriously&#8230; GET YOUR OWN DESIGN.</p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.mikedvb.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/coomme-still-ripped.png" rel="lightbox[451]"><img class="aligncenter size-large wp-image-465" title="coomme-still-ripped" src="http://www.mikedvb.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/coomme-still-ripped-941x1024.png" alt="" width="527" height="573" /></a></p>
<h2><strong>Update 08/11/2011 &#8211; 6:47 PM EDT<br />
</strong></h2>
<p>The logo has changed, although it&#8217;s still using our rounded parallelogram and dashed lines, they&#8217;ve also changed the background on the comparison boxes and the colors of the &#8220;Order Now&#8221; and &#8220;Learn More&#8221; buttons.  There is still a lot of our copyrighted material in use, but who knows, maybe by the time they&#8217;re done butchering this illegal copy of our intellectual property it won&#8217;t be recognizable?</p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.mikedvb.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/index.php-18-46.png" rel="lightbox[451]"><img class="aligncenter size-large wp-image-471" title="index.php-18-46" src="http://www.mikedvb.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/index.php-18-46-942x1024.png" alt="" width="527" height="573" /></a></p>
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		<item>
		<title>Seeing the big picture&#8230; Why most hosting providers fail.</title>
		<link>http://www.mikedvb.com/2011/06/25/seeing-the-big-picture-why-most-hosting-providers-fail/</link>
		<comments>http://www.mikedvb.com/2011/06/25/seeing-the-big-picture-why-most-hosting-providers-fail/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Sat, 25 Jun 2011 10:32:41 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>MikeDVB</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Business]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Hosting]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.mikedvb.com/?p=439</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[It&#8217;s no surprise that there are hundreds, if not thousands of new hosting providers that are started every day as there is simply little to no barrier to entry.  Anybody who has $5 to $15 can sign up for a reseller account and be their very own hosting company within minutes and this has some [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://www.mikedvb.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/company03.jpg" rel="lightbox[439]"><img class="alignleft size-thumbnail wp-image-445" style="margin: 0px 10px 0px 0px;" title="Servers" src="http://www.mikedvb.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/company03-150x150.jpg" alt="Servers" width="150" height="150" /></a>It&#8217;s no surprise that there are hundreds, if not thousands of new hosting providers that are started every day as there is simply little to no barrier to entry.  Anybody who has $5 to $15 can sign up for a reseller account and be their very own <em>hosting company</em> within minutes and this has some very unfortunate side-effects for the industry as a whole.</p>
<p>Many think that selling hosting is as simple as taking the disk and transfer allocations, splitting them up into their individual plans, and then sitting back and waiting for the money to come rolling in.  This usually ends up in the person who tried to start said <em>company</em> realizing, after a few months, that they aren&#8217;t going to get rich quick like they expected and that hosting really is a lot of work.  What happens to somebody who starts a business to get rich instead of because it&#8217;s what they are passionate about do you ask?  The answer is simple: the business folds.</p>
<p>Most new <em>hosting companies</em> are operated by individuals who have little to no business sense or experience and many times they fail to plan or to even see the big picture.  These individuals purchase a $5 to $15 per month plan and then expect to compete with the larger providers purely by cost but they fail to realize that in this industry that the less somebody pays, the more they expect from you and your service.  The individual who jumps from provider to provider looking for the best possible price tends to be the person who causes the most trouble and due to the naivety of these new <em>hosting companies</em> they become overwhelmed by cheap customers.</p>
<p>New <em>hosting companies</em> that manage to stick it out more than a year or two have a small chance of actually becoming profitable if they plan accordingly and make all of the right decisions.  Too many times have I seen a provider that <em>appeared</em> to know what they were doing but in reality they had no technical know-how and relied heavily upon friends and others in the industry to essentially run their business for them.  These <em>hosting companies</em> often will go from design to design mimicking as closely as possible, without directly copying, the providers that they themselves see as successful.  What these <em>hosting companies</em> don&#8217;t realize is that it&#8217;s not just the site design that makes the provider successful but the whole package.</p>
<p>I&#8217;ve said numerous times in the past that any company can try to copy what we do but more often than not they will fail to see the big picture and simply copying one aspect of how we operate our business will not give them the reputation and growth that we&#8217;ve worked hard to obtain over the years.  You can copy a design, you can copy an advertisement, you can post in the same forums, but none of this in and of itself will lead to success.</p>
