city02

so i had a really weird experience yesterday when i tried to topup a family member's prepaid online for the 1st time: despite visiting a dozen different sites - they all had one flaw requiring login / registration before paying! is there no site that allows you to simply pay without providing any email address? the goal is to replicate the offline mode where you can go to any shop, provide the number and pay no password / name required ... the built in password for all credit cards is already enough security / authentication also many of the sites require you to mention the operator and circle there was one that automatically detected this based on the number which is best it can always be a default that the customer can change if incorrect finally many sites provided a text listing of the various denominations that you have to type in manually some would not provide refund if you wrote an invalid amount! why not just make this a drop down list so there is no chance of human error / typo? others charged fees instead of being free and a few even charged in US$ so there was a big difference in exchange rates of 10-20% i just want a free site in INR without any additional data other than phone and amount apparently this is very rare! anyone else have this issue yet?

BTW, i forgot to mention that its for airtel prepaid and since i have tata sky also, i did not want to visit different sites i hate logins since i don't want to provide emails i just want to be treated equally to offline customers who just pay and go they are not asked to register, provide email etc. the password rules are different and if you forget its another hassle most of them don't have any hint feature in any case why should we waste time to login if its possible to 'quick pay' directly? all cards already require password online in any case double passwords are useless i can pay my credit cards from 3rd party sites like billdesk without any login since it just fwd to your netbanking that requires login / password in any case maybe this can be the USP for a new site / app that allows any prepaid recharge without login! it would be the fastest way to pay online for multiple operators ... minimum clicks / taps should be the benchmark for all such transactional sites if login is required [and i don't think its at all] then just use 3rd party logins like google, yahoo, twitter, FB etc.

we keep our ipad2 at home since 3g on airtel and rgsm was too slow on wifi its fine but there would be others like us who did not buy it for 'snob value' an iphone / ipod is different since you will usually carry it with you most places and others will notice

i hate apple as much as the next person but as an ipad2 owner pls don't call us all dumb! apple has rarely if ever invented anything but they remain the best at redesign, repackaging, and even sales no other consumer product company in the world has as many different hits as apple its not just the most valuable company by market cap but also in profitability for a reason people are always willing to pay a premium for great design regardless of how smart they are no other manufacturer can get away without providing usb slots in their phones or tabs either obviously they are doing something right you can't fool most of the people most of the time ...

test drove the Renault fluence automatic - at about rs. 17 L on road Mumbai its obviously over priced and should flop in the market but here are the good qualities: - rear AC blowers but the indigo XL has a rear AC on/off also which is much better - superb suspension over potholed navi Mumbai roads [better than sonata gold which is better than the corolla] - very nice side and rear window pull up 'curtains' [all cars over rs. 10 L should have this option so you don't have to put illegal window tinting to avoid beggars at traffic lights - start/stop button for keyless ignition [though the pulse seems to have a better quality one with chrome trim!] - dual zone climate control since my wife likes it a few degrees colder than i do - 140 bhp vs 160 for sonata gold so its under powered for its price the stupid stuff [apart from the pricing] is that the start/stop button is awkwardly placed on the LEFT of the gear shift! it should have swapped places with the same sized 12v socket on the right its kind of retarded that they have not realised that we have right hand drive cars in india also no audio remote for the rear passenger even the controls on the steering don't have audio - just cruise control which is not used 99% of the time in this country the delhi on road of around rs. 15.5 L is a more realistic price but to get any volumes they have to bring it below rs. 15 L on road mumbai we are in the perfect negotiating position since we have 2 cars and can wait for many months lets see what they offer for exchange i plan to demand more for either car to make up for the higher price let the mind games begin ...

