Final Decision- Convince me otherwise

So from all the research I have done so far and all the complains on this forum I think I am going to hold off on buying the iPhone until issues are resolved. I really want this thing and I have no idea how I am holding myself back but I just have a really bad feeling the device I will receive will have a ton of issues especially since I am getting mine from ATT and I have heard the ones at ATT are having a lot of problems. Anyone here want to convince me to get one and assure me that if the one I get is faulty there will be a fix or that is it worth the risk?

For what it's worth, I was using a first gen iPhone since 2007. I didn't upgrade to the 3G series phones because they seemed like incremental upgrades, not something I wanted to plunk down $$ on. I received my iPhone4 on June 24, after ordering it from ATT on the first day of pre-order. I was able to move my data and #'s over to the new phone easily.
The first thing that struck me was that the phone is FAST. VERY FAST. Like something out of a sci-fi movie fast.
I was somewhat skeptical of the "Retina Display" from Steve Jobs' keynote but once I saw it, I was sold. I have started reading ebooks on the iPhone, something that was impossible for me on the old iPhone. The display is truly above and beyond anything else out there. If anything, that is what I appreciate more every day as I use the phone.
I also noticed that the reception on the new phone was terrible compared to my old iPhone. Usable but terrible(and I do have the antenna issues that everyone seems to be getting their knickers in a twist over). In fact, it reminded me of the reception I used to get with my 1st gen phone until Apple came out with an OS update, which as I recall happened rather quickly. Over time, my reception improved despite using the same hardware. The jump from iOS 2 to 3 caused my phone to gain reception in places that previously had been black holes to me.
I am not an Apple fan but I am an iPhone fan. Based on my experience with the iPhone over the past 3 years, I am confident that whatever issues are there (and they are there) will be dealt with. iPhone 4 is truly a new platform and if you don't have the stomach of an early adopter, don't be one.

Similar Messages

  • Afraid to make the switch.....Convince me otherwise!

    I have been a PC guy since 1988 (had the original macintosh before then) and overall quite happy. Now, with owning an iPod for the past year and purchasing it for others, I have been bombarded with apple products while visiting the local store. Actually put my hands on an iMac last night and was quite impressed. The reason I left Mac in the first place was lack of support (awesome 3rd party software). Seeing all of the commercials about not needing to reboot, no viruses, etc. has peeked my interest. However, I still need convincing. Below is what I do on my PC and will consider changing if Mac does it BETTER. Also, if some of you can share you switching experiences it would be greatly appreciated.
    MS Office: Will need to share files with PC users in the office
    DVD burning: Use a great program that is PC only and is dual layer capable among other things
    Slingbox: Might not be an issue as of yet because I use this with my office laptop and the slingbox is already connected to my router.
    Media extender: I already know the answer to this. The holy war b/w MS and apple is real and still exists.
    HP all in one printer 3300: Any problems interfacing?
    Thats enough to get started and thanks ahead for any input!

    First, it's your job to decide whether you should switch. Do your homework. It's not our job to convince you of what to do. We can answer questions about technical concerns if those can help you with your decision.
    Go to an Apple store and see for yourself. Find someone who does what you do on a PC and determine if the Mac does it BETTER. That's your job. We don't have a clue as to what your criteria for "BETTER" is.
    Office 2004 X is available for the Mac. Files are compatible with Windows versions.
    OS X has built-in disc burning. There are dozens of third-party applications such as Toast available.
    Slingbox Media has a Mac version of the software that is a universal binary and works just fine. I have one connected to an Airport Express.
    I have no idea what "Media Extender" means.
    A universal binary driver for your All-in-One Photosmart 3300 is downloadable from HP.
    Visit http://www.apple.com/support/switch101/ for more on switching from PCs to Macs.
    Of course if you don't care for the Mac after you buy it you can install Windows on it and run Windows faster than on your current Windows box. I doubt that's something your Windows box can do.
    Oh, Macs need restarting from time to time, they require system maintenance, they have their differences and quirks, there are no "active" viruses which does not mean they are immune. OS X is relatively more secure than Windows and stabler. OS X is not Windows. That has numerous implications for someone who is used to Windows. Not everything works the same and some things may not work at all.
    Frankly, if you're not already convinced then keep your Windows box.

  • Thank You: The Final Decision

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    it would cost $20 a month more than you pay now for a device that will handle email and web 1000x better than your phone now...
    Thats $240 more dollars a year for the ease and convince..
    You should think more about how the data package will help you than how its just a random fee you get nothing for
    I use my phone every single day of my life for emails, even if its just being lazy in bed, waiting at the doctors office, to view some foodnetwork while i'm shopping, watching youtube while my gf is trying cloths, checking stock prices while waiting for the daily meeting to start..... etc etc

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    Sorry but if you could pay particular attention to graphocs, integrated vs stand alone, also the performance update from model releases.

  • Help me on final decision

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    Hi, Thanks for all replies
    Bootstritty, you're right, i didn't explain myself fully. I meant that other inferior models(not brands) available at local computer stores were at similar prices or sometimes higher than this 5700U td128. For instance, in one store the 5600U was more expensive than the 5700U i found later in another store  
    msivictim, i couldn't find anything on the web about which rails are used by the mobo, do i need some system utility to find that out? do u have some links that u can share?
    These are the amps values:
     +3.3V  28A
     +5V     40A
     +12V    17A
    If i ask questions about your explanation (i'm sure it was a very good explanation), there would be too many , because i'm totally newbie on this     , so for now, i'll try to find out which rail the mobo uses, and then i'll ask again
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     MSI™ Twin-BIOS,  MSI 3D!Turbo Experience™, openGL 1.5, fill rate: 1.9 billion pixels/sec., Memory Data Rate: 900 MHz
    MSI FX5700 TD128: 128MB DDR SDRAM, fill rate: 1.7 billion pixels/sec., Memory Data Rate: 550 MHz
    based on most responses i'm deciding for the ultra, but do you think it's worth the extra 50U$s for it even if i don't use AA or any effect (which i won't)?
    -Albatron KM18G Pro Socket A FSB333 DCh400/Video+TV+AGP8x/5.1/lan
    -AMD Athlon XP 2500PR 512K Barton Box
    -DDR 400 Mhz PC-3200 OCZ Premier 512 Mb
    -Maxtor DiamondMax Plus 8 40 Gb ATA133
    -Medium Tower Vitsuba 400W
    -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

  • Purchase Decision

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    Money is definitely a factor, otherwise I would have no questions. I have a budget of about $1,000 US and have narrowed down some options. First I will explain my needs, then the considerations I have made, then my questions which may be evident if you follow my train of thought.
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    And on any of those machines, Mini, low-end iMac and low-end MacBook, will the Universal versions of the Adobe software that is critical to me overwhelm machine capabilities?
    Are there any other issues I should concern myself with? If I could hear from some graphics professionals, I would appreciate it. Thank you for your time.