<p>At the end of the day if you have a solid business plan, the time, the money, the desire, and the passion for running your own hosting company then you very well may succeed.  If you&#8217;re simply starting a provider in an attempt to make some quick and easy money, I suggest you stop now before you damage our industry any more than it already has been by the countless before you.</p>
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		<title>R1Soft &#8211; CDP 2.0, CDP 3.0, cPanel Integration, Delays, and Poor Support (Updated)</title>
		<link>http://www.mikedvb.com/2011/01/30/r1soft-cdp-2-0-cdp-3-0-cpanel-integration-delays-and-poor-support/</link>
		<comments>http://www.mikedvb.com/2011/01/30/r1soft-cdp-2-0-cdp-3-0-cpanel-integration-delays-and-poor-support/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Sun, 30 Jan 2011 22:04:31 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>MikeDVB</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Business]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Hosting]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Technology]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[2.0]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[3.0]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[CDP]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[CDP Agent]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[CDP2.0]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[CDP3.0]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Linux CDP]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[R1Soft]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[R1Soft CDP]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Windows CDP]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.mikedvb.com/?p=417</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Let me start by saying that R1Soft, when it works, is an excellent solution that has on a few occasions saved us from partial or complete data loss in the event of an unexpected hardware failure or other unexpected data issue.  That is about the extent of what I have to say good about R1Soft [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://www.mikedvb.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/r1soft.png" rel="lightbox[417]"><img class="alignleft size-full wp-image-419" style="margin-bottom: 5px; margin-right: 5px;" title="R1Soft Logo" src="http://www.mikedvb.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/r1soft.png" alt="R1Soft" width="167" height="44" /></a>Let me start by saying that R1Soft, when it works, is an excellent solution that has on a few occasions saved us from partial or complete data loss in the event of an unexpected hardware failure or other unexpected data issue.  That is about the extent of what I have to say good about R1Soft which is extremely unfortunate.</p>
<p>My experiences with R1Soft formally began on March 12th, 2009 when we first obtained our trial R1Soft license.  I was in contact with David Wells from R1Soft after having faced an issue with some lost MySQL databases due to a mistake made by a technician when performing some maintenance on a server.  When discussing the issue with David he made it clear that with R1Soft backing up the server not only could we have restored those destroyed databases but we would also be protected against total data loss such as a catastrophic server failure.</p>
<p>We used the original trial license until March 30th, 2009 when we purchased the R1Soft Linux CDP starter pack for $500 including 5 Linux CDP agents, 1 MySQL addon, and 1 Archiving addon.  This was an excellent deal and up until this point R1Soft had lived up to every promise and we were very happy with the software.</p>
<p>David at R1Soft mentioned CDP 3.0 was coming out soon and mentioned, if memory serves, within the next quarter.  Promises were made such as faster backups, faster restorations, more reliable operation, cPanel integration, a more streamlined interface, and a lot of other features that surely anybody else running R1Soft 2.0 would love to see.  I&#8217;ll cut straight to the point &#8211; it was nearly 2 years before the 3.0 version of the R1Soft CDP was released in <strong>beta</strong> and even then it didn&#8217;t include all of the features that were promised and was even <em>missing many of the key features of 2.0</em>.</p>
<p>R1Soft 3.0 beta was released as a &#8220;standard edition&#8221; which only allowed backing up to the same server on either a secondary disk or network mounted storage.  There was no centralized backup server and when I looked into it no bare metal restoration &#8211; both features that had been available in 2.0 for over 2 years.  When the &#8220;enterprise edition&#8221; was finally released in <strong>beta</strong>, years after it was promised, it did not include bare metal restore or cPanel integration.  You are reading this correct &#8211; basic 2.0 features were totally absent from the 3.0 version of the R1Soft CDP even with it having been released nearly 2 years after it was originally promised.</p>
<p>With version 2.0 over the years and 3.0 the short period that we&#8217;ve been using it &#8211; we&#8217;ve always had strange issues that we&#8217;ve reported that have been entirely ignored.  We&#8217;ve had issues where 2.0 would cause kernel panics, would simply fail to back up, or would fail to restore that support either stated they could not replicate, that they claim don&#8217;t exist, or that they claim will be fixed in &#8220;the next release&#8221; or &#8220;sometime soon&#8221; that still happen.  We&#8217;ve had tickets where we gave them full and complete access to a server to diagnose and reproduce the issue, view and download logs, or anything else they needed to do and gotten back canned responses telling us how to do things on <strong>WINDOWS</strong> R1Soft backup servers or agents when we run exclusively Linux and made it clear in the ticket.</p>