99% of their customers will have no need for 'poster size' image prints what they really need is a nice 3-4mp digicam with flash in a handset that costs under rs. 4 k [or upto $100 abroad] that would be a much bigger impact to their sales than any 30-40mp cam they can develop classic 'shooting for the moon while tripping up on your feet' syndrome!

apple has the best marketing, sales, profitability, and hardware design but not the best prices, value, technology or even the best interfaces which shows that cost, tech or UI is not the top 4 factors for success in consumer electronics! i hate apple's arrogance despite owning an ipad2 ... that's why apple will continue to ignore the indian market with its premium pricing and 1-2% mkt share and no itunes simply because they could not care less for such a small mkt size PS: the video posted by rajan has embedding disabled so its not viewable currently do you know that despite being the leading consumer company for some years, apple has never conducted mkt research to find out what its customers want! they think they know everything and this hubris will be their downfall ...

nope - the side slider and dual standby sim are must have requirements as mentioned above, i can give up on the touchscreen

small corrections below: i have TS+ and you can only use about 320 gb max for recording while the rest is reserved for VOD etc. i have also watched recordings over a month after unsubscribing to a channel but that maybe because i'm on ala carte instead of packages

i was tired of the hypercity sms i was getting weekly from the UK [+44?] code

we are buying a used car for the 1st time but due to the risks involved, we only bought new until now. our requirements for our second vehicle were: budget of rs. 2.5 L automatic certified loan or card payment without any fees / surcharges all these were met by first choice in thane: we are getting a 2004 sonata gold with under 45,000 km for rs. 2.63 L and 2.5% card fees waived off which is about rs. 6 k since we were ready to pay with cheque as backup we now get the bonus of frequent flyer miles with our purchase also and it covers a mumbai - delhi one way ticket on jet so the singular question most used car buyers have is did we overpay? - the hdfc insurance had an IDV of rs. 5 L which is a good start - the online valuation on carwale was rs. 4 L which is better - 12 of the 15 sonata golds being sold in mumbai were worse off in terms of age, price, or km - the best deal was one being offered for rs. 2.3 L so we paid about 15% more for peace of mind the nice thing is that mahindra buys the used cars and shares the risk with the customer instead of selling on pure commission basis like 99% of used car dealers who take virtually zero risk and pass it all on to the buyer 1st choice will never buy any car that's been in accidents, flood damaged, odometer rollback, rusted etc and do a 100 point check before purchase they also take care of all RTO formalities for a complete solution unfortunately they only offer warranties for cars below 7 years and ours was a month over but it was also priced lower my rule of thumb is rs. 10/km for 'breakeven' on your car purchase so we only have to drive it for 27,000 km more to get our 'paisa vasool' then we can get rid of it and upgrade to something else in comparison our current car has 106,000 km and still not reached breakeven for another 29,000 km so that sonata might get there sooner than our 2006 corolla! if all goes well, we will never need to buy a new car again and save a ton of money with certified used cars ... it was also my dream to be able to buy a used car on my cards without fees and i reached that goal this week! its our 1st car with a v6 engine and leather seats.

they should also standardise '0' for operator or CC rep in all IVR so we can speak with a human directly

at least airtel has 200 mb for rs. 100 monthly recharge - rcom does not have any smaller amount i've heard MTS might be cheaper but where can we get the forms in chembur?

does this mean the rs. 100 for 30 days is also gone? now i'll have to switch back to airtel - so stupid ...

apple is so arrogant it needs to eat some humble pie i hope it loses [and i'm an ipad2 owner!]

i have seen ads for SBI car loans without prepayment penalty and 0 fees is this still on? does any other bank offer the same deal? has anyone availed of this offer yet?

china also has death penalty for corruption / bribery lets adopt that also!

rcom is ready to sell all of its tower biz but the asking price has been about a billion $ too high so they have no takers but some interested parties the company's cash flows are being devoured by its massive interest payments roughly 1/4 - 1/3 of the total flows and rising each year every billion $ reduction in debt will boost its cash flow enough to add a few rs. to the stock price and thus mkt cap

