We’re taking a few days off here at Winderz HQ for some much needed R&R. Normal service will be resumed mid next week :-)
Take care out there!
Home » Archive for category "winderz"
Archive for the ‘winderz’ Category:
Site Issues
Apologies if some of you were redirected to a strange holding page for a while there. For some reason the domain registrar thought that the domain had expired in 2009 (which, clearly, it hadn’t!).
Hopefully all is well now, but it may take 24-48 hours for all DNS issues to be resolved.
(and yes, we were annoyed – especially during a busy event period!).
Happy New Year!
Hope you all had a great night last night, whatever you were doing.
A quiet one for us here in sunny Brisbane and a relaxing day today too :-)
Just wanted to wish you all the best for 2012.
Normal service will be resumed around here very shortly, but in the meantime take good care and here’s to a fantastic new year!!
Christmas Shopping
No posts tonight – Christmas shopping instead!
Back tomorrow.
Have a safe night :-)
Winderz Site Updates
A quick update: we’re updating themes and other options so if things look a little screwy around here you know why :-)
Shouldn’t be too much longer – we hope you’ll like the new look.
Please let us know if you find anything that’s broken!
The Sad Story Of My Tissot T-Touch
Many moons ago – back in the days when even attempting to browse parts of the Tissot website from outside Switzerland was verboten (yes, really), I bought myself an original ‘T-Touch’ model.
Despite numerous stories of other people experiencing dodgy compasses, wonky buttons and movement failures, this little geek beauty served me perfectly as a more or less daily wear for many many years.
In fact, it was at least a full eight years before the battery gave up the ghost and I packed the watch away until I got around to getting a new battery installed.
Fast-forward to today and I’ve found that that isn’t the simple exercise I thought it would be - far from it in fact.
Having traipsed around in the Brisbane heat for most of my lunch-hour it now seems that not only does the watch have to go back to Tissot (fair enough, it’s a techie piece), but there’s a better than even chance Tissot will elect to not change the battery at all.
In fact, it turns out that for old T-Touch models such as mine that they’re more likely to elect to ‘offer’ me a new T-Touch at a discount, rather than attempt a battery change.
I know it’s a discontinued watch, but I’m not sure what to make of that – especially as I was told by multiple dealers that this would cost me somewhere around $500-$700 to transact (yes .. I’d get a new watch, but that’s one hell of an expensive battery change!).
Effectively that’s forced obsolescence for the sake of a (pretty standard) battery.
So, I guess I’m left with three choices:
1. Wear something else and write-off using my much loved T-Touch
2. Pay for a new T-Touch when I have a perfectly capable one (minus any juice to power it!)
3. Attempt to change the battery myself.
With regards option 3 I was given a range of horror stories from the dealers around ‘specialist equipment’, ‘calibration’, ‘nuclear meltdown’ etc., but a bit of Googling reveals that it doesn’t actually look that hard and I’m very tempted to try that approach.
What do you think?
Should I just accept that it’s now old technology and move on, or should we expect to be able to at least get a change of battery, regardless of watch age? (other failures, sure thing – no more parts etc – I get that).
On a related note, I had a battery change for a Tag Heuer from an even older vintage recently and that went just fine :-)
Sort of cross, kind of confused, quite disappointed … :-(
Magrette Regattare Bronze: Pictures And First Impressions
Regular readers of this blog may recall that I put in an order for a Magrette Regattare Bronze when the latest limited edition was announced.
Well, I’m pleased to say that it’s now arrived!
I thought I’d share some quick initial pictures and give you my first impressions (images are from a cellphone, so bear with me :-) ).
For an ‘affordable’ ($350) watch I have to say, I am very impressed with what you get for the money, and how it’s all presented.
The external bubble wrap has a Magrette sticker on it: genuine NZ goods inside!
The watch and associated items come in a wooden ‘dominoes’ style box, which has the Magrette logo on the outside.
Once opened, you get:
- a cloth pouch, which contains ..
- the watch (of course)
- a business card
- a guarantee / info card
- an extra rubber strap and spare strap pin.
The latter surprised me, as I thought the watch just shipped with the leather strap it was wearing when I took it out of the box. To have an additional rubber alternate strap is definitely a bit of a bonus.
One nice touch on the information card is that Magrette lists things such as the size (44mm), movement (Miyota automatic) and crystal type (sapphire). Good for those of us who prefer the techie details!
The Regattare Bronze is limited to 1000 pieces: mine is #360, which is shown on the back of the watch and the info card.
To the watch itself ..
At 44mm, it is as you’d expect nice and chunky. The bronze case adds to the heft, but it’s not so heavy as to be a pain to wear.
I can see that bronze is already bronzing in parts so I’m looking forward to seeing how it will age – which of course is the idea of a watch like this. Every one will end up slightly different!
The sapphire crystal is domed which gives a slight magnifying effect to the already clear dial.
You get nothing beyond the time on this one, which so far it appears to be keeping very well (but only one day in ..).
The lume is good, with numbers and hands getting the treatment. The lume on the numbers fades fairly quickly, but the hands seem long lasting, so no dramas there.
On the back is an inset piece of New Zealand Kauri wood, behind another crystal.
Printed on that is the wood detail, model name, logo and reference number (# 360 for me, as mentioned above).
The black leather strap it ships with is also a chunky piece. I do like the red rear of the strap.
There’s a little Magrette logo on the clasp and on the back of the strap too.
All in all I’m loving this so far. For $350 you definitely get a great deal for your money – all presented very well.
Will wear this for a while and give you a longer term report down the track :-)
