Oh I bet they did. Remember here, though, I am not talking about the driver. It was the user-mode software that does not work on Vista, and the user-mode software drives the driver, which means that, if all I have are Vista machines, I cannot use the dongle as an AP.
The investigation just started (at my behest), meaning any consumer can cause and investigation of any company for any reasonable claim of false advertising.
I will however, say that the FTC representative was suprisingly diligent in verifiying details, etc. I also discerned from our conversation Zyxel is not the only company playing this game.
Yep. You have a valid complaint in that all the software in the box doesn't play with Vista. Whether it justifies all the noise you're making is debatable.
Yeah. That happens. I've been involved in a few class action suits against companies that fumble over their advertising claims. Hard disk manufacturers that couldn't resist stating unformatted capacity.
3Com that used the X2 trademark on their modems, only to discover that buyers genuinely expected the modems to be x2 or two times as fast. Several companies, who thought that a change of name justifies not paying any rebates and revising some of their product specs. Also, some medical billing issues that are not exactly relevant here. The bottom line is that the lawyers collected millions by shaking down the companies, while the victims usually received a gift certificate or nominal discount on future purchases.
Conversation? Have you ever heard of the world wide web?
Fill out the form and wait your place in line. The FTC is required by law to "investigate" any and all complaints that it receives. The investigation may end up going no further than someone reading your complaint and filling it appropriately. It may also be taken seriously and obtain the attention of the Justice Department. Hard to tell. If Zyxel didn't provide any campaign contributions, I'm sure the threat of an investigation would get their attention. It works for Microsoft.
As for other companies playing the same game, I suppose that's true. Everyone lies, but that's ok because nobody listens.
I used to believe that until about 20 years ago, when an employee of of Massachussetts Turnpike Authority started shaving $1 of my toll payments. One day I deliberately paid with a $20, pretended I was in hurry to make my 1 hour commute from Boston to Framingham, got all $1's back (which is what made me suspicious in the first place), and I pulled over to count. $18 back, when toll was $1. I walked back to booth to demand my extra $1, and he pretended he didn't know. I called MTA in vain, until finally a coworker who knew a friend of friend, etc...let it be known that he was funding his drug habbit by skimming. Anyhow, long story short, I have a check in my safe for $2 from MTA that took me 7 months to get. Obviously it is a matter of principle for such a small amount, but I learned quite a bit from that experience.
Since then, I have never had to sue anyone, but I have had countless situations where people have been induced to make good their accounts. Sometimes I let things go, like when took a drink at fancy Boston restaurant and end up with mouthful of broken glass (manager wanted to refund entire $140+ ticket + extra), and sometimes I push, like when Air France tried to keep $2000 payment without telling me decisively up front whether I would be allowed to travel not long after 9/11. Sometimes the "defendant" finds mutual compromise, like when I was hit by uninsured driver ($200), again ($0 and a handshake since there was very little damage to my vehicle), etc. There is also matter of oil company that trespassed on property I jointly own in East Texas. Ahem. ;)
But it's not really the dollar amount. I look at the Zyxel situation as an opportunity to do for others what others have done for me, whether I was aware of it or not.
Who knows...someone else might want to run AP on PC running Vista, and come across my post, and think twice, saving $65.
Zyxel certainly came across it (within 24 hours in fact).
If you are doing something about it rather than just Trolling at least get your facts straight. "2008-06-02" is either 2nd June or 6th Feb and your post " Windows PC As IEEE 802.11 Access Point" commenced 25th June. At the start of that post you had "supposedly" not decided what item to buy. If you filed a complaint with the FTC on 2008-06-02 then you deliberately bought an item knowing that it would not work in a particular function.
Don't do that, you silly person. We have trouble enough with the braindead ``nuxi''-style US date format as is. According to ISO8601 "2008-06-02" is 2nd June *only*. In fact, this sort of silly doubting is why that standard exists in the first place.
Repeat after me: YYYY-MM-DD; fullyear dash month dash day and no other interpretations. If for whatever reason you have to f*ck up the order, you write the month as Roman numbers or the month name or abbreviation.