    Welcome to Apple Discussions!
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    Thus, if you do not already have them, you will need OS X-compatible versions of all your software, including InDesign, Illustrator, Photoshop and Word..... and at this time none are in Intel native format, meaning that while these applications will run, they'll run rather slowly in emulation.
    Leaving that issue aside (since your message indicates you have obviously already considered it), your concerns about the possibility of painting yourself into a corner with the mini platform are understandable, but really not well founded. To be sure, the lack of dedicated graphics board gives the appearance of poor probably display quality or capabilities, but it doesn't really work out that way. The Intel GMA 950 certainly has greater potential, for instance, than the graphics sub-system of your existing G3 iMac, and easily outperforms the graphics cards fitted to many late-model Macs, including the ATI chips in the PPC minis. It's Core Image compatible, thus can take advantage of Apple's display control software and technologies, and while it lags behind the dedicated cards in more expensive systems, it's primarily in games and intensive animations that it shows any weaknesses. Given that the software you use has been in widespread use by many users on Mac systems with older, less powerful graphics systems, I think it's plenty enough. If it were to be insufficient for your flight sims, then you'd have to look at the $1200 iMac instead, which would have the advantage of a 20" display and is a very credible system without doubt.
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  • Convincing my parents that the iPhone is a good idea

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    I had super-cheap parents, so I know where you're coming from.
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    D

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    There is also another model by the same company, which has a small fan on it too:
    http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835708006
    The first one would definitely fit, at least where the gfx card is concerned, albeit, barely. Not sure if the one with the fan would, but then again, based on all that i've read so far, that seems like overkill, since the SB doesn't get hot at all, only lukewarm at this point, and a decent heatsink is all that is really needed. However, i say this person 'claimed' it fit, 'supposedly', because he never posted pics when asked about it, and then disappeared from his own thread shortly after. And what spoiled the whole read for me, was another person posting this:
    "The enzotech low profile heatsink will not fit on the south bridge because the hole to hole diameter is too large for it to match up against the mounting holes of the south bridge on the x58 boards.
    The Enzotech CNB-S1L has 2 possible hole-hole diameters: 54.6 mm and 59mm. However, the mounting holes on the mobo are only 49mm apart. So the Enzotech heatsink designed for the northbridge will not fit on the south bridge.
    If you somehow managed to make it fit, please post pics."
    So yea, now i can't be certain that heatsink would fit on the SB, and if this guy was telling the truth, if he did his own modding to force it to fit, or what. Yes, i can hacksaw the pipe off, and leave the stock SB heatsink there, but...i figure if i am going to replace one, i may as well replace the other while i am doing all of that. Like i said, i don't want to have to find out it doesn't upon installing it, because that is just unnecessary time being wasted.
    And there you have it, guys. Now, i am no expert at all when it comes a lot of this stuff, as far as certain technical aspects go, but many posters here really know their stuff and from what i have read here and on other forums, i feel like a total noob sometimes lol. So all this boils down to, and what i really need to know, is will all the heatsinks that i have outlined here, fit this motherboard properly? I really need to take care of this asap, because this thing running at 78-80 all the time is really going to lower it's life span, and every second that it does, is just one less second of use. Maybe that is being a lil too dramatic, but still, i've seen so many get their temps down to the low 40s and 50s, so i know for sure this board DOES NOT need to be running that hot :-/
    On another note, i noticed many saying they wanted to add nuts/washers or whatever, to give better stability and contact. Well, since as i am as bad as it gets with carpentry, measuring, etc, i have no damn idea which ones i would need. I once was asked to measure something long ago when i worked as a laborer for a carpenter and reported back, saying to him '2/3s'. The guy looked at me like i had two heads lmao. Fortunately, i can read a ruler/measuring tape much better now lol, but i'm still no Norm, from This Old House.  I hear all this talk of 'spring mounts', 'push pins' 'mounting holes', 'screws', etc. Since i am unable to see the back of my mobo right now (only the CPU area from the other side of the case panel when removed), i have no idea if its using metal screws, or push pins, or what. I see the heatsinks i mentioned here, as well as many others, use these various methods, so im uncertain what would work on this board (if it needs plastic/nylon screws or metal ones). Now, i checked out this youtube vid of a guy showing how to remove my exact mobo and reseat it with new/better paste. It was quite informative. Just so you guys know, i have the older 'brown colored' Pro-E board. The one in the video looks to be the same color. However, i just purchased this board, along with the whole system less than 3 weeks ago, so i don't know how old this Pro-E may be.
    Another important question about what this guy did in the vid too. You can fast-forward to where he takes it apart. Looks to me like they are metal screws, but again, im unsure if mine use those. The front of the heatsinks have two holes, those of which i can easily see, and have what looks to be a plastic washer or something on it. It looks 'greyish'. Now, A VERY IMPORTANT issue in this vid, is this guy removed the THERMAL PADDING on the heatsinks. I read here all over the place, that you are NOT SUPPOSED TO DO THAT, as to ensure that the heatsinks aren't touching any components on the board, the chipset itself. As you can see in the first couple comments, the guy says 'Yes, the existing pads were scraped off. It's important to remove the old thermal pads, otherwise you won't have any benefit & it may even be worse.' So yea. all that does is just confuse me more. Considering how gunked up, though, that the paste will be when removing it, i can only image that the stock pad on there is probably gonna be pretty nasty as well too, which is why he probably took it all off. But yea, wondering if you guys could clarify that for me, if that should be done or not. Seems many here were very firm that it should NEVER be removed.
    I can honestly i never have had an issue with MSI until now, and they do put out quality products, but i hope in the future, that newer mobos would use better TIM and have a fan added on the NB or something. Other manufacturers do this, some don't, but they ALL should, so i am not just singling out MSI here. We live in an age where technology is very capricious and always progressing, and back in the day, well, PCs didn't require crazy amounts of fans, watercooling, etc. But with things putting out so much wattage these days, apps/games/movies requiring better hardware, which also needs more power and/or outputs a lot too, well you don't have to work for NASA to know that heat is going to be a problem, and the motherboard being an obvious vital component, should be adequately cooled just as well as everything else that needs it. I do love this board, and it does more than enough to suit my needs, i just wish it didn't run so dang hot   That's the ONLY gripe i have about it.