<p>One issue that we, as well as several providers I network with, have faced with CDP 2.0 is when an end user starts a restoration and does not select the &#8220;overwrite files&#8221; option and &#8220;overwrite failed&#8221; errors cause the agent to fail on the restoration.  Now it wouldn&#8217;t be quite as bad if the agent just failed out and quit &#8211; but it actually fails &#8220;on&#8221; and consumes a full CPU core indefinitely until an administrator manually kills the restoration process.  There are several valid reasons to do a restoration without overwriting such as if you wish to replace any deleted files inside of a directory tree from a backup without overwriting any files not deleted &#8211; this error makes this impossible.  One provider I speak with opened a ticket about this on or around April 9th, 2009 and this issue has yet to be resolved.</p>
<p>Right now R1Soft 3.0 is extremely unstable on OpenVZ kernels, and has been since it has been released.  I know of approximately 5 kernel issues that R1Soft 3.0 has on various CentOS, CloudLinux, and OpenVZ kernels that cause the backups to either simply fail, or worse, for the entire server to hang or lock up.  Not only are R1Soft agent licensed extremely expensive, but they will take your production servers OFFLINE which is <em><strong>unacceptable</strong></em>.  I&#8217;ve gotten word that these issues have been resolved and will need to go through 10 <em>business days</em> of QA testing meaning, at minimum, 2 weeks before these serious kernel incompatibilities are resolved assuming all of their testing goes well.</p>
<p>With what R1Soft charges for new licenses, charges for maintenance, and the number of licenses they&#8217;ve sold, I simply do not understand how they cannot have a solid development team that can resolve issues in a timely fashion as well as building the new revisions of the software that have been promised.  Why does it take R1Soft 2 years to go from 2.0 to 3.0 when it was promised and why is the software so ridiculously unreliable, buggy, and incomplete when it finally makes it to the market?</p>
<h2>Update 02/17/2011</h2>
<p>R1Soft 3.0 has some &#8220;kernel&#8221; issues that occasionally causes a server under specific circumstances to lock up entirely forcing a reboot.  Their development team apparently has recently just finished finding and fixing all of these issues however the next step is to push those updates through &#8220;Quality Assurance&#8221; and then they&#8217;ll be available to those using the software.  While I am all for &#8220;QA&#8221;, I&#8217;m more for us not having to reboot servers twice a week due to the backup process causing the server to hang.</p>
<p>Last night the R1Soft process killed one of our servers at around 5 AM EST and unfortunately it occurred during a period of time that did not have staff coverage. The staff member who was supposed to be watching the process that decided to go <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AWOL#Absence_without_leave">awol</a> which meant that bringing the server back online quickly fell onto my shoulders.  Coincidentally, knowing that we had staff coverage, I set my phone on silent for the first time in over two years and it just so happens that this is the night that R1Soft causes the server to hang up, while a staff member is not working like they should, and my phone is on silent.  I&#8217;m not trying to make excuses as the staff member should have been doing their job and that is definitely a failure on our part.</p>
<p>It is however a bad situation that should never have happened &#8211; if the R1Soft CDP Agent and Kernel Module would work like they&#8217;re supposed to the server never would have crashed and been offline.  While yes, the staff member certainly should have been doing their job which would have involved rebooting the server within minutes and avoiding extended downtime, ultimately the failure is due to the R1Soft Software.  I hope for R1Soft&#8217;s sake that no competitor brings a quality product to market although I dream about it every night.</p>
<p>It&#8217;s bad that a backup system that we rely on to protect our customers&#8217; data also causes us to have to make sure we have somebody awake and watching in case the backup system takes one of our servers offline.  Hopefully R1Soft will have the fixes for these issues pushed out within the next two weeks although I won&#8217;t be holding my breath.</p>
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		<slash:comments>8</slash:comments>
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		<title>Comcast &#8211; EXTREME Lack of Customer Service</title>
		<link>http://www.mikedvb.com/2010/11/10/comcast-extreme-lack-of-customer-service/</link>