<p>so everybody loves many things about the ipad2, let me mention the things iHATE!</p> <ol> <li>no flash but that's true for all apple devices [i'm a virgin apple customer so this came as a shocker]<br /> there are apps / browsers that convert flash to HTML so that you can see most sites but i have not downloaded any yet</li> <li>no usb [again true of all iOS as far as i know and very irritating] so i can't use my rcom HSD datastick unlike in any android tablet</li> <li>no upgradable memory [e.g., SD card slots like other tabs] so you have to buy a new ipad if you run out of space<br /> that's like replacing your tyre with a new one after each puncture!</li> <li>its easy to 'brick' your ipad - mine went dead during a perfectly legal download of iOS5<br /> there is absolutely no reason for any sane implementation of any tablet OS to crash just because the PC that its tethered to happens to abort a download midway -<br /> a] there should be 'milestones' or checkpoints so that any big download can resume where it disconnected which is very common on any mobile device [e.g., every Mb or so]<br /> b] there should be an ability to restore any ipad to its previous state with a single click in iTunes instead of taking forever to 're-sync' [kind of like the factory settings option]<br /> c] all syncing should be enabled over wifi or bluetooth so that no cables are required and it can be done WHILE its charging [yes, you saw that right - ipad2 does NOT recharge while plugged into any laptop]<br /> d] it would cost rs. 750 to restore your ipad at reliance or other apple stores! WTF?</li> <li>all ipads sold should come with a free upgrade to iOS5 which instead costs rs. 500 unless you want to waste time doing it yourself</li> <li>extended warranty costs another rs. 4,300 for an extra year and does NOT cover un-bricking or iOS upgrades mentioned above in 4 [d] & # 5!<br /> what's the point - it'll hardly have significant hardware failures during the initial 2 years</li> <li> </li> no zippable covers available for the ipads officially so i had to buy a samsung cover for 10" netbooks but it was still about an inch too loose - hellooo apple?! </ol> avoid the white ipads since they get dirty very quickly - stick to black unless you are more obsessed about fashion than functionality also no songs can be purchased since apple does not think indians deserve to pay for legal copies! i'm not even getting into the pricing discrimination in india by the bigots in california... only apple can get away with such 3rd class treatment and still be praised by most indian customers! time to post that good old sign outside iTunes stores: 'dogs and indians not allowed' or maybe it should be ' iNdians ' ! PS: something went wrong when i posted this as you can see all the raw HTML code above...

and you forgot over priced!

apple is so arrogant that they will prefer to stop selling all apple products in india rather than comply with a single objection raised in the complaint. some of the points for CCI are moot: 1. you can buy ipad unlocked from any apple store so its not tied to any particular operator i think the same is true for iphones also 2. non-apple outlets like staples, jumbo, reliance etc are selling ipads now [at least in the top 4 metros] but apple will never support flash or non-app store software or even allow music downloads in india and they will charge a premium over singapore, HK, USA etc for unlocked / unsubsidised products in fact india will remain the highest priced market for apple for the foreseeable future the silver lining is that it will spawn a lot of android clones at affordable prices and apple will continue to have negligible sales from here

i need to connect my ipad2 to my hp printer [1018] what wireless adaptor should i get in mumbai? how much should it cost? where can i get it?

got a lovely birthday gift from my wife but its not really usable without a sim if i want a prepaid - which operator has the best speeds in mumbai [eastern suburbs]? my default is airtel since the shop is close to home but that's obviously not a good criteria despite being a loyal rcom customer since 2003 i had to eliminate the gsm since they don't offer prepaid at all with any micro sim the cheapest postpaid plan starts at rs 750 monthly unlike airtel that starts at rs 100

yes, we had to google it: airtelgprs.com so stupid that airtel did not give this info up front i hate the 20 mb limit on 3g downloads set by apple! this should be determined by the operator instead not to mention no itunes to add insult to injury i also wish we could have 'folders' instead of just screenfuls of icons or categories like games, utilities, news, social, etc is there any benefit to 'jailbreaking' my ipad? will the 20mb download limit go away? i also can't find any free app to track my lost device this is my 1st apple product and the user interface left much to be desired... wi fi notifications can't be filtered - all or nothing but i would prefer an 'ignore' option for each network encountered instead there should be some local caching of app store and web pages since 3g is quite slow in the eastern suburbs its the same speed as cdma 2g as far as i can tell even if there is to be an arbitrary limit on download size, the apps should mention the size BEFORE we click on them and wait 10-20 sec to find out its too big! also could not change the date format from mm/dd to dd/mm its correctly detecting the 'region' as india in the settings

OK, i got the airtel SIM inserted into the iPad its a huge pain to remove the 'tray' for the sim i was kind of shocked at how hard it was given that apple is world famous for its usability and good design the tray itself is very flimsy and will break easily if you push too hard during sim insertion there does not seem to be any way to get a replacement of course despite the micro sim being activated on a handset the pad still can't get data access going does anyone know what settings are needed for airtel 3g? i'm so used to putting in a sim and everything working instantly that the pad has been a big let down of course all the hype about apple has not helped either in setting expectations