By Mark Tennent in Reader
Posted in utilities, Internet on March 2, 2009 at 4:44 pm
British Telecom emailed us today with the message that our monthly on-line bill is ready for reading. Coincidentally, 18185.co.uk also emailed our call charges bill. All very good and supposedly saving paper, just like HSBC who have been struggling to get us to accept paperless bank statements, assuming we can get at our account to read the bad news.
Of the three companies only one, the smallest of the lot, has got a paperless bill that lets us see the amount we owe and to log into our account with ease. That is, 18185.co.uk who send an email in the form of a single page invoice, ready to print if necessary. Full call details are on their web site if we want them.
This is the firm we pay for the call part of our telephone use. We dial 18185 in front of any local, national or international telephone number we want to call. We get the conversation for free usually, plus a tiny connection charge.
The other two companies, BT and HSBC, are so untrustworthy in their on-line offerings we will not move to their “paperless” accounts. For “paperless” read less paper for them to buy and more for us to supply for them. Both companies send accounts with numerous near empty pages bar their logos and corporate rubbish. If they stopped using them they would halve their paper costs and especially if they kept to a single ink colour.
BT revamped their website recently and the new one is not recognised in our password loggers, the Mac OS Keychain or 1Password. Their site won’t accept our username and password we type in and clicking on ’Forgotten Password’ results in an automated email uselessly saying “This is an example template for forgotten password”. So much for their paperless bills.
HSBC were also locking out Safari 3 following a website revamp last year. It is fixed now, just in time for Safari 4 to be released in beta form.
Look that up in your Funk and Wagnalls
What can be said about Safari 4? Apple’s engineers have given it a whole new face, copying Google’s Chrome by putting tabs across the top of the window. Other new tweaks are to drop the blue progress bar, omit the reload button and add automatic suggestions for Google searches and URLs. Apparently, Safari 4 is faster that its predecessor but it still has problems with some sites Firefox opens with ease.
The final flourish is a new window of Top Sites based on the recent history log. Resembling a Rowan and Martin joke wall, click on a little web page in the wall and expect a wide-eyed, giggly Goldie Hawn to pop her head out.
We’ve used the new-look Safari for a week before screaming in frustration and wanting it to look like good old Safari 3. There are various Terminal commands which turn off most of the new features but better still is the free haxie Safari-Tweaks from pointum, here.
It gives Safari a new Tweaks menu where all the new toys Apple’s engineers have devised, can be turned off.
Brilliant!
Rated: 100% (1 votes)
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