It finally happened, Malta has finally caught up with the rest of the third world and had its very own iPhone launch day. I was told people were queuing up to pick up their ordered iPhones from various Vodafone outlets. I even got a little email from the local apple agents…

Will I be getting one? Not unless it’s a present from some rich admirer (donations towards the iphone fund will be accepted).My ipod touch and cheapo phone are enough for now and I’ve spent too much on toys of late.

The pricing isn’t awful but could be better. The most interesting price for the local consumer is the prepaid contract free package which is actually just the iPhone. The 8gb model comes in at €515 whilst the 16gb model weighs in at a hefty €599 - thats €15 and €30 more expensive than in Italy. 

Full pricing for the iPhone from Vodafone Malta can be found here - I will try and compile comparison charts with other countries in the coming days. 

A pre-registration page has appeared on the malta vodafone site. I don’t want the iPhone so bad as to pre register. I want to know what the price plans are and if it will be available prepaid. Ah well. I’m off to try and fix my stylesheet.

Vodafone Malta is promoting the launch of some Blaclberry or another when we are all expecting an official iPhone launch… It was meant to already happen. Who knows maybe GO have put spokes in the wheel since they have the rights to the name locally I believe.

At least I didn’t have to endure Voda’s “summer is now” banner which was up till a day or so ago.

Just thinking bout the verbal and orthographical laziness that is plaguing and permeating our everyday communication. Just like Hank Moody, the main character in the excellent Californication took umbrage at someone spelling out L.O.L. instead of actually laughing, I too have been exposed to the same L.O.L. It’s not upsetting as much as the phonetic translation of English words into Maltese (werkbuk anyone?) and I too, have been guilty of using or abusing acronyms and abbreviations.

My referring to Manchester United as “Man U”, at times is not understood for example, let alone some geek speak like “FTW”. At times abbreviations can be extremely useful and often within a specific field, they become the common used noun, for example few people know what all those computer abbreviations in specs mean… RAM, ROM, PCMCIA, EPROM, CGA, PCI, AGP etc… but they actually are extremely useful because they are easier to remember and more efficient. But that’s the point – efficiency, acronyms should be used within the correct context and should be efficient. If I have to stop to explain an acronym then it defeated the purpose of the acronym. Within printed texts, it is common for a phrase to be written in full in its first instance and then abbreviated thereafter. That works… Unfortunately I’ve read many documents, especially of the marketing variety where the writer is throwing out some acronym which is hardly used in normal vernacular and then expects a lay person to understand their jargon. It is obviously done in many instances to impress others in the same sector (be it marketing or information technology) or to befuddle those not cognisant in the field. It’s another way to doublespeak, equivocate and to throw around buzzwords which in the end usually backfires as if someone has to stop to understand what is being read or said.

Efficiency, again is also related to context. Different people might have different meanings for the same acronym or word. RAM for a computer user is Random Access Memory, a ram, for a Gozitan is  tomorrow’s date. However, for both, a virus caught in the RAM is alas, bad news.

Being the grumpy dissatisfied SOB (son of a bat) that I am, I’m not content with ripping Melita a new one, Go - my ISP, Malta’s national telecoms company and main competitor to Melita, deserves a Frogbattian lament too. Quite simply, I’ve been overpaying my internet bill for the past couple of months. \\\although it is mainly my fault because I kept forgetting to deal with it.

Basically, every Trade fair or ITT fair for the past 2 years has seen Go and Melita try and one up each other with their offers. Being a longstanding and long suffering Maltanet customer I was pleased to see them revise their rates and offers. However when it came to my online payment options I was stuck with my previous price. I had a faster connection now, supposedly 12mbps rather than the previous 6, and my bandwidth was a whopping 200gb. Howevr, this was a carry over package. Their official packages offered less bandwidth and a cheaper price. Also, more importantly – i was still connecting at about 7-8mbps. My phoneline it seems does not support faster connections for the time being.

I called and rectified the situation by asking for a downgrade. I am now paying half what I was previously, and compared to before am still getting more bandwidth. The funny thing is, I’d rather stick with these guys than jump on Melita especially since it was my fault really. The whole point of this little post was that people should check to see if they’re overpaying for a service they’re not getting in full.

I’ve been eying a PS3 for a long time. Budgeting reasons and ridiculous local pricing conspired against my acquisition till now. Also i was waiting for the newly updated version - I have since perused ebay’s listing for sellers shipping to Malta and found an interesting item from Cyprus. It isn’t the latest model but it was well priced to begin with and my total price including P&P was €335 rather than the €466 at local retail. Now let’s start with the fact that I WAS outbid! I was away from the laptop for about an hour almost forgetting about the auction and I return to find the previous highest bidder withdrew his bid.

Now I have a few reservations regarding this item - it’s a motor storm bundle but apparently motor storm isn’t there (i do get a couple of blu ray movies however) and the seller claims it comes with a dual shock controller - not sure if this bundle had dual shock or not…
 

Another issue is that it’s an NTSC model. I hope it’ll work on my TV.. we use PAL here and then there’s the blu-ray region issue. Wouldn’t be a big issue if it weren’t for the fact that it’s kinda hard to be sure what region a disc is when buying online. Though it appears that many discs are in fact, region free.

The other reason I would’ve liked the latest version is the use of smaller and thus cooler running and less consuming chips. 

This will be interesting to see if it works or not… If yeah then I saved some Lm50 (that’s more than a €100) if not I’ll be starting my first ebay auction!

Local company Melita cable has just unleashed its new brand identity - a unified brand name and logo grouping all of its previous separate services under one monicker. I’ve never had personal experience with the telephony or internet side of their business but have been a cable subscriber for over 15 years. They have excellent service when it comes to installations, however the actual TV service s lousy at best and they’re downright crooked at worst. The “mistakes” they’ve made on bills, empty promises in adverts and the whole World Cup 2006 fiasco. Melita offered a special offer during the World Cup on their sports channel package, then they continued billing at the sports channel’s full price whilst advertising a special offer to continue the service at the same pre World Cup prices oh well.

 Now they’ve launched their new brand identity - Glaxo Smith Kline might wish to ask for royalties, they appear to have teething problems. Website issues I can fully understand, yes their site was down, big deal, but we’ve suffered at least three tv service outages since Sunday. Fortunately Inter weren’t playing then (the rest of Serie A was though). 

It’s good to know that the money we’re spending is going on such great service and a crumby logo! It looks crap on the TV too btw…