Part of the reason why it has been quiet on the RibbonCustomizer front is that the mainboard of my main computer (a good old Gigabyte mainboard with an AMD 64) died after years of faithful service. Unfortunately, replacing my computer with a brand-new Core i7 based machine became a nightmare on its own.

Used to the American Newegg, I had to find out that its most similar German equivalent Alternate symbolizes the “Servicewüste” (service desert) Germany has often been described as. My mistake was that I ordered correctly as the company I am, instead of as a consumer, as I in retrospect should have done with that online seller of computer hardware: As a consumer ordering from an online seller in Germany, one enjoys a legal right of return for any reason (including not liking it/not wanting it anymore) within 2 weeks of receiving it. On the other hand, the German lawmaker assumed that corporations are more informed market participants than consumers and hence did not grant them a similar right. However, this has not stopped many companies from extending a similar right to corporate customers, even for purchases not made online. Alternate, however, is the exception with its call center personnel obviously trained on blaming the German lawmaker for not extending this right to corporations, instead of admitting that its their corporate policy of offering only the legally required minimum.

What happened to me? I ordered the individual parts for a new computer, built it together, turned it on and watched in horror as nothing would boot. More than a week of troubleshooting later, and at some point enough parts here for 3 new computers (all purchased either as consumer or from local companies with a better return policy), I finally had the new system booting and sent the faulty combination of parts back to Alternate. As it looks right now, I’ll be receiving working (and by now totally unnecessary) replacement parts back instead of being refunded my money.

Lessons learnt for me?

1. Never order from Alternate again
2. If ordering online, make sure the online seller offers an acceptable return policy to corporations and, if not, order as consumer and deal with the accounting implications of that later

The other part of why it has been quiet with RibbonCustomizer is that I have been spending time looking at the Office 2010 beta. As it has a built-in ribbon customization feature, I don’t know yet what exactly RibbonCustomizer’s support of Office 2010 will be. If you have any suggestions (and have used the beta), please leave me a comment!