    Hey, HU16E, and others,
    I just wanted to let you know that i finally broke down and attempted this procedure (after a lot of hesitation), and everything worked out perfectly as you said, WITHOUT having to buy some aftermarket chipset cooler. Maybe it was meant to be for me, because i learned a crap load of things in the process and in the end, it wasn't as hard or grueling as i thought (although 1 process was, which ill get to shortly lol).
    Once i finally got everything gutted (well, just the stuff attached to the mobo), i then removed it, and hit a wall, because the screws that hold down the chipset heatsink, wouldnt fit any phillips head screw drivers had, so i had to stop, run out and buy a lil six pack of VERY small philips and flat heads. I had assumed during my extensive research on all of this, that those screws used the 6-32 size, which is pretty much the smallest i could find out there. Many pointed out the RC/Model Airplane hobby shops, but nothing i could find out where i live. Those 4 screws differ from everything else in the case. I thought they would be the M3 type screw (6-32), which on the wiki for pc-screws, had said they were commonly used on most mobos. But anyway, i got those off with the right screwdriver, and that was where the 'grueling' part came in.
    The NB heatsink came off after 5 minutes of careful wiggling/rocking/twisting to the left and right. I never once PULLED UPWARD, until it was VERY LOOSE, in fear that i would crack the NB die, because if that happened, well, the mobo would basically have become nothing more than a good coffee cup stand). The SB took about 20 minutes since it was cemented on there pretty good. I had to use a wrench and lock both sides of it on there, and then again, just twisted to the left n right carefully, because my hands/fingers were too big to get a grip on the heatsink it uses. Finally, it came off, and i was good to go, but my goodness.....
    ...not to sound to harsh here, but man, that original paste it had was just terrible, HU16E. This Pro-E i have is the brownish colored one, and so, it had this pink, bubble gum stuff, that was VERY sticky and hard, and i can now see why these heating issues were taking place. Also, the HS itself wasnt as tight as when i finally put it all back. I used alcohol and qtip swab, and also your toothpick method of scraping from the outside, in, to form a clump, which worked well, but the thinner residue afterward was a real hassle to get off there, both on the HS and the NB die/SB surface. Used a butterknife on the HS, but only soft and non-metallic stuff on the NB die, and just kept wiping with alcohol and a microfiber pad for what felt like an eternity until it just basically dissolved and got that nice mirror finish. I used 4 of the 6-32 washers between the stock screw/spring/washer, and believe it or not, it fit very well. It's not loose, the screws head doesnt go through it at all, and once it was scerwed in nice n tight, there was no play at all, so it worked out really well. I mean, at most while it was loose, was probably just a micro millimeter of space while it was around the screws shaft, but again, once it was in there it was tight as can be. I used Arctic Cooling MX-4, since it one of the best out there and i liked the fact it was non-conductive. From what i have read about pastes, metallic-based compounds just arent necessary in this day and age anymore. Also replace the paste on the CPU cooler too.
    So i fired up, and well...checked the bios temps, and there ya have it. Went from 82 degrees, down to 48! That definitely made it all worth it. Now i can finally do some gaming/hd content without having to worry about it going into the 90s. It hasnt even exceeded 60 on load, so all is well for sure   Also have an antec spot fan set on medium and aimed right over the NB and added a 200mm fan on the top of case, acting as exhaust, so im sure that all plays a part too.
    Honestly, though, i really hope MSI is NOT using that paste anymore, because it really is just....well.....ill just say it's BAD lol. It sure as hell would work awesome for some kind of adhesive or glue that is for sure lmao. Maybe MSI should hold onto to that stuff, and give the glue market some competition lol. But yea, as a thermal compound, umm...i just sure hope they switched to a good type of paste for all their future mobos, especially the z68s. I also don't believe that the NB/SB heatsink ever needed a combo type deal, via the heat pipe, as this just creates more tedium. Heck, i dont even think the SB even needs a HS on it, as it doesn't even give off much heat at all. Mine is barely lukewarm to the touch. Not to mention, when taking it off, the heat pipe tends 'move/bend' a bit, and this means the heatsinks on either side will not match up well, or be perfectly parallel when you seat them back on the board. I had to keep bending it gently and standing it on my table til all 4 pegs on the bottom would touch, this way i would know that it'd reseat properly. I hope in the future that MSI will scrap that whole linked HS set-up.
    As i stated before, love the board, and the TIM issue was the only issue i had with it, and now since that is resolved, i have no gripes whatsoever. Down the line, ill probably get a z68 soon, and wouldn't mind at all going with MSI, but id like to be assured first that some changes were made to the chipset cooling, because even though this was all a good learning experience for me, it is not something i want to go through again lol.
    But hey, thanks a bunch for all of your advice HU16E and other mods as well. I was going to go with that Thermalright HS, and your posts (past and present) convinced me otherwise and the temps are down to what others got them to WITH that same aftermarket heatsink, so you saved me 30USD  

  • Just too many problems, iMovie, iDVD

    After working with the same project for the past 2 weeks and getting nowhere, I finally gave up in total frustration and deleted the entire project, one piece at a time. I spent the last hour today starting at, 10:45 Am Alaska time and tracked down every piece of my project, iMovie and iDVD and deleted the whole shebang. Problems kept happening over and over and each time, were getting worse than the last time.
    This time, iDVD froze up. It did it last night and again today. After waiting for 9 hours over night, and again 5 hours today for it to finish encoding and to finally burn the project, I ended up doing a "force quit", because iDVD wasn't responding at all. It was highlighted in red on force quit, with the words, ("iDVD not responding") in parenthesis. This told me that the program was locked and would not be able to complete the assigned project, so I force quitted the project and scrapped the entire thing.
    Now I'm forced to make another decision. Do I go on and re-enter the video into my computer and start over? Or, do I just say forget it and trash the entire idea of producing an DVD from my video footage all together? I'm ****** off and frustrated at how poorly this new and expensive program is not operating like it was designed and supposed to do. Why did I spend all that money, for a program that doesn't work the way it was designed to? Is anyone else feeling the way I do right now?
    Froglips from Alaska

