Monthly Archives: April 2012

Brinkmann Grill, Home Appliances

A BBQ Review? Huh?

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Yes, this is a computer/tech site. What’s a BBQ grill review doing here, you ask? Well, the big box chain where I purchased the grille refused my product review twice so I decided to publish my own review here.  While I did use the word ‘idiot’  in the first review to describe the person who assisted me when I made the purchase, the second was cleansed of any inflammatory material and, I must admit, was very well written. So, instead of having the review buried on the big box site, I’ll publish the review here. Had they accepted it, my work would have been done and few people would have read the review. However, since it wasn’t approved, a whole lot more people will see it. Here’s the scoop:

1. The store, unfortunately, was a Home Depot close to me here in Toronto. The advertised unit was a Brinkmann 4 burner propane gas grill sold under the banner of ‘Special Buy’ for $249.00. The model number is 810-9422-F. Here’s a photo of it:

Brinkmann Gas Grille
Side burner and all, here it is.

2. Brinkmann, a U.S. manufacturer…well, not really since all the grills are made in China, is the distributor of this BBQ. So far, all of my dealings with Brinkmann have been pretty good but, as you’ll see in the review, they haven’t been perfect.

Here’s the original review:

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My old Fiesta died a natural death but it was the best BBQ I’ve ever had. The Brinkmann replacement just isn’t worth the money, even at its ‘special’ price of $249.00. Here’s why you should avoid this at all costs:
1. Even though it has 4 burners, you have to turn them all on if you want to cook anything. The sales rep (an idiot who may have been the DSM at Eglinton East) told me that if you want to cook one burger, you only have to turn one burner on. I pointed out that the Fiesta directions said to turn all the burners on at the same time, no matter what you’re cooking. He laughed and said, no way. Well, he was completely wrong. If you turn one burner on, it takes FOREVER to cook even a lowly burger. Try to cook a chicken with two burners on and it will take hours. Turn them all on and you’re (litereally) cookin’.
2. The burners are so weak that a medium wind will blow them out. I BBQ a lot, summer and winter, and no wind EVER blew out the Fiesta. Now with this Brinkmann I have to put a wind protector in front of it to keep the wind off it.
3. The burner feeds are hidden under the pre-assembled top section. There is no way to get at them to adjust the gas/oxygen screen. Although I think this may solve the weak burner problem, there is no way to access them. Although they should be set at the factory, they don’t seem to be.
4. The fit and finish of this BBQ is not up to the standards of either the Fiesta or the Broilmate that I used previously, Many things that are made in China are above standard. This thing is completely sub-standard. Fit and finish is cheap, befitting the price. This isn’t a deal, believe me. You’re getting less than what you’re paying for.
5. If I could return this, I would. I’ve used it and don’t feel right about returning it (I know, I know, it’s Home Depot, right?) but mark my words, this is the last Brinkmann I will ever buy.
6. The igniter didn’t work from the get-go. The Fiesta igniter worked for years. When I contacted Brinkmann for replacement parts, they said there were no parts in stock at that point but they’d send them off when they came in. It’s April 17 and that was back on March 6. Right now I’m lighting
my new BBQ with a match. Cool huh?

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Admittedly, calling the associate an idiot was probably out of line, even if he was a dolt. Mentioning a competitor, even if they do make a better unit, maybe wasn’t too cool either. Fiesta makes a damn good, simple BBQ. They don’t try to be something they’re not.

Here’s the second review, much the same but without some of the booboos mentioned above.