		<comments>http://www.mikedvb.com/2010/11/10/comcast-extreme-lack-of-customer-service/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 10 Nov 2010 05:59:43 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>MikeDVB</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Business]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Hosting]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Technology]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Cable Service]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Comcast]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Comcast Business]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Comcast Business Class]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Comcast Cable]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Comcast Customer Service]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Comcast Digital]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Comcast Fail]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Comcast failure]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Customer Service]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Digital Cable]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Lack of Customer Service]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[xFinity]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[xFinity Cable]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.mikedvb.com/?p=397</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Let me first begin by saying that I&#8217;ve had Comcast Internet and Television service for well over 4 years and for the most part I&#8217;ve been satisfied with the service itself.  I&#8217;ve rarely had to use customer service as generally I&#8217;ve not had issues with any of my services and when I did for the [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<div id="attachment_399" class="wp-caption alignleft" style="width: 160px"><a href="http://www.mikedvb.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/ComcastBill1.png" rel="lightbox[397]"><img class="size-thumbnail wp-image-399" title="ComcastBill" src="http://www.mikedvb.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/ComcastBill1-150x150.png" alt="" width="150" height="150" /></a><p class="wp-caption-text">Comcast Bill showing $50 &quot;Unbilled Activity&quot;</p></div>
<p>Let me first begin by saying that I&#8217;ve had Comcast Internet and Television service for well over 4 years and for the most part I&#8217;ve been satisfied with the service itself.  I&#8217;ve rarely had to use customer service as generally I&#8217;ve not had issues with any of my services and when I did for the most part Comcast fixed those issues in a timely fashion.  I&#8217;m not entirely sure what has changed over the last year or so, but things have gone seriously down hill when it comes to customer service.  I&#8217;m going to do my absolute best to detail exactly what happened, how it happened, and why it happened so that you can hopefully make an informed decision as to whether you wish to go with Comcast, to continue your existing Comcast service, or to shift to/choose another provider.</p>
<p>On September 27th, 2010 my wife and I moved in to our new apartment a couple of minutes away from our old apartment and we had previously called to schedule Comcast to come out and perform a transfer of service to get our DVR Box and our Cable box online in our new apartment.  Comcast came out and performed the transfer of service free of charge and since we were moving into a larger apartment we opted to go ahead and get another digital box for one of our bedrooms while we were at it.  The technician that came out explained to me that this was his first installation where he was on his own and apologized ahead of time if it took longer than we expected.  I told the technician that I understood and that it wasn&#8217;t an issue.<span id="more-397"></span></p>
<p>The technician did what he needed to do including making the connection in the junction box at the back of the apartment building, cutting and putting ends on coaxial cables for our DVR, Cable Modem, and Digital Box, and installing a splitter for the DVR and Cable box.  The technician tested the line for the DVR and the cable modem and everything seemed to be working well so he went into the bedroom for the new digital box.  The digital box was having some issues and displaying an error code so he powered the box off and back on and it appeared to work fine so he finished up his paperwork and left.</p>
<p>About a week went by before we had a chance to use the cable box in the bedroom and when we turned on the TV it was giving the same error code it did at the original installation prompting me to call Comcast and have them come out to take a look at the box.  A technician came out the next week and at first glance he said that the cable box was dead and went ahead and swapped it out for a brand new box and told me that the issue would be resolved.  I tested the box myself and was pleased to see that the box was indeed working as it should.  The technician finished his paperwork and left and everything was fine for about a week.</p>
<p>The next week I began seeing 20% to 30% packet loss on my internet connection and I ran numerous tests to Google.com as well as several other sites and servers around the United States and abroad to ensure that it wasn&#8217;t something specific to a particular site, switch, router, or network outside of Comcast&#8217;s control.  I directly connected the modem to the computer and tested to ensure that it wasn&#8217;t the router and I switched out ethernet cables as well to ensure it wasn&#8217;t a bad cable however the issue continued.  At this point I determined that something was wrong and it wasn&#8217;t my equipment so I called and scheduled for a technician to come out and look into the issue.</p>
<p>The earliest the technician could come out was around four days later which was less than satisfactory as my livelihood requires an internet connection and I had to resort to a cellular 3G connection in the meantime.  Finally once the technician came out he hooked up his tester and made sure that our cables and ends in the wall were in good shape and he informed me that they were and that there didn&#8217;t appear to be any issues between the junction box and the wall plate in the wall.  He then proceeded to look over the coaxial cables that the original installer put in place and found that the original installer had failed to properly put the ends on the coaxial cables.  He was rather shocked to see this issue as he said it was a very simple thing to fix and very odd for it to be overlooked when putting ends onto a coaxial cable.  If my memory serves me correctly he said that the original installer neglected to put a seal on the connector, or something similar.</p>
