dog
updates as they arrive. In the meantime, you
should obviously avoid these applications like
the plague.
My Last.fM Won’t stop
After reading about http://www.last.fm in Maximum PC I
decided to try it. It’s not bad. I figured I would run it
when I wanted to hear some streaming music. When
I finished listening, I clicked the icon in the task bar
to exit the application. Ten minutes later it was run-
ning again. I clicked Exit and went to work. It started
again. I looked at the Options menu and unchecked
“Scrobbling” and made sure it wasn’t set to run
automatically when Windows starts up.
After clicking Apply and exiting the applica-
tion, it started up again. I could tell when it would
start up because my floppy drive would make a
noise. I decided to uninstall it since I have no idea
what it’s doing.
— Brian
to see if he could reproduce the problem, the
Dog installed the latest version of Last.fm on a
clean copy of Windows Xp pro running in a virtu-
al machine. Like Brian, the Dog also unchecked
“scrobbling” and “start with Windows.”
after 18 hours, the application had not
spawned. so why was Brian’s version starting?
Windows Media player is the likely culprit. When
installed, Last.fm hooks into Windows Media
player. If you launch WMp, Last.fm launches with
it, which gives the impression that it is starting
by itself. as far as the Dog knows, the app is
clean, and the Dog has received no other com-
plaints about it being too aggressive in starting
up on its own.
LoW prIorIty
I purchased a notebook PC hard drive from
PriorityElectronics.com in February and ordered it
second-day FedEx. Two days later, the drive didn’t
show up. A week later, I called Priority Electronics
and spoke to a salesperson named Jessica who said
an email with the package’s tracking number would
be sent to me at the end of the day. I didn’t receive
the tracking information. To make a long story short, I
had to call the company several times to get a refund
for my shipping costs, and I had to badger them
just to get the product I paid for. I felt the reps were
snarky with me as well. All I wanted was my hard
drive on time.
— Charles T. La Grande IIIthe Dog spoke with a priority Electronics rep
who confirmed that the company had refunded
Charles’s shipping costs. the rep wasn’t sure
why the drive took so long to arrive, but he said
that a delay at the warehouse was the probable
reason. although priority did ultimately sup-
ply the drive, Charles’s frustration isn’t unique.
priority Electronics of fountain Valley, Ca,
received an f rating from the Better Business
Bureau. on its website, the BBB describes its
f rating as follows: “We strongly question the
company’s reliability for reasons such as that
they have failed to respond to complaints, their
advertising is grossly misleading, they are not
in compliance with the law’s licensing or regis-
tration requirements, their complaints contain
especially serious allegations, or the company’s
industry is known for its fraudulent business
practices.” ouch.
the Dog must point out, however, that
the BBB’s rating is apparently based on 18
complaints, with eight of those ending in a full
refund. to see what other people had to say, the
Dog headed over to http://www.resellerratings.com,
which compiles consumers’ reviews of stores.
the company has a lifetime rating of 4.38 out
of 10 with fewer than 20 reviews, and the last
positive review came back in December 2005.
the tenor of the complaints was pretty hot. one
consumer wrote, “I ordered a new laptop drive
that they spec’d as DVD+rW, DVD-rW, DVD+DL,
and CD-rW. the first drive I got appeared used
or refurbished, didn’t open when the button was
pushed, and did not support DVD-rW or DVD+DL.
the second drive looked new but did not support
DVD+DL. rMaed a second time (and I paid for
shipping), then they decided they could not pro-
vide me with a drive that met their own specs.
they credited back to my credit card $20 short!
I’m now working with the credit card company
to get my $20 back.”
although the number of complaints against
the company is relatively small, we cer-
tainly don’t have much confidence in priority
Electronics. Woof.Firing up
Windows Media
Player will
launch Last.fm.