In the US it's definitely DD-MM-YYYY. I'm trying to get used to the "braindead" (insult-speak for "not the way we do it"-eh?) method they use in Mexico, um, MM-DD-YYYY I think.
But now I have to fill out all these US goverment forms right now,and they are very strict about DD-MM-YYYY. They will reject the form if I attempt to adhere to somebody else's standard.
where the day and year are numeric, and the month is in alpha; e.g., today is: 7 July 2008. This avoids all ambiguity, even the ambiguity as to which standard one is using, since there can be no confusion as to which two-digit number is the day, and which is the month.
-- Rich Seifert Networks and Communications Consulting 21885 Bear Creek Way (408) 395-5700 Los Gatos, CA 95033 (408) 228-0803 FAX
This works well for English speakers, speakers of certain Romanized languages from which "July" can be inferred, and poorly for everyone else, which is several billion people. :)
We must not forget the significance of the "I" in "ISO".
Which is entirely acceptable under ISO8601 and reasonable if your audience can be expected to understand your names for the months.
You're assuming it is even desirable to strive for such ultimate universality. You'll likely find that with corner cases far enough away from the English speaking world the entire concept of an alphabet and the western/`arabic' numerals is unknown. Then what do you do?
My original comment was mostly directed at introducing a YYYY-DD-MM format, which AFAIK nobody except perhaps the one person upthread uses. I see no sense in doing so except deliberately creating confusion with the ISO8601 ``all-numeric'' YYYY-MM-DD format, which is otherwise perfectly unambigious and distinct from the other two widely used notations, at least for people who know about the Christian(!) date system and can read western numbers.
Once again, I failed to think before typing. Especially embarrassing when one is being a bit persnickety about details !
MM-DD-YYYY or YY in US. DD-MM-YYYY in Mexico
International standard is a good idea, of course! I could unlearn old habits, but switching back and forth is confusing.
I agree that writing the month out is safest for operating within this hemisphere. And on some parts of the same Gov forms, they do that. But always month first.
For some people, there is no problem with the "July" format because their context is only for people for whom "July" makes sense. For others, the context is universal to start with. Especially in computation, the context is large. I noticed this once in lunch room where seven languages (Mandarin, Urdu, French, German, English, Spanish, Russian) were going at once.
On a related topic this past Saturday I was at a party where almost all present were Brazilians. Whatever language was spoken, English/ Portuguese/Spanish, the method of delivery was altered to a form that is more understandable (avoiding German adjectification, avoiding slang, rearranging prepositions, etc.). In other words, everyone there was aware of context. My portuguese is not good at all, and for about 15 minutes, I struggled with a conversation until the guy talking realized that I was not Brazilian. He continued in Portguese, but switched to a mode that made it easier for me to keep up. One might argue that his mode is more universal, and was desirable within that context.
So I guess what I am saying is that it depends on the context of the person asking the question.
There are probably people living in the country who who never saw the need for area codes, and still don't.
Returning to topic, I think the best way to publicly punish Zyxel for their sins is to informatively and nicely (to avoid above insults and digressions) state your findings, so that people believe and support you. More support =3D more buzz.
That way the word gets around the web about them and their marketing guys lose points (jobs) for cheating. Well, not for just cheating, but for going so far as to get caught red-handed at it.
I do know what you mean about holding your own with the companies. I get like that at times. It's not fun, but if nobody ever called them on stuff, we'd really be screwed.
Won't happen. Interestingly my favorite vendors tend to also be the worst offenders. For example, the Buffalo web pile is a mess of marketing baloney (i.e. MIMO-like performance), and unsubstantiated performance claims (2x thru 12x). Linksys is a close second with the added entertainment value of having them try to sell trash using the same model numbers as previous successful products. Just how many products need to have WRT54G in the name before the customers are totally confused? Zyxel is one of my favorite router vendors with the G-2000 Plus v2 having one of the few internal WPA/WPA2 RADIUS (PEAP) servers. I'm not sure why better products equate to marketing hype, but I'm prepared to tolerate the hype to get a superior product.
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