Kenya, Miscellaneous

I was so lucky to see this advertisement today as I was walking down Wayaki Way after work. At first it was the “Core i3” that caught my eye, and then the words “FREE DOS” leapt out at me. Holy cow, each new Dell Inspiron comes with a complimentary copy of DOS! How Dell limited themselves to only using capital letters, I don’t know. If I had an opportunity like that I would pay some guy to stand on top of the billboard, shouting, “FREE DOS!!!” at the top of his lungs!

Billboard advertising a laptop that comes with "FREE DOS"
Billboard advertising a laptop that comes with “FREE DOS”

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Miscellaneous, Rants

Safaricom's Huawei E160 USB modem
Safaricom’s Huawei E160 USB modem

I use a Safaricom-branded Huawei E160 USB modem to connect to the Internet over 3G from my apartment in Westlands. It works great but Safaricom has locked the device so it only works on their network—an anti-consumer move they probably learned from the likes of AT&T. We have four different mobile providers in Kenya, each one of which sells their own custom-branded Huawei modems. The other providers are small fries compared to Safaricom, but they love to play catch up so they’ve locked their modems too. Wanna browse on Zain? Buy a Zain modem! Thanks for nothing…

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