The customer service of new AT&T for Bellsouth customer

After AT&T took over Bellsouth at the beginning of this year, we can see a lot changes now. Not only the company name, sign we can see the change, so do the customer service representative we have to deal with. Today, I decided to call Bellsouth or AT&T to complain my DSL modem charge and it took me longer than I thought.

Right after the merge, I could not wait for AT&T's $10 per month deal then I ordered at-that-time Bellsouth DSL service for $32 per month. When I was ordering, I was told I could get the DSL modem for free after mail-in-rebate if I signed up the service from the web. But after nearly half year, I did not see any rebate form showed up in my mail box but $7.5 charge for the modem showed up for my every month's bill statement. I called the "BellSouth" a couple times, and each time the rebate specialist told me he/she would put my rewarding in the system since I was eligible for this rebate, and it would take 6-8 weeks to process. But after a few month's waiting, what I received were two postcards saying that they could not give me the rebate because I did not purchase the Bellsouth FastAccess service. What?

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Review: Buffalo DriveStation Combo Hard Drive - HD-HC500IU2

I ordered this Buffalo DriveStation from Frys(Outpost.com) a couple days ago with the lowest price $119.00 I could have ever found for a 500 GB external hardDisk. The other reasons I ordered were that it has 3 connection interfaces (USB 2.0, Firewire 4 pin and 6 pin) and the shipping fee is free.

It arrived at my house 3 days later after I ordered which was amazing considering the shipping was free. I opened the package and was satisfied with the size of this hardDisk. It is not too much huge as what I thought at all.

......

I put the included CD in and the setup wizard is very straightforward. First time I chose the Firewire 4 pin as the connection method, and it just took a few seconds from my computer recognize it after I plug the firewire cable in. Then I checked the disk information, and I found it shows as Samsung driver in my computer. No wonder I was told Buffalo only products external driver case not the disk itself.

Since I saw the format was FAT32 and the disk space was 465GB, I decided to format it before I use it. But when I opened the included Disk Formatter program, and selected the HD - Samsung driver (Be careful, the external disk is not the default selected one, do not format your internal disk by mistake), I could not click the format command button since it was in gray. I saw the Physical Format button on the top, and I clicked it. After two warning messages, I got another error message as the below to fail the physical formating. (Another fact: I learned the meaning of "aforementioned" from this error message)

I checked the manual CD, and could not find the reason but I saw the manual uses USB connection as the example. I guess I had to use USB instead of Firewire connection.

I then unplugged the firewire, and connected the include USB 2.0 cable. The set up progress was quick too, and my computer found and show this Buffalo driver very quickly.

Since I got a chance to connect two connections, I did a speed comparison. I dragged a 935MB file from my internal disk to this external driver in both connection methods. Both of them only took less than 1 minute to finish the copy progress, but in 4pin Firewire took longer and initially showed more than 2 minute on the progressing status bar. Since I do not have 6 pin Firewire to test, I drew the conclusion that USB 2.0 connection is faster than 4 pin Firewire.

With USB connection, I clicked the Physical Format button and everything went through. But I am very regretful now, since it will have to take more than 4 hours to finish this physical formatting. It is running when I am typing this blog after my dinner, oh, my.

Other than that, I am very happy about this external disk so far. Oh, I did not mention that it is very quiet with fanless design and auto power on/off with the computer on/off.

Recommend it if you are looking for a cheap medium space external hardDisk.

Full production name: Buffalo DriveStation Combo Hard Drive - SATA, 500GB, 7500 RPM - External Hard Drive

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How to download YouTube videos to your local machine

I like YouTube since I can share my videos with my family and friend from everywhere the world on it. And I also can watch a lot of interested videos uploaded from everywhere the world. But sometimes I just want to watch some video offline. So how can I download video from YouTube?

Well, there are a simple way and a complicated way as well.

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