tekHedd – the blog

It’s EXTREME! or something.

wot;dnr: Great video card; sluggish initial response from tech support, great support after they engaged.

I like my new video card, a “Zotac GTX970 Amp! Extreme Edition”or something to that effect. Runs great and cool, and has what can only be described as unnecessarily excessive thermal management. Three PCI slots wide, and barely fits in my gigantic Antec case.

But, I can not save settings in the Zotac Firestorm application, which on a Zotac brand card is the only way to fully control it. You lose the settings, not just on reboot, but if you accidentally click the close button on the Zotec control panel. It just sucks generally.

So, naturally I contacted tech support. There’s a phone number to call–for every region except the USA. Oh joy. So I used the email. Got my automated response over a week ago; nothing since. Just sent a followup email:

tekHedd .,

This is an automated response. Thank you for contacting us; we appreciate your interest in ZOTAC! This response confirms that we have received your ticket. One of the members of our support staff will be in touch within 1-2 business days. The details of your ticket are listed below. Note: When replying, please include your ticket ID in the subject line so we may track your ticket accurately

Ticket ID: LKD-XXXXXXX
Subject: Firestorm won’t save presets
Department: Technical Support
Type: Issue
Status: Open
Priority: Low

You can check the status of or reply to this ticket online at: https://www.zotacusa.com/help/index.php/Tickets/Ticket/View/LKDXXXXXXXXKind regards,ZOTAC USA

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Support Center: https://www.zotacusa.com/help/index.php

What I learned about torture this year, is that it is totally OK, even if it gets no results, even if it is done to random innocents, as long as all of the following are true:

1. It’s in a good cause
2. You don’t call it “torture”
3. You pretend it isn’t happening

And there you have it. Torture is completely OK and not morally wrong, as long as you follow these three simple rules.

OUYA is actually pretty neat. But their recent decision to allow apps with no demo-able content of any kind really makes shopping for games a chore. The whole system is built around the idea that if a game seems remotely intriguing, you immediately download it and try out the demo content, to see if you want to buy it. But with the addition of “no-demo” games, this is gone.

It is frustrating to browse for games on the ouya.tv web page. First off, their web store simply has no way to trigger a “purchase.” But why would you purchase from there, anyway? With no text-based reviews, and no prices listed, and no demos, you have no clue if the game is good. And, there is no way to know how much a game costs without going to your OUYA and searching for it. The “Push to my OUYA” button doesn’t seem to work.

So you have to browse games at the OUHA, while simultaneously using a different computer to search for internet reviews.

Oh sure, every game can have a short video trailer and some screen caps. But that’s rubbish: it’s a lot like buying a game in the store based on the box artwork–usually a mistake.

So… once again a decision is made by the OUYA team that can only hurt their success further. Great idea; terrible marketing.