    Your not alone. I just spent over a week trying to
    burn a project. I have a new iMac and the latest
    iLife.....thought I'd be set for awhile however while
    trying many different possible solutions for my
    problem have spent the last week dancing around
    iMovie bugs, iDVD bugs and Quicktime bugs forcing me
    to do "workarounds" which take extra time again. I
    like alot of things about Apple however people pay
    for a workable product and iLife should not cause
    people this much pain. I've used software that is 98%
    bug-free so I know it can be done but Apple does'nt
    seem to be willing to test its software thouroughly
    enough on a wide variety of systems and different
    circumstances to eliminate the bugs....and so we
    ....its faithful followers end up being its
    "bug-testers". Perhaps it also has to do with the
    desire to "pump-out" new versions every 9-16 months
    however I would much prefer to wait longer and even
    pay reasonably more for a new version that worked
    properly. I want a company and software that is
    usable, reliable and responsive to its customers.
    This is the kind of company I'd be willing to be
    faithful to. I've noticed that Apple has a tendency
    to either be non-responsive alot of the time to
    problems brought up in these forums or to deny that
    problems exist. (It's hubris).Thats why sometimes a
    new version of iMovie will carry over some bugs from
    a previous version. Of course the right way to handle
    this would be to acknowledge the problems , then do
    everything you can to make sure they dont come up
    again.After doing some testing myself between iMovie
    2 and iMovie 5......I find iMovie 2 to still be the
    fastest and most reliable version however it does"nt
    have the "extras" that version 5 has. Instead of
    building on the firm foundation of iM2 ....the
    foundation was ripped up and we got the disasterous
    iMovie 3.(To be fair...iM4 and 5 are at least better
    than 3). When phoning Apple Support for assistance
    with my latest problem .......my "helper" was trying
    to tell me that my Mac was"nt capable of burning a
    DVD over 1 hour . I ended up having to read some
    passages out of the "Missing Manual" to convince him
    otherwise. Apple often tends to say that the people
    in these forums only represent a small percentage of
    all its users ....tending to dismiss the
    problems.......however its also true that only a
    fraction of the people having problems come to these
    forums for help. Alot more struggle on their
    own....ask other people.....or just give up and move
    on to some other software that works.As I said
    earlier...I'm generally a fan of Apple.....but they
    really should wake up and test their products
    thouroughly before releasing. I have Final Cut
    Express but I like the beauty in the simplicity and
    ease of use of iLife. iLife is a great
    concept............if only it worked properly.
    Having said my say.......all I can suggest is that
    if you persist and keep trying different possible
    solutions found in this forum, theres a good chance
    you'll eventually work it out (as I did). Only you
    know if its worth the effort. Good luck.
    Thanks Mr. Thompson, for your input. I agree completely with many of the things you said. I too, am a fan of Apple products, the computers especially. But that entheusiasm I once had about them has diminished considerably in light of the problems that seem to be ongoing. I finally gave up completely on the project that I was trying to edit, and I deleted the whole project. Right now I'm trying to decide if it will be worth the effort and time, to reenter my video and try again. I commend you for your diligence and willingness to keep trying and thank you for encouraging me to keep trying, but for now I'll take a break and rest on it before I decide what to do next.

  • Solutions for lots of hard drive space?

    Yes, this is a repost from my thread in the getting started forum, but I figured that this board is more heavily populated, and perhaps some professional videographers visit here more frequently to help me out, so I'm posting my question here as well. Here I go:
    Hello,
    Next spring and summer, I plan to be shooting and editing weddings. The past weddings I've done, I use about 12 tapes. ~200mb/min x 60 mins x 12 tapes is about 144GB. That's about 3 weddings in a single 500GB hard drive (and I plan on doing about 20 in a year). Obviously, I'm going to need a LOT of hard drive space. I don't want to consider entirely deleting the media after finishing a project because it seems common that clients wish to change little bits of the video, so I want to keep them for a while longer.
    Right now I have a 500GB HD in a firewire400 enclosure. I don't use the internal Mac HD for media.
    What a photographer said that others wedding videographers do and suggested to me was to buy as many HD's needed for the year (approx. so I guess about 7 if 500GB), set a deadline for those whiny clients for returns or re-edits and such, and at the end of the year, and reformat them all and reuse them for the next year.
    I'm thinking of doing the same, but using the same enclosure for all my hard drives, just unplugging and plugging as needed.
    I've heard of using a RAID system. I can't say I know much about using it but with what I'm using, I don't think it's an option? I am using a 17" 2.33ghz MacBook Pro with Final Cut Pro and I plan on getting an aluminum 24" iMac (probably 2.4ghz unless you can convince me otherwise) as a secondary editing machine, and perhaps to make the dreadful capturing process twice as fast.
    So some of my questions are:
    * can plugging and unplugging HD's to an external closure possibly damage the pins?
    * would storing HD's that are not being used at the moment be safe in those plastic containers that usually come with a HD when you buy one? Or would it be damaging to keep one in there and store it away for a year?
    * is this idea okay or would you suggest another method?
    * slightly off-topic but sometimes I take my external hard drive, put it in my laptop bag, and do some editing at another location. I know it's supposed to be portable but someone told me that external hard drives aren't meant to be taken around like that. Is that true or am I okay? It's just sitting sideways in the bag while I walk/drive, it's not like I'm hiking a mountain and dropping my bag.
    Thanks in advance for all your help.

