The new Maybank2u website is extremely slow

Maybank has changed their Maybank2u website to a new design since yesterday. Unfortunately, extensive use of AJAX has render the website extremely slow, to the extend that it is unusable most of the time.

Maybank should be well awared that although AJAX could bring some fancy user interface experience, as a trade-off, it greatly reduce the web application loading speed. Even great application from Google such as GMail which started to use AJAX extensively recently also experiences the same problem, and that's why Google has made available a special link to access GMail without AJAX as a backup plan for their users.

The slowness intensifies over secured SSL connection, which is a must for the bank online services. There is also increase vulnerability for the server to encounter Denial of Service (DoS) Attack, since even without attack, the service is already close to useless due to time-out respond time.

In addition, AJAX application performance is largely depends on the performance of JavaScript execution and browser DOM operations. This mean, the user's web browser play an important role in the AJAX performance too. AFAIK, Safari performs much better than Firefox in handling AJAX, and Firebox performs much better than IE 7 in handling AJAX. Unfortunately, I'm sure they have the most users using IE7, and least users using Safari.

Therefore, too much of AJAX on any website (or a full-Ajax-enabled website) is not a good idea. Maybank2u must find ways to resolve this problem, either to reduce usage to AJAX, or invest more money in upgrading their network equipments and servers. Luckily, they still maintain a link to fallback to their previous website interface. Not so fancy, but at least usable.