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Model: 810-9422-F | Store SKU: 1000715184
This Brinkmann grill just isn’t worth the money, even at its ‘special’ price of $249.00. Here’s why you should avoid this at all costs:
1. Even though it has 4 burners, you have to turn them all on if you want to cook anything. The sales rep told me that if you want to cook one burger, you only have to turn one burner on. I pointed out that the Fiesta directions said to turn all the burners on at the same time, no matter what you’re cooking. He laughed and said, no way. Well, he was completely wrong. If you turn one burner on, it takes FOREVER to cook even a lowly burger. Try to cook a chicken with two burners on and it will take hours. Turn them all on and you’re fine.
2. The burners are so weak that a medium wind will blow them out. I BBQ a lot, summer and winter, and no wind EVER blew out my old BBQ. Now with this Brinkmann I have to put a wind protector in front of it to keep the wind off it.
3. The burner feeds are hidden under the pre-assembled top section. There is no way to get at them to adjust the gas/oxygen screen. Although I think this may solve the weak burner problem, there is no way to access them. Although they should be set at the factory, they don’t seem to be.
4. The fit and finish of this BBQ is not up to the standards of either the Fiesta or the Broilmate that I used previously, Many things that are made in China are above standard. This thing is completely sub-standard. Fit and finish is cheap, befitting the price. This isn’t a deal, believe me. You’re getting less than what you’re paying for.
5. If I could return this, I would. I’ve used it and don’t feel right about returning it (I know, I know, it’s Home Depot, right?) but mark my words, this is the last Brinkmann I will ever buy.
6. The igniter didn’t work from the get-go. The Fiesta igniter worked for years. When I contacted Brinkmann for replacement parts, they said there were no parts in stock at that point but they’d send them off when they came in. It’s April 23 and that was back on March 6. Right now I’m lighting
my new BBQ with a match.

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There you have it. Maybe Brinkmann makes a better BBQ than this medium priced unit, I’m not sure. Judging from the quality of this grill and the fact that I’m still lighting the damn thing with a match AND since Home Depot Canada refused to publish a negative review, I sure won’t find out. As an aside, I have reviewed many products on the Dell website as well as on the Canadian Radio Shack (thesource.ca) site. The reviews have been both positive and negative, either way they get published. On the Source site, I’m listed as a Top Reviewer, as a matter of fact.

Thanks for reading! Sometimes a big outfit such as Home Depot can’t see the forest for the trees. The big picture escapes them. If you’ve been in their stores lately, you’ll know exactly what I mean.

 

April 22, 2012

Update: Home Depot contacted me after I tweeted about this post. They tell me that my review was rejected because it mentioned the price of the BBQ. As you can see, I have already had a comment from a reader within hours of publishing this blog entry. Ah, the power of Google AND the power of Twitter. Maybe I will start to integrate product reviews here as well as tech stuff. Hmm…

 

April 23, 2012

Yes another update. Finally, Home Depot posted my review of the Brinkmann BBQ.  A CSR from Brinkmann called this afternoon as well. He suggested that I adjust the burners and check that nothing had gotten into them at the factory. This is concerning the wind blowing out the flame. I guess this kind of thing is probably normal but I didn’t have to do this with the Fiesta or the Broilmate that I previously owned. Does that make sense to you? Am I being too picky? When I buy something at Home Depot am I expecting too much that it work fine right out of the box?

Microsoft Xbox Live Gold

Microsoft’s Big Mistake

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Every now and then (think Windows ME), Microsoft screws up. Although it’s too early to tell, Windows 8 might be another gigantic mistake. Right now, however, I’m talking about Xbox Live and the big mistake Microsoft made with it.

If you buy an Xbox 360, Microsoft asks that you pay a monthly fee to gain access to something called Xbox Live Gold. Remember that you’ve already shelled out big bucks for the game console, only to find out that the bulk of your online experience is going to cost you even more money. Big mistake on Microsoft’s part.

By insisting that Xbox 360 users pony up money for access to Xbox Live Gold, Microsoft is shutting out millions of users from spending money with Microsoft and its premium content providers. Want Netflix? Add the Xbox Live Gold monthly fee to the till. Want Hulu or any of the other premium content? Add the Xbox Live Gold monthly fee to the till. Microsoft could have charged the providers a fee to have access to its Xbox Live users but they decided to charge their own users, instead. In a stupendous moment of short-sightedness, Microsoft has pulled a classic ‘forest for the trees’ move here.

The big picture is that Xbox Live is a portal to the online Xbox experience. Once people get online with their Xbox consoles, the world of online shopping should be open to them. Instead, Microsoft charges you before you even get into the store. An analogy to this would be if Gillette started charging for its razors. Gillette now offers its razors pretty much for free. Hell, they’ll even send one out to you without you even asking for it! Everyone knows that the money is in the blades, not the razors.

Microsoft wants it both ways. Instead of seeing the potential in customers using the Xbox Live site as an online store to generate revenue, Microsoft has slammed that door shut. In a revolving series of discounts advertised on the skimpy free portion of Xbox Live site, Microsoft offers free weekends of the Gold experience, as if someone somewhere realizes the importance of this particular online portal but is bound by some internal law at Microsoft that nothing is ever free.