<p>The technician fixed the cable, the one that the original installer brought and installed, and I ran my tests and the packet loss was gone and the signal to the modem was once again excellent.  Everything has been absolutely wonderful from that point until today, when I went to pay my Comcast bill.  I saw that my Comcast bill had $50 in &#8220;Unbilled Activity&#8221; which you can see by clicking on the thumbnail of the bill at the top of this post.  I had no idea what these charges were for so I called Comcast&#8217;s customer service to discuss the charges.</p>
<p>I was connected with a customer service representative who explained that the $50 charge was for the technician to come out to repair the service, and that the issue was with our equipment and not theirs.  The representative even went so far as to say that the installer had replaced a &#8220;line drop connector&#8221; however when I asked her what a &#8220;line drop connector&#8221; was she said that she didn&#8217;t know and that I would have to get in contact with a technician.  I told the representative that this was unacceptable and that there was no way that I am going to pay a charge for something if they can&#8217;t even tell me what the charge was.  I had the call escalated to a supervisor as the customer support representative couldn&#8217;t adequately explain the charge.</p>
<p>I was connected with a supervisor and she explained to me that it was to replace a connector in the face plate on the wall which didn&#8217;t happen and yes, they&#8217;re charging me $50 for a $0.50 connector.  I told the supervisor what the technician did when he came out, that he said it was indeed an installation error, and that it was a simple fix and that the technician told me that I would not be charged for the visit.  The supervisor said that it was a legitimate charge and that there was nothing that she could do about it.  At this point I was becoming extremely frustrated and I asked to be escalated to the next level supervisor at which point the individual told me that management did not take phone calls and that there was essentially nothing more that I could do.</p>
<p>I asked the supervisor to transfer me to another supervisor hoping that I would get a hold of somebody with a real sense of customer service and would at the very least get me to somebody who could resolve the issue, or advise me on how to further pursue the issue to get it resolved in a timely fashion.  The next supervisor that I spoke with on the phone simply told me that it was against company policy to escalate a phone call any further and that all they could do was escalate it on their end, but didn&#8217;t explain to me what that entailed or what to expect.  The supervisor even went so far as to actually say that he agreed with me that in this particular case this was an extreme lack of quality customer service but he told me that there was literally nothing more that he could do to help me.</p>
<p>Essentially it comes down to the fact that the original installer that was contracted by Comcast to install my service in the new apartment failed to do so correctly and I&#8217;m now being billed for the incompetence of the original installer.  When contacting Comcast customer service I&#8217;m being told that the technician that fixed the issue put a code down that caused me to be billed and since it was a legitimate code that there is nothing that they can do to waive the charge.  If Comcast doesn&#8217;t in some way, shape, or form let me know that they really do appreciate me as a customer and tell me that they are going to make this situation right, at the least, I&#8217;m going to look into alternate providers for my services.</p>
<p>My business is growing at a decent pace and I&#8217;m looking at opening a physical office location for my employees to work out of which would have been a Comcast Business connection in addition to the data and TV connections that I currently have in my apartment but at this point it looks as though Comcast is going to be potentially losing out on my future business as well as my current business.  I sincerely hope that Comcast hasn&#8217;t grown so large that they don&#8217;t care about their individual customers and don&#8217;t care if they&#8217;re unhappy, receive poor customer service, or simply choose to no longer do business with Comcast due to these reasons.</p>
<p>Comcast: make this right, or I&#8217;m going to do my absolute best in every way, shape, and form to make sure that anybody I ever have any interactions with be it business, personal, or otherwise knows exactly about your services, the lack of customer service, and everything that these issues entail.  The ball is in your court, I hope you make the right decision.</p>
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		<title>From Leasing to Owning and Colocation</title>
		<link>http://www.mikedvb.com/2010/11/07/from-leasing-to-owning-and-colocation/</link>
