ZA Tech Show: Episode 8
This week we recorded the show live from Podcamp SA in Bloemfontein! A big thanks to Nico Baird and the rest of the Podcamp crew who put together a great event, even if we did miss half of it thanks to Duncan blowing out a tyre on the way to Bloem.
In this episode we discuss:
- Podcamp SA
- Fring for the iPhone
- iPhone possibly being released in India through Vodafone
- Gauteng’s planned fibre ring
- Mobile broadband and data
- Cell C supposedly becoming profitable
- The Psystar ‘Open PC’ Mac clone
- More of our investigations into WantItAll
- Apple halting its Safari for Windows stealth installs
- Telkom taking on the Competition Commission
- Seagate suing STEC
- Sun’s Richard Barrington and green computing
And probably some other stuff too…
Hey guys,
Thanx for the great mention and feedback.
Regards
SimonB
Great show, guys, keep it up. Someone mentioned another site or sites that does the same as wantitall.co.za, can anyone put some URL’s up? Thanks
One of the sites we mentioned was Have2have - http://www.have2have.co.za Beware of grey imports however, support can be an issue.
Maxxcooldude said:
“Great show, guys, keep it up. Someone mentioned another site or sites that does the same as wantitall.co.za, can anyone put some URL’s up? Thanks”
Hi Maxxcooldude,
I think the site Jon mentioned was http://www.have2have.co.za/
Duncan
Grey imports is the bogeyman the distributors conjure up to scare consumers from trying to buy consumer electronics at decent prices. I’m hoping what we’ll see is big merchants being able to do their own after sales support if they can’t get an official distribution agreement with the manufacturers. (I’ve seen some gear at prices at Hi Fi Corp that I think fits this description)
Which begs the question, why can’t we here in SA get our tech at fair prices and officially supported by a manufacturers guarantee? Maybe the manufacturers are in on the scam as well.
Grey Imports: lol Maxxcooldude I couldn’t agree more with you. When shopping at Makro a year back I was told that HiFi corp only sells grey import products and that I should not buy there.
I was sold a product from the “real deal” and it broke and guess what - the customer support stank. I waited weekes for my device to be “repaired” only to have it break again..
I then got the same product at HiFi corp, it also broke and after taking it back, they gave me a new product off the shelf, no questions asked, in fact the 2nd one broke almost a year down the line and HiFi corp again replaced the product, no questions asked. mmm now the question arises.. who is selling the “grey imports”????
@HiFi corp is the only place I now buy my techno gadgets in South Africa.
I’m not disagreeing with you guys - HiFi Corp is great at support and so are the guys at Have2have.
All I was saying was that you have to be careful who you deal with; there are a lot of fly-by-nighters out there who bring grey gadgets into SA to make a quick buck and disappear when anything goes wrong.
Pays to do your homework is all
So, we have MultiChoice chief technology officer Gerdus van Eeden on the show this Friday. There must be tons of questions from all the geeks who watch DStv and listen to this show. So let’s get ‘em and we’ll pose them to Gerdus this Friday. Please post your questions here…
[ Grey imports is the bogeyman the distributors conjure up to scare consumers from trying to buy consumer electronics at decent prices. ]
If only this were true.. I’ve been stung twice with grey imports, once was a Sony tv from hifi corp - it broke, was out of hifi corp’s warantee and they couldnt fix it .. Sony wouldnt touch it cos it was grey.
Although it might be blown out of proportion there is definately some truth to Grey Import issues … it’s specially apparent in the A/V game - as any A/V enthusiast will know, the power supply is usually one of the most important thing in a device - the classic Grey problem is that they get cheap devices from other markets, rip out the power supply and put in some cheap piece of junk which ends up (a) degrading performance and (b) killing the device slowly - this was the case with my Sony TV.
It’s gotten a bit better recently with the universal power supplies going into devices, but I’d rather have an officially imported and supported product than something Grey… and there’s no excuse to buy Grey - with places like Game and other places matching other prices.
Question to the Multichoice CTO re: HDTV
I was wondering, if our devices are capable of 1080p, which I assume they are - it would just be stupid to bring in a previous-gen decoder from eu, which is what it seems Multichoice is doing - will premium events like the world cup be getting the 1080p treatment? As I understand it, the high-def content will be put together locally then beamed around the world?
Seems like it went off very well. I hope to attend the Jhb round in November.
Later