By not looking at the big picture, Microsoft has limited itself in a way that Sony never did with its PS3. The PS3 experience is much more attractive for consumers. Instead of having to shell out a monthly fee, PS3 users have access to a wealth of content as well as ample advertising for premium material. Sony has you covered. It offers you a good amount of ‘free’ while at the same time having a platform for ‘extra cost’.

In some ways, I think this is a difference between the American business template as opposed to the Japanese template. Instead of gouging you for everything, Sony at least, gives you a decent amount of content and has a built-in platform for its own advertising. Microsoft has missed the boat completely on this one.

Thanks for reading!

Back ups, Backing up your computer, Basics, Hard Drives, Windows, Windows Secrets

How do I back up my computer? Part 2

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When it comes to backing up your computer, what exactly are you backing up? Well, pretty much everything that you have added to it. This includes, but is not limited to, documents you’re written, photos you’ve taken as well as anything that you’ve downloaded from the Internet such as videos, photos, audio files, Etc. What you aren’t able to back up are all of the Windows files, the program files nor any of the browsers or apps that you use. There isn’t a way to back these last things up anyway, unless you want to copy your whole drive. Even then, none of the programs would work. You’re backing up your stuff, not Windows or related stuff.

If you have purchased a new computer or laptop/netbook, it most likely didn’t come with any CDs or DVDs. These days, new computers don’t come with these system disks. You have to make them. Windows will prompt you to make new recovery disks and this is something you should do as soon as you can after purchase. If your computer fails, you can restore it to its original condition by using these disks. But, and this is a big but, creating the recovery disks has nothing to do with backing up your computer. When you create recovery disks, you are only backing up the original software that came with your computer, nothing that you have saved or created since you started using it. Remember that.

Where is all of your stuff? Nine times out of ten, everything you want to back up is in the My Documents folder. Windows automatically saves files to different folders in My Documents. Even the downloads from the Internet are saved there. This, however, doesn’t mean that everything is saved there. Some programs save your creations in completely different folders, ones that the program creates on its own. If you have things that are important to you on your computer, make sure you know where they are.

Windows Explorer, that folder on the bottom of your taskbar in Windows 7 or the ‘Explore’ program that comes up when you right click the start button and choose ‘explore’, is your friend. Get used to using it. All of the cool things on your computer can be found using Windows Explorer. Explorer is worth a blog entry on its own, it’s that important. Play around with it and see what you can find. I use it all the time and it’s one of the reasons I stick to Windows. The Mac OS has nothing like Explorer, that I have found anyway, and I get claustrophobia using OS X simply because I can’t find anything!

While we are discussing back ups, go back and read my post on WinDirStat . If you’re wondering where things are on your computer or if you simply want to know what’s taking up the room, read the post and you’ll be educated. WinDirStat is free and perfect for exploring your computer. Once you have the graphic up on your screen, run your cursor over it to see where everything is. As the cursor moves, the location of the file it’s resting on is shown. Some files, the Windows ones for instance, are huge but can’t be touched. Others, usually the blue ones, are your files and can be backed up.

That’s it for today. Tomorrow I’ll write more about actually performing the back up. It’s a step by step job that takes time but, ultimately, will save your bacon should your hard drive fail. Even if you only save precious family photos, it’s worth it, right? Some things that are lost are lost forever. That’s not a good feeling.

Thanks for reading!

Back ups, Backing up your computer

How do I back up my computer? Part 1

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Here we go again, folks. Last week I heard an interview with a relatively popular musician. He mentioned that he’d recently spilled a glass of rye on his laptop keyboard during a recording session. I’m not sure why he had a rye during the session but maybe that’s how he relaxes. The singer was relieved that he hadn’t lost all of his music, words and ideas but he came close. Believe it or not, the interviewer mentioned that he had recently done the same thing and almost lost the book he’d been writing. I listened and thought, “Wow! Two people who are creative but not too bright when it comes to common sense computing.”

First, if you have material on your computer that is important to you, sign up for Dropbox. It’s free, simple and ensures that nothing you create will be lost if something untoward occurs. Check out my post on Dropbox here:  Dropbox – 6 reasons why you should be using it now.  Briefly, if you save your work to your Dropbox folder, you can access it online from anywhere in the world. The free 1 gigabyte of storage is ample for most needs but if you need more, you can get up to 16 gigs through referrals or, more simply, pay a premium for more space. I’m a writer and I save everything I write to my box and I haven’t used more than a quarter of the space. Besides keeping your stuff safe, Dropbox saves old versions of your work, just in case you make a save error somewhere along the line. You can access these old versions by logging into your account online.