		<comments>http://www.mikedvb.com/2010/11/07/from-leasing-to-owning-and-colocation/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 08 Nov 2010 02:22:05 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>MikeDVB</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Business]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Hosting]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[News]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Technology]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.mikedvb.com/?p=388</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[For over three years my company has always leased its hardware from the facility in which our services were located.  For a long time we felt that it was better to pay a little more over time for the hardware in exchange for not having to make the large initial investment, not having to recycle [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><img class="alignleft size-thumbnail wp-image-393" style="margin-right: 8px;" title="Dual 5620 Server" src="http://www.mikedvb.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/2010-11-05_2258_0021-150x150.png" alt="Dual 5620 Server" width="150" height="150" />For over three years my company has always leased its hardware from the facility in which our services were located.  For a long time we felt that it was better to pay a little more over time for the hardware in exchange for not having to make the large initial investment, not having to recycle old hardware when we upgrade, and not having to cover the parts and labor for replacing failed hardware.</p>
<p>Not too long ago we decided to re-evaluate our decision to lease our hardware and ultimately decided to obtain our own fully owned hardware and to colocate that hardware in a data center facility.  The initial cost is one of the largest barriers to get over when going from leased to owned and as an example we&#8217;ve spent nearly $25,000 in new equipment alone.  We&#8217;ve bought server chassis, processors, motherboards, RAM, raid controllers, hard disks, power distribution units, and switches in order to bring our systems online at a new facility.</p>
<p>There is a lot that goes into deciding which facility you&#8217;re going to go with and it requires a lot more research and time than choosing a leased provider.  When you&#8217;re leasing you can simply order new servers somewhere else, cancel the old servers at the old provider, and shift your data over.  When you colocate your own hardware it&#8217;s not so easy to make a change like this.  You either have to double your hardware to do live transfers or you have to take the sites and services offline to physically transport the hardware from one facility to another.  All of this makes it very important for you to make sure that you&#8217;ve chosen a facility you can trust and one that you plan on doing business with for a very long time.</p>
<p>We researched facilities for several months and looked at the pricing, power, cooling, transit providers, locations, redundancy, and remote hands and ultimately settled upon <a href="http://www.handynetworks.com/" target="_blank">HandyNetworks LLC</a> based out of Denver, Colorado.  This is going to be a learning experience for myself as well as those who work for me so I&#8217;m going to do my best to post my experiences, expectations, and any surprises we face along the way.  The hardware will be online on or around November 15th, 2010 and we&#8217;ll begin transitioning customers over to the new facility starting on November 18th.</p>
<p>If there is anything particular you&#8217;d like to know about the process of choosing the facility, the transfer process, or anything else having to do with obtaining hardware and colocating &#8211; feel free to comment this post or any future posts on the subject and I&#8217;ll do my best to address your questions.</p>
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		<title>WordPress &#8220;Yet Another Related Post Plugin&#8221; or &#8220;YARPP&#8221;&#8230;</title>
		<link>http://www.mikedvb.com/2010/10/11/wordpress-yet-another-related-post-plugin-or-yarpp/</link>
		<comments>http://www.mikedvb.com/2010/10/11/wordpress-yet-another-related-post-plugin-or-yarpp/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 11 Oct 2010 22:06:53 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>MikeDVB</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Miscellaneous]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.mikedvb.com/?p=383</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[# Query_time: 9 Lock_time: 0 Rows_sent: 0 Rows_examined: 4281017 Now if you&#8217;re not a webmaster, server administrator, or developer the above line may not mean too much to you.  I understand that many people who install WordPress and dozens or more plugins really have no idea what it takes for that to all &#8220;work&#8221;.  In [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<blockquote><p># Query_time: 9 Lock_time: 0 Rows_sent: 0 Rows_examined: 4281017</p></blockquote>
<p>Now if you&#8217;re not a webmaster, server administrator, or developer the above line may not mean too much to you.  I understand that many people who install WordPress and dozens or more plugins really have no idea what it takes for that to all &#8220;work&#8221;.  In this particular case the above line is one single query made by the &#8220;Yet Another Related Post Plugin&#8221; on a WordPress database.  The query took 9 seconds and examined over <strong><em><span style="text-decoration: underline;">4.2 MILLION</span><span style="font-weight: normal; font-style: normal;"> rows of data &#8211; and this was done on a </span><span style="font-style: normal;">shared<span style="font-weight: normal;"> web hosting server.<span id="more-383"></span><br />
</span></span></em></strong></p>
<p><strong><em><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">Generally a table with several thousand rows is considered to be fairly large and more often than not those identified as abusing the MySQL server are doing queries in the 100,000 to 250,000 row range.  When investigating slower than normal query performance and higher than normal CPU consumption from the MySQL server I came across several copies of this query for one database, on one blog, by one customer.</span></span></em></strong></p>
