Me: I live in Silicon Valley with my wife, child and cat. I have worked at Microsoft since I graduated from College, both in the Macintosh Business Unit on products such as Outlook Express, Entourage, IE, and Virtual PC and in Windows Live on Hotmail, Calendar and People. I am currently a Principal Lead Program Manager on the Windows Live Social Networking team. I basically manage a team of Program Managers responsible for delivering features to support our web and client applications. I've been blogging since 2001 and like to play around with .NET in my spare time working on projects such as dasBlog (the blog that powers this site) and Send to SmugMug (an application for uploading photos to SmugMug). I blog about a number of technology and productivity related topics.
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© Copyright 2010, Omar Shahine
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When we moved to Seattle one of the purchases we needed to make was a new TV. I happen to love buying new TVs because it’s not something I do often, and the technology changes that occur in that time span are staggering.
The first TV I purchased was a 27 inch tube Sony. I then got a 34 inch 16:9 Toshiba CRT that was about 200 lbs but the first HD set I owned. It was stunning watching “progressive scan” DVDs.
The next TV was a Samsung Plasma and since then I’ve decided all my future TVs would be Samsung. This was for 2 reasons. 1) Their service is amazing and 2) they make great, well priced, quality products that are pc/media center friendly. Since my TV is mostly driven by a Media Center TV, things like DVI/HDMI support are important.
So on moving to Seattle I decided on getting a Samsung LED TV. These TVs are 1.2 inches thick. I can’t describe how cool this is. They also look awesome and come in giant sizes (55 inches) an weigh practically nothing. In fact, Samsung makes a wall mount that is more similar to hanging a heavy picture to a wall than a TV.
Figuring out where to buy this TV from was a challenge. Good old Brick and Mortar wanted about $400 more than online, but I was also pretty sketched out about buying such a big ticket and heavy item from an online etailer. Also most of the good prices were from “grey market” dealers.
Luckily Microsoft had a special going with a company called Intech out in New York that was an authorized Samsung dealer. The prices were better than any online deal I saw and they included a free media center extender. Shipping was also free.
I pulled the trigger and ordered the TV. it arrived in 5 days from the east coast. I set the TV and all seemed well, but then I noticed that the TV was actually bent! yes, the TV is so thin that at some point the TV had received concealed damage in the box and had a nice big dent in the top middle. I never noticed because you could only see this by looking at the profile, and the picture was otherwise perfect.
I pretty much assumed I was out of luck, but working with the fine folks at Intech they worked tirelessly over the course of the next week to work with Samsung to issue a replacement TV. This required that I document the damage by sending them a bunch of photos to document the damage, and they were fantastic in working with me through this. I shudder to think what might have happened had I purchased from a great market etailer.
Anyway, I’m writing this because I love to point out when companies go above and beyond to make things right. Thanks Intech and Samsung!
You can view Intech’s webiste here: http://www.thehighdefinitionstore.com/