TIP: If you need more space, refer yourself a few times using your other email addresses. For each referral, you get another gig of space. Honestly though, I have lots of pics and articles in my folder and I still have 750 megs left open.

Next, a Dropbox account is a sensible part of backing up your computer but it’s not a complete solution. In the next few posts I will (again) run through the various steps that you need to perform in order to keep your creative efforts safe. If you’re an artist, a business type, teacher or just about any other profession, backing up your computer relieves stress and might just keep you employed.

Thanks for reading!

If you can’t wait, look for my older posts on backups here: How to back-up your computer Part 1   My next few posts will explain all of this using the latest software but the older posts are still effective.

 

Rip Offs

Avoid Getting Ripped Off by Staples

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If you buy a new laptop or desktop from Staples, you’re likely going to get ripped off…unless you listen to me carefully.

While Staples may have good prices on their computers and peripherals, they are running a scam in their stores, at least in Canada. If you’re in the U.S., let me know if they are using the same scam down there.

The sales staff at most outlets are very helpful, when you can find one, and they seem to know their stuff. The problems begin once you decide on which model you want to buy. When you get to that point, the csr (customer service rep) will do his or her damnedest to hook you up with all kinds of extras that you DON’T NEED. Here are some examples:

1. A bogus fee to transfer your files (documents, photos, videos, etc.) from your old computer to your new one. This charge was recently quoted  to be over $200.00. This is a completely unnecessary fee. Don’t pay it. Set yourself up with a flash drive, 8 or 16 gigs should be enough, and transfer the files yourself. A drive that size might be $15.00 or $20.00 but it’s both useful after you’ve backed up your stuff and a lot cheaper than the ridiculous transfer fee that Staples wants to charge.

TIP:Here is my how-to about backing up your computer  Part one, part two and part three.

2. An expensive and completely phony charge to set up your new computer. Staples will tell you that the charge is to load the software that comes with your computer onto it. The csr will lie to your face and tell you that the software isn’t already on the hard drive, that it takes hours to load it but they will do it all for you. The fee is, again, in the $200.00 range. Trust me, this money is the worst ripoff out there. Every new computer comes loaded with all kinds of software ALREADY ON THE HARD DRIVE! There is absolutely nothing for you to do on a new laptop or desktop except to create a log-in name and a password, if you want one. The password is optional, of course. There is nothing else to do, even if the csr insists that there is. Don’t listen to the csr and if things get out of hand, walk out of the store. If you are firm about buying from Staples, in spite of what I am telling you, call their head office and insist that the store stop pushing you into these totally unnecessary extras.

3. Extra warranties. All computers come with a year warranty, at least they do in Canada. Believe me, if something is going to happen to a computer, it’s going to happen in the first few months. After that, there is no sense in paying for extra coverage that will, undoubtedly, be money down the drain. HP (and Compaq), Dell and most other computer manufacturers offer these extra warranties anyway. You have time to think about things like this, you don’t have to buy them at the store level. No matter how hard the csr or the manager tries, just buy the damn computer, nothing else.

4. Pay extra for Microsoft Word. Most new computers come with a Starter Edition of Word. This version of Word is fully functional, not time limited and is included in the price of the computer. There is no reason to pay extra for Office unless you KNOW that you must have it. Regardless, you can often get deals from Microsoft on the Student Edition of Office. Alternatively, you can download Libre Office, a completely free, open source version which is compatible with Microsoft Office. Get it here: http://www.libreoffice.org/

If you are firm about buying from Staples, in spite of what I am telling you, call their head office and insist that the store stop pushing you into these totally unnecessary extras. All of these things are generally done at the store level, none of this seems to be part of Staples corporate policy. However, head office must know that this kind of thing is going on and, as far as I can see, has done nothing to stop it. I have gone so far as to interrupt a csr who was deliberately lying to a customer in the store, saying that their new laptop had to be set up by an expert because the software wasn’t already loaded on the hard drive. In spite of my protests, the csr continued to mislead the customer. I finally took the customer aside, told them who I was and what I did for a living, and walked them out of the store. At least I saved one person from being conned by a Staples csr.

If other stores are doing the same thing, let me know. Buy the computer if you want but don’t pay for ANYTHING else.

Thanks for reading!