    321estrellas wrote:
    - I wonder if enclosure manufacturers do special orders of JUST the enclosure without the cables and power adapter? Since I'll likely be buying the same one but plugging one at a time...(maybe one other for another computer)
    Not sure if they will or not. Of course, IMO, it is not bad to have an extra Power Adapter and cables (or more), just in case. You would be suprised how things can get misplaced or when you really would like another FW or eSATA cable. You can call some of these places and ask, it nevers hurts. I have had very good experiences with Firewiredirect, OWC/MacSales and Wiebetech, probably worth a customer service IM window with them or call or email. Worst they can say it is not possible.
    - Alternatively the Wiebtech SilverSata I enclosure seems pretty convenient and maybe I'll expand it with 6-8 additional trays...but again I may want to use another HD in another computer but I'm sure I can figure a way around that...
    If you get a G5 or MacIntel they all use the same drives so if you remove it from a tray you can put it in the computer. I like the SilverSata I because it is relatively small and light and I will often throw a 750gig Drive into a tray when traveling to have a place to capture things and keep copies of photo downloads, audio files for Soundtrack and other files which take up room and a partition for a boot/repair/restore disk for the laptop.

  • Is Best Buy credit card linked to Citibank?

    This is posted in response to one moderators comment about Best Buy credit card.
    His claim was that the Best Buy credit card was not really owned by Best Buy.  As a result, there was nothing any Best Buy employee could do to help out with complaints about their Best Buy credit card.
    The claim that Best Buy could not be responsible for the problems occurring with Citibank credit cards.  Best Buy was just the "name" on the front of the card.  The analogy called to mind is that if you are using the Best Buy Credit Card, it is just an advertising ploy.  Best Buy cards are labeled with the Best Buy name and trademarked logo as an advertising premise.  They are not linked in any way with Citicard and how Best Buy customers are treated.
    The premise is not true.  If Best Buy is not affiliated with Citibank or their cards; whey do we get "reward points" to only Best Buy if they have no involvement with Citibank?  Other cards I have allow "reward points" to be used in multiple forums. 
    The Best Buy card has culpability in the mess with Citibank and cards issued under the Best Buy name.  Best Buy retailer has culpability in this matter.  I have no idea what the legal analysis of this leads to: I am not an attorney. 
    My posts have scared the "moderators" to the point that when I pass on the help attained by other members, they have  pulled the posts; "locked the posts to read only" in mid-post.  It's creepy.  It also helps determine culpability and who is liable for the Citicard mess with Best Buy. 
    If Best Buy moderators pull posts that do not violate rules; if they restrict the use of a post to "read only while I'm typing" they are watching on a computer terminal as I write/type.  When they restrict information that might show a path of resolution for those of us stuck in a loop; they are showing that they know that Best Buy is responsible in some way for what is happening with Citibank and the Best Buy issued card.
    What can we do as consumers at Best Buy?  Write the Board of Directors; copy the letters to your local store.  And of course, take your business somewhere else.  {removed per forum guidelines}  This is a speculative comment. What if there is a relationship between Best Buy and Citibank that allows Best Buy to "capture" a portion of the fees that we have been charged by the "malfunctioning" computers?  I have no idea and there is no way in the world that I would, at this point in time, talk with an attorney.
    Sad that Best Buy moderators won't even apologize to the consumers who post on their website that there are major problems with purchasing an item at Best Buy on the Best Buy/Citicard.  They could post an appropriate link or phone number that "might" help consumers with the problems with purchases.  Sad that there is not acknowledgement of problems since Citibank took over the "Not Best Buy credit card".
    Best Buy could have a conversation about what is going on and let people know that they want our business and they will do their best by establishing a better conduit of communication and information when there are problems with "not Best Buy credit card."
    I wonder if they will pull this post?  It is only fear that moves them.  That is the key ingredient that makes something in a corporation sweat.
    We all like shopping at Best Buy.  Those reward points are great!  Some of the stores provide excellent service. 
    Now that I understand that Best Buy credit cards have no relationship to Best Buy and it is just advertising for Citibank by putting all their store information on the front of the card; I think it's on the back too; rememember, it is not the fault of Best Buy.  It is Citicards fault.  Call Citicard....good luck. 
    Best Buy does not care about their customers who use the "Not Best Buy Card".  There has to be a reason.  Why would they want customers to shop somewhere else?  Is the strategy now, "Best Buy is too good for consumers?" "Best Buy prefers that you pay cash for all purchases?" "Best Buy, we're so rich, we don't have to care about our customers! They keep coming in the front door!"  This could be a public relations nightmare for Best Buy.  That is why they don't want  consumers to talk about how their "real-life problems" originated at a Best Buy store.
    I despise how I have been treated by Citibank.  I know I post on a forum that is "owned and promoted" by Best Buy.  In the corporate world, they set the rules.  Most of us understand that corporate wins over consumer at all times in this business environment.  I'm sure they will be very happy that this is my last post regarding this matter.
    Learn what federal regulations are in place to help you.  Stop using the "Not Best Buy card".  It is our choice to use them. if you have to shop at Best Buy, use cash or another credit card that is not affialated with "Not Best Buy card".
    Sorry about the spelling errors.  This laptop was bought at Best Buy.  The hard drive was replaced by the "Geek Squad".  It was repaired, but some functions  no longer work.
    Yeeup! I went and bought another computer at Best Buy!  It was only a couple of thousands of dollars.  I went with a tower! I already have a notebook. Getting away from a laptop was expensive!
    I'll  have to ponder as to whether I will ever shop at Best Buy again.  It is due to the reactions of the moderators; the finger pointing from Citibank and Best Buy and most of all; a lot of my money has been emptied out of my bank account since Citi took over my "Not Best Buy card". 
    I am not an attorney.  I did graduate from college and there is a wonderful member on this forum who has helped me out with the system.
    Cheers! I hope this post isnt' pullled since it is designed to mitigate frustration among members of the "Not Best Buy card"

