The tracking information shows that it was delivered yesterday morning, but I was gone until around 3PM. I got the regular mail, and figured that the package just hadn’t arrived yet – it wasn’t even supposed to be here until the 27th. It was only later in the evening that I checked out the tracking, and was informed that the item I hadn’t found on my porch had been delivered. Oops.

I called the post office, and they weren’t a great deal of help. Essentially: “It was delivered. Sorry for your luck.” I didn’t expect much more than that (they did do their part, after all), but the lady I spoke to could have been a little sympathetic, no? Amazon, as usual, seems to be willing to bend over backwards to achieve customer satisfaction. They told me that if the post office doesn’t come up with the package, they’ll send me another one with overnight shipping. While I do want my backpack, I’m going to feel pretty weird / bad about accepting the replacement. Amazon did their part – they shipped the item to me, and it even arrived ahead of time. Why should they eat the cost of another one because some asshat stole the box from my porch?

Update: I assumed right away that the box was delivered to my house and then stolen from my porch, but after thinking on it some more, I’m not sure that’s the case. It may have actually been delivered somewhere else. The tracking shows that it was delivered at 9:11AM, but our mail never runs that early. Usually it’s in the early to mid-afternoon when stuff shows up. That, and I was still home at 9:11 – not for long, as I had class at 10, but I was in the house, and I heard no knocking, etc.

Apparently, amazon.com is already doing this with some books. A few days ago I bought French Grammar: A Complete Reference Guide; after purchasing it, I was given the option to get the digital version as well, for a mere $1.89. I of course jumped on the option.

I’m not crazy about the implementation, as you have to login amazon.com to read it, and the reading is done in their online reader (the same system which you can preview books in). It makes sense, though; if they allowed PDF downloads they’d be all over the internet in a matter of hours.

The online reader lets you highlight and add annotations, as well as make an unlimited number of bookmarks. You can then search the whole book, just bookmarked pages, highlighted text, or your notes. The only feature which seems to be a bit wonky right now is the copy feature. Standard copy and paste is disabled in the reader, so you have to select the text you’re after and then press a “Copy” button at the top of the controls. However, when I try this, a little “Loading…” window pops up, and stays there indefinitely.

Still, though, it’s cool to see things moving in this direction. I wish I could upgrade my long-ago purhased copy of Hammer’s German Grammar and Usage, but it looks like it’s not yet available in digital format.

Of course, I wouldn’t want to buy each book twice at full price. In the future, I’d like to see some sort of sysem that allowed one to buy the ebook at a deeply discounted price when you purchased the hard copy; say, if I buy a $40 German grammar text, I can add the ebook version to my amazon.com cart at checkout for $10. I would assume the publishers would still be making money here; how much does it cost to print an ebook? I suppose preparation of the ebook has to be considered, but I’m guessing the bulk of publishing prep is now done on computers, so how much preparation work could there be?

Apparently, I’m not the only one wanting this. And indeed, if I could buy a hard copy of a book and get an ultra cheap digital version thrown into the basket… well, I might just hop onto the ebook bandwagon. Quick, someone buy me a Kindle!

• In comparison to the new one, the original netbook I received ran hot – really hot. The bottom of it was rather hot to the touch after an hour or so of use.
• The first one didn’t like standby much; sometimes it would work, other times when I tried to use standby, I’d end up having to reboot the computer, as it would go into standby but not come out of it.
• I’ve not had a single lock-up with the new one, even after using it for a number of hours. The first one locked up three or four times in the limited time that I had it.

In hindsight, it’s clear that there was something very wrong with the first one, but I think my judgment was clouded by the fact that I didn’t want to send my new toy back. Can’t blame a guy, can you?

As I said in my first post about it, if you’re looking for a laptop to take notes on and use for other light duty, I can’t recommend one of these enough. While I did my homework, I still had reservations about it when I purchased it. I don’t now. The little thing rocks. I’m moving all of my note-taking for class into OneNote 2007, and syncing things up between my computers with Dropbox. I just wish I’d had one of them when I started college.

One other note which is not specifically about the Aspire One but is related: Kudos to amazon.com for once again pulling through as a wonderful company to deal with. I had no trouble in submitting my request for a replacement, and I got the replacement netbook the very next day, as they upgraded the shipping on it to one day shipping for free. They also supplied a prepaid shipping label to ship the defective one back.