<p><strong><em><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">In a shared environment where you&#8217;re sharing everything with others on the server including, but not limited to, the MySQL server this is simply not something that is going to be acceptable.  Any provider that wishes to provide a quality performance platform to their clients will pick up on this sort of usage and will advise the client to either drop the plugin or to upgrade to another level of service where the extreme over-usage of MySQL is less likely to cause issues to others such as on a VPS platform or where it&#8217;s guaranteed not to cause issues to others such as a dedicated server.</span></span></em></strong></p>
<p><strong><em><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">At the end of the day, there are ultimately going to be limits as to what you can or cannot do in a shared environment no matter how amazing the provider is.  My advice is to avoid the &#8220;YARPP&#8221; plugin, at least in a standard shared environment.  <em>I didn&#8217;t look to see what version of the plugin is being used so it&#8217;s possible there&#8217;s a newer version available that has a less dramatic impact on MySQL performance.</em></span></span></em></strong></p>
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		<title>Samsung High Efficiency Front Loading Washer &amp; Dryer</title>
		<link>http://www.mikedvb.com/2010/10/05/samsung-high-efficiency-front-loading-washer-dryer/</link>
		<comments>http://www.mikedvb.com/2010/10/05/samsung-high-efficiency-front-loading-washer-dryer/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 05 Oct 2010 06:58:09 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>MikeDVB</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Miscellaneous]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Technology]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Dryer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Front Loading]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[High Efficiency]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Samsung]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Washer]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.mikedvb.com/?p=375</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[So my wife and I just moved into a new apartment and either our old washer got damaged during the move or it just decided to give up the ghost.  We hooked the old set up and woke up the next morning to a huge pool of water in the laundry room!  Needless to say [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><img class="alignleft size-thumbnail wp-image-379" style="margin: 5px;" title="Samsung Washer &amp; Dryer" src="http://www.mikedvb.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/2010-10-05_1516-150x116.png" alt="" width="150" height="116" />So my wife and I just moved into a new apartment and either our old washer got damaged during the move or it just decided to give up the ghost.  We hooked the old set up and woke up the next morning to a huge pool of water in the laundry room!  Needless to say that the wife was not very happy with the situation and we began perusing craigslist.com looking for a replacement set.</p>
<p>We ended up buying a used washer and dryer that turned out to be a not-so-great purchase.  The set appeared to work fine however once we got them home and tried using them we quickly found out that the washer didn&#8217;t pump any cold water even on the &#8220;cold&#8221; setting but instead only used hot water.  The dryer also did a good job of drying but it sounded almost as if the drum was hitting the side of the dryer as it was running&#8230; Needless to say that I decided that buying a used washer and dryer wasn&#8217;t a good idea so I went to my local HHGregg store to look at a new set.</p>
<p>It&#8217;s been a long time since I&#8217;ve looked at major home appliances, at least several years, and I expected them to be around $1,000 or more per unit and was surprised to find this unit MSRP&#8217;d at $799 listed at $649 each at HHGregg!  I negotiated the price down with the salesman to $580 per unit and I feel I got a pretty good deal on the set.  I had to drive to the north side of Indianapolis, which is around a 45 minute drive from our apartment, to pick up the set.  I could have waited for the local store to get the units in stock however we had laundry that needed done and I really just wanted to bring them home that day.</p>
<p>I have to say that Samsung packed the appliances quite well!  The washer&#8217;s drum was supported from below on molded Styrofoam and the drum was held in place by four shipping bolts and spacers.  After getting the set fully unpacked and installed I ran them through an empty cycle to make sure that they were working as they should and then I got to washing laundry!</p>
<p>The washer uses an extremely low amount of water, so little that I was almost worried it wouldn&#8217;t get anything cleaned.  I quickly ran a full load through the washer and was amazed as it spun the drum up to 1,300 RPM during the spin cycle in perfect balanced harmony due to the Vibration Reduction Technology.  The washer is nearly completely silent as it does it&#8217;s job and the dryer is similar in that it&#8217;s extremely quiet.</p>
<p>At the end of the day &#8211; if you&#8217;re looking for a new washer and drier I can highly recommend Samsung appliances.  The estimated yearly operating cost of the washer is $14 if you&#8217;re using an electric water heater and $8 if using a gas powered heater.</p>
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