    Hello AlwaysWondering-
    It certainly sounds as if you have had a bad experience with Citibank regarding your Best Buy credit card, enough so that you’ve chosen to join our community to speak to that dissatisfaction.
    When it comes to the Best Buy credit card, the information that you have been given to this point is correct.  While the Best Buy logo is on the credit card, Citibank does providing the financing for the card and as such, we have no access to your account, nor any ability to make changes to it.  However, this does not mean that we cannot attempt to help our customers with concerns that come up with Citibank.  In fact, we welcome feedback about our third party partners regarding the service that they are providing to our customers and when possible, we will try to work as an advocate for the customer with that partner.  In the end, any final decision regarding your credit card account is at the sole discretion of Citibank.
    Everyone that joins our forums does so with the understanding that they must abide by our Terms and Conditions, as well as the Community and Forum Guidelines. 
    As part of those guidelines Best Buy® retains the right to remove and edit content and to limit and/or ban users' access to the Forum.  Best Buy® retains the right, at its sole discretion, to limit users' access to the Forum and to remove material, in Best Buy's sole judgment, that does not comply with the Usage Guidelines or Terms and Conditions or that is otherwise inappropriate for the Forum, harmful, objectionable, or inaccurate. 
    Moderators may take any action they deem necessary in their own judgment to enforce the Usage Guidelines and Terms and Conditions, and, in general, to address content that can detract from the experience of other users or the purpose of the Forum. Such actions may include editing, moving, or deleting material and banning individual users.
    This can include blocking further replies to posts that have already been provided a resolution or removing replies from an older post that no longer needs additional commentary.  In general, we would rather not take this route and welcome the input of our users in a timely manner and by keeping the discussion relevant by staying on the topic when posting.
    If you have a customer service issue regarding Citibank or any other aspect of your interactions with Best Buy we would urge you to create a post regarding that interaction and we would be glad to see if we can help you.  Otherwise, we encourage you to follow the Community Guidelines as posted and see what you can provide other users on our forums to assist them in resolving their concerns.
    Sincerely,
    Bill|Senior Social Media Specialist | Best Buy® Corporate
     Private Message