While I’d love to say that it worked right out of the box, I can’t – in fact, it was DOA. I took it out of the box, looked over the quick start guide, and then followed the easy instructions: plug it in, open it up, and hit the power button. In the instructions, the picture for the next step showed a person logging onto Windows. Instead of being greeted with a booting computer, however, I was shown a black screen, a green power light, and no hard drive activity. Following rule number one of dealing with computers, I tried turning it off and back on again, but still just got a black screen. I tried increasing the screen brightness, thinking that perhaps it was set to 0, but that didn’t do anything either.

While I certainly wasn’t overjoyed, I also didn’t freak. It’s a computer, and DOAs happen. I poked around online to see if there was any information about the problem (beyond “It’s dead, Jim”), and came across a post about the Acer Aspire One’s BIOS occasionally becoming corrupted, causing the unit to not, well, do much of anything. Apparently, the Aspire One has a built-in BIOS recovery routine, which allows you to flash the BIOS even if the machine won’t boot up. Figuring I had nothing to lose – what am I going to do, make it not boot up? – I gave it a try. I followed the linked guide, and after a bit of tinkering, it actually worked. I had to try it multiple times because the computer kept ignoring my flash drive. When it started reading though, it took perhaps 20 seconds, then the computer rebooted, greeting me with the Acer screen followed by Windows. Success!

All’s well that ends well, however, and things didn’t end quite so well despite me being able to revive the little thing. While it works quite well, there’s something wrong with the sound. If music is playing while I’m typing, the sound often becomes staticy or cuts in and out. Last night it cut out completely. The “fix”? Lightly tapping on the unit below the keyboard. I found that if I had music going, I could reproduce the static / cut out problem by resting my hands on the unit in a couple of places. I’m not really sure what that means – a loose connection, maybe? – but I know that if tapping the device fixes it, it’s something I don’t want to mess with.

I’ve filed a replacement claim with amazon.com, as I really do like the thing – I just want one without any bizarre issues. I had the chance to use it once in class to take notes (the primary reason I bought it), and found it to be infinitely better than taking notes by hand. I caught every word, and my right hand wasn’t aching at the end of a 50 minute session. Other thoughts: The battery life seems excellent, and the screen is much clearer and crisper than I expected. I’m definitely not going to be playing Call of Duty 4 on it, but for the internet, taking notes, and other light duty, I think it’s perfect. Someone in my class remarked, “That may be the coolest thing I’ve ever seen – it’s so tiny!” While I don’t know if I’d say coolest, it is pretty awesome. For those of you who have been asking me via Twitter if I’d recommend one – most definitely. Assuming my replacement doesn’t have any issues, I’ll be very, very happy with the purchase.

One other little oddity about all of this: my original package wasn’t shipped from “Amazon.com”, but from “Amazon.com Returns.” I’m not really sure what the explanation for that is; in all my years of buying from them, I’ve never received a package from that address. Perhaps they sent me one which another customer had returned, which might go far in explaining some of the issues I ran into. Has anyone else ever received a purchase “Amazon.com Returns”?

… an Amazon.com subsidiary. We offer open box, refurbished, and slightly damaged merchandise at reduced prices with the benefits of Amazon.com fulfillment and customer service. Satisfaction is guaranteed!

It sounded like a good deal. Getting the book from them shaved nearly $15 off the price, and yet amazon.com would actually be fulfilling the order? Cool.

The book arrived a few days after I ordered it, as I’ve pretty much come to expect from amazon.com. As they filled the order, it came in the usual amazon.com box. However, something was a bit – off. Observe:

Looks pretty normal, right? But wait… what’s up with the rubber band? That’s a new feature. Let’s see how things look on the flip side (literally). Aha!

Apparently, they figured out that if they just replaced a big swath of packing tape with one rubber band, they’d save millions of dollars in the long run. Unfortunately, one rubber band isn’t quite as secure. That is, it’s not secure at all. I’m glad I’m a nerd; if there’d been something in there that someone normal would actually want, I probably would have received an empty box. My rubber band might have even been gone!

Bad, amazon.com! Bad!

1. Using French, for those of you who’re interested. More of my foreign language geekery over here.