  • Useful Document/resources For Begginners

    this document is easily on net
    WS-BPEL Guide
    Last changed on Dec 10, 2004 by Matthieu Riou
    What is this article about ?
    This is an introduction to WS-BPEL that should give you a practical understanding of what you have to do to create a nice WS-BPEL process, dwelling on most important details. After reading this article you probably won't be able to write a WS-BPEL process from top to bottom. But you should have a pretty good notion of what can be done with it, what it involves and be familiar with the main elements of the grammar.
    First things first, here are the answers to the most trivial questions:
    •     What this new and unique acronym means? Web Services Business Process Execution Language.
    •     What is WS-BPEL? It's an XML grammar (a W3C schema) defining and standardizing structures necessary for web services orchestration.
    •     What does WS-BPEL? Well, actually nothing as it's just a grammar. But a WS-BPEL engine can do many things when executing your process. Like reacting to message reception, manipulating the message data, sending messages to web services and evaluating expressions.
    •     Where does it come from? It has been written by IBM, BEA Systems and Microsoft. Siebel and SAP joined these three and the specification has bee donated to OASIS.
    •     Where does WS-BPEL fit? It's a very good candidate to add an orchestration layer to a Service Oriented Architecture. It will make your services collaborate nicely and will encapsulate the cross-service business logic. It will also help you to introduce long-living transactions.
    Now that the introductory questions have been answered and before going any further I would like to clarify one thing about WSDL (I voluntarily wrote WSDL here, it's not a weird typo). WS-BPEL heavily relies on WSDL to describe the web services it is interacting with (we will see that soon) but that doesn't mean that it can only interact with services using XML(SOAP)/HTTP. WSDL introduces bindings which are the declaration of your services underlying communication medium. Bindings can be declared for local Java, JMS, RMI or anything you like (you might want to check Apache WSIF ). So a WS-BPEL engine using the right bindings could very well invoke many different services.
    So let's see how we are going to take a look at WS-BPEL. First, I'm going to give a very simple and classic example, just to give you a taste of what can be done with WS-BPEL. Then I'll introduce briefly its main activities. We'll see how to handle your process data and manipulate it and also how a particular process execution can be identified among all others. Finally we'll talk about how WS-BPEL introduces long-living transactions.
    A very simple yet demonstrative example
    After reading this chapter, most of you will probably think that the example I'm going to use is too simple and not realistic. I agree. But my goal here is just to give you a flavor of how WS-BPEL can be used, a realistic example would take more than all this article by itself.
    Now, you are the owner of a small bank granting loans to some of your customers. You have sales offices creating new customer contracts. You also have a web site and customers can directly ask for a loan online for small amounts. But before accepting a contract, some verifications are necessary. Those verifications are done using a risk assessment system maintained by a third party and by an in-house system that files the most tough requests. Loan specialists are part of your staff and then use this in-house system to take the final decision.
    So here is, step by step, the process that must be followed:
    1.     A loan request is issued, either from your web site of from one of your agencies. This request is made for a customer and for a certain amount.
    2.     A risk assessment system must be contacted to check whether the risk associated with the customer asking for the loan is high or low (probably based on his credit history).
    1.     If the loan amount is lower than $10,000 and the risk associated to the customer is low, the loan is directly approved (which saves time).
    2.     Otherwise, the loan request must be filed in your in-house system.
    1.     A loan specialist checks the request and gives his final decision.
    2.     The in-house system let you know the specialist's decision.
    3.     The response is sent to the customer.
    So how those pieces would be implemented in a "WS-BPEL aware" architecture? Here we go:
    •     One message triggered by your web site or your sales system and targeted at your process web service. It would hold at least the customer's name and the loan amount.
    •     One message triggered by the WS-BPEL engine to the risk assessment system to ask for the risk associated with the customer. If you pay your bills correctly, an answer message from this message should be expected.
    •     If needed, one message from the WS-BPEL engine to your in-house system to fill the loan request.
    •     One message from your in-house system to the process web service to give it the loan specialist's answer.
    •     Finally, one message back to your web site or to your sales system to give the final answer.
    One thing some of you probably already noticed is that when talking about the process I mentioned the "process web service". That's right, every process created inside a WS-BPEL engine is published as a web service with its own endpoint. When you want to send a message to your process, you actually send it to this web service.
    So now that you have a better idea of what it would take to implement this process in WS-BPEL, it's time to step back a bit.
    Private vs. Public Processes
    It's quite important to differentiate private and public processes (they are called executable and abstract in WS-BPEL). It is the same kind of opposition as between orchestration and choreography and it has a great impact on your architecture.
    Private processes manage services inside a given organization. They act as a service themselves and are centralized. As in an orchestra, there is a chief conductor (the process engine). Public processes manage services across several organizations. Each organization knows about it's own part of the process but doesn't know anything about the activities executed by other parties (for obvious confidentiality reasons). It's a peer-to-peer approach where you know the incoming and the outgoing messages, but nothing about what is done before, after or even meanwhile.
    WS-BPEL is quite good to handle private processes but doesn't perform so well for public ones (don't shoot me!). I have a feeling that even the members of the Oasis committee working on WS-BPEL don't know too much what to do with those. But actually, service choreography (public services) is not completely mature yet in terms of standards and market acceptance where as orchestration already has a widely embraced specification (WS-BPEL, in case you didn't realize) and many commercial implementations as well as open source ones (you may want to check Twister ). So good news, what you are going to learn in this article might prove useful.
    After those high-level considerations, we'll now look into WS-BPEL guts to see what's there and what we could use to build our process.
    WS-BPEL Activities
    In WS-BPEL, everything being part of your process body is an activity. There are basic activities (the ones that do something) and structured activities (the ones that organize basic activities without doing anything by themselves, just like your boss).
    Basic activities
    Invoking a web service is as simple as that:
    <invoke partnerLink="riskAssessor" portType="assessor" operation="assess"/>
    Pretty simple isn't it? In our initial example this declaration would be used to invoke the risk assessment system. Well, I'm actually cheating, you'll see later that you usually need a bit more (like input and output data) but this is a valid invocation.
    To wait for an incoming message, you'll write:
    <receive partnerLink="inhouseSystem" portType="inhousePort" operation="registerLoanRequest"/>
    That would be used to wait for the loan specialists' answer after registering the loan request in your in-house system. Now let's say that you want to send an immediate synchronous answer to this "receive". You'd write, after the receive:
    <reply partnerLink="inhouseSystem" portType="inhousePort" operation="registerLoanRequest"/>
    But how exactly does a WS-BPEL engine know, upon reception of a message, if it has to trigger the creation of a new process execution (a process instance)? Well, there's an attribute just for that: "createInstance".
    <receive partnerLink="loanRequester" portType="loanProcess" operation="processLoanRequest" createInstance="true"/>
    These 3 declarations use common attributes: partnerLink, portType and operation. If you know WSDL, you are already familiar with the port types and operations. Partner links have been introduced in WS-BPEL to model a two-way interaction between a process and a partner (a web service or another process). It lets you define the role of each of the two party in the interaction.
    There are two more basic activities that could prove useful (or at least one of the two):
    <wait until="'2002-12-24T18:00+01:00'"/>
    <empty/>
    Structured activities
    To start with, 3 basic ones: sequence, switch and while. If their behavior is not clear yet, here are examples:
    <sequence>
    <receive .../>
    <invoke .../>
    <invoke .../>
    </sequence>
    <switch xmlns:inventory="http://supply-chain.org/inventory" xmlns:FLT="http://example.com/faults">
    <case condition= "bpws:getVariableProperty(stockResult,level) > 100">
    … do something
    </case>
    <case condition="bpws:getVariableProperty(stockResult,level) >= 0">
    … do something else
    </case>
    <otherwise>
    … do the last thing
    </otherwise>
    </switch>
    <while condition="10 < bpws:getVariableData('loopVar', 'main', '/counter')">
    <assign>
    <copy>
    <from expression="bpws:getVariableData('loopVar', 'main', '/counter') + 1"/>
    <to variable="loopVar" part="main" query="/counter"/>
    </copy>
    </assign>
    </while>
    Another structured activity is 'pick'. It's just like several receive activities waiting at the same time with an additional alarm construct to avoid waiting forever the occurrence of a message:
    <pick>
    <onMessage partnerLink="" portType="" operation="">
    … do something
    </onMessage>
    <onMessage partnerLink="" portType="" operation="">
    … do something else
    </onMessage>
    <onAlarm until="2004-12-31T23:59:00">
    … hey, what the hell are you waiting for?
    </onAlarm>
    <pick>
    Like the receive activity, it's possible to declare a 'createInstance' attribute on the pick element to trigger the creation of a new process instance.
    Finally, for those who found all those activities way too structured and were missing a bit of anarchy, WS-BPEL introduced a flow activity. You basically declare all your activities as you like and then create links that take those activities as origin and target. The flow is also the only way to enable the execution of several parallel branches.
    Process Data
    To handle the process execution data, WS-BPEL introduces a new and unique concept: variables… Ok, that was just a bad attempt to keep you interested. Here is the context: your process engine must receive and send messages as defined by web services WSDL descriptions. To be able to do anything useful it must retain those messages and let you manipulate their content to create new messages or influence the process flow in variables. Therefore variables hold the state of a process execution. WS-BPEL variables can either hold a WSDL message or an arbitrary XML structure defined by a schema.
    An example for the declaration of a variable that can hold a WSDL message (the first stanza comes from the WSDL description, the second is a part of the process definition):
    <message name="creditInformationMessage">
    <part name="firstName" type="xsd:string"/>
    <part name="lastName" type="xsd:string"/>
    <part name="amount" type="xsd:integer"/>
    </message>
    <variable name="requestLoan" messageType="creditInformationMessage"/>
    So now, how do I stuff an incoming message into this variable? Here is the stuffing:
    <receive partnerLink="loanRequester" portType="loanProcess" operation="processLoanRequest" variable="requestLoan"/>
    Hey hey! That's our old receive! A variable attribute can be specified for a receive to hold the incoming message. For a reply, there's also a variable attribute to give the content of the message to send. And for an invoke, there's an inputVariable attribute to give the variable to send and an outputVariable to hold the response (for a synchronous invocation).
    We have variables to hold our message and we know how to give them a value upon reception of a message. But how do you initialize a variable when you want to send a message using it? How do you build a variable using parts of other variables? The answer is assignment. There's an additional activity I didn't mention yet (yes, I'm holding information) named assign. It lets you "copy and paste" the whole content of a variable, only a WSDL part in a message or even just an element (using Xpath). Again, examples are better than idle words:
    <assign>
    <copy>
    <from variable="ob1"/>
    <to variable="knob"/>
    </copy>
    <copy>
    <from variable="userInfo" part="homeAddress"/>
    <to variable="address"/>
    </copy>
    <copy>
    <from variable="house" part="bathroom" query="/shower/soap"/>
    <to variable="cleaningAgent"/>
    </copy>
    <copy>
    <from>hey you</from>
    <to variable="song" part="title"/>
    </copy>
    </assign>
    Once your variable has been set correctly, you can simply use it as inputVariable for an invoke.
    There's still one mystery unsolved in the way you can use variables in WS-BPEL: referencing them in expressions. Let's say you have a variable holding a specific value and want to use this value in the condition of a switch case, how do we do that? By using two functions:
    bpws:getVariableProperty ('variableName', 'propertyName')
    bpws:getVariableData ('variableName', 'partName'?, 'locationPath'?)
    The first function accepts the name of your variable and a property (we'll introduce property later but right now you just need to know that a property is a named XPath expression). The second accepts your variable, an optional part and an optional XPath expression relative to the part root.
    It's now time to see your first complete WS-BPEL example. It triggers the execution of a process upon reception of a message and iterates over a value contained in the message until 10. It's a very stupid example and it's probably the last thing you want to do with WS-BPEL (just as a reminder, WS-BPEL is used to orchestrate web services, not iterate over a value) but it illustrates almost everything we talked about in this paragraph.
    <?xml version='1.0' encoding="UTF-8"?>
    <process name="loop"
    targetNamespace="http://www.smartcomps.org/twister/example/loop/process/"
    xmlns="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/ws/2003/03/business-process/"
    xmlns:def="http://www.smartcomps.org/twister/examples/loop/service/"
    abstractProcess="no">
         <variables>
              <variable name="loopVar" type="loopVarType"/>
         </variables>
         <correlationSets>
              <correlationSet name="counterCorrel" properties="def:counterId"/>
         </correlationSets>
         <sequence>
              <receive partnerLink="loopPartner" portType="loopPort" operation="loopOp"
              variable="loopVar" createInstance="true">
                   <correlations>
                        <correlation set="counterCorrel" initiate="yes"/>
                   </correlations>
              </receive>
              <while condition="10 > bpws:getVariableData('loopVar', 'main', '/counter')">
                   <assign>
                        <copy>
                             <from expression="bpws:getVariableData('loopVar', 'main', '/counter') + 1"/>
                             <to variable="loopVar" part="main" query="/counter"/>
                        </copy>
                   </assign>
              </while>
         </sequence>
    </process>
    As you probably already realized, data manipulation can quickly become a bit verbose. The WS-BPEL Technical Committee is currently working on it to have something easier for WS-BPEL 2.0.
    Correlation
    Correlation is a notion that can be a bit hard to grasp at first but is very important. So hang on and I'll do my best to be even more clear (somehow) than usually. During its execution, a process has to interact with several different services. This interaction is stateless so there is no way to make sure you will be addressed to a particular instance of a service. So let's imagine you own a wine store and have a web site allowing users from all over the world to order cheap and very good French wine. A service provided by your bank does the billing for you and you also use a shipper to send the orders all over the world. When a user places an order online, your web site generates an order id. But your bank doesn't know anything about your order id, it creates its own billing id corresponding to your order and you always must use this billing id when interacting with your bank (to confirm the transaction just after shipment for example). The shipper also creates his own shipment id that will be used when he confirms that the order has been sent.
    You want to use a WS-BPEL engine to handle those tasks automatically and orchestrate all the services (there's probably much more than three services and many steps involved). That's a really good idea!!! But how do you deal with all these different ids ? Yep, you guessed it: correlation. How does it work? A correlation is an unique way to identify the interaction of your process execution with a given party. A correlation is a list of property elements and a property element is a named XPath expression. This XPath expression must select a value in the exchanged messages that will be the value of the correlation for this particular message. So for our previous example we would define the following elements:
    <property name="billId" type="xsd:string"/>
         <propertyAlias propertyName="billId" messageType="createBillMessage" part="billInfo" query="billId"/>
         <propertyAlias propertyName="billId" messageType="confirmTransactionMessage" part="billId"/>
         <property name="shipId" type="xsd:string"/>
         <propertyAlias propertyName="shipId" messageType="shipMessage" part="shipId"/>
         <correlationSets>
              <correlationSet name="bankCorrelation" properties="billId"/>
              <correlationSet name="shipperCorrelation" properties="shipId"/>
         </correlationSets>
    A correlation can be composed of more than one property (separated by spaces). A property can also have several aliases for each type of message the correlation is used for.
    Usually a correlation is declared for each actor your process has to communicate with. The correlation is initiated during the first message exchange between your process execution and a party and is reused anytime your process execution sends a message to this party.
    Compensation
    I'm not going to detail this chapter as much as I did for the previous ones. This article is already far too long (and therefore too boring). Talking about compensation in a detailed manner would require another article like this one. But to whet your appetite, I'll tell you what its is and what it is the problem it has been designed to solve.
    Compensation is related to error handling. WS-BPEL processes are usually long-lasting (there could be days between 2 activities), they use asynchronous messages and interact with several different services. Introducing the concept of ACID transactions in this context is quite tough. Each of the services involved can locally use its own transaction but it's impossible within your process to control them (and you probably don't want to). So what can you do if you have three asynchronous operations, like 3 invoke / receive couples, that must be executed in an "all or nothing" fashion? How to cancel the two first operations that have already been committed if the third fails?
    Compensation is basically a set of activities attempting to cancel operations that have already been completed inside an unit of work. If an activity fails or a fault is thrown inside this unit of work, this set of activities is supposed to roll back everything that has been already completed in the unit of work in a way specific to your business case. You are the only one who really knows what to do if something goes wrong so you have to provide the necessary operations.
    But this system has important drawbacks:
    •     It is your responsibility to execute the right activities to handle the cancellation.
    •     All the services you are interacting with must support a way to rollback a previously committed transaction (most probably requiring some hard coding).
    Conclusion
    WS-BPEL has been a bit criticized principally for its absence of human participant interaction (as in conventional workflows), everything is a service. But whether you like it or not, it's already standard and if you use it for what it is good at, a pretty good one. Besides it's a good step in the right direction to standardize the BPM - SOA - 'call it what you like' space. And you can always rely on good products like Twister to introduce Worklist functionalities (remember, always a bit of marketing in a conclusion).
    Resources
    WS-BPEL Specification: http://www-106.ibm.com/developerworks/library/ws-bpel/
    Oasis WS-BPEL Technical committee: http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/tc_home.php?wg_abbrev=wsbpel
    Twister WS-BPEL Open Source Implementation: http://www.smartcomps.org/twister

    Where can I get a document like this for the IQ775? I have asked HP several times, but get no response. I just want to know how to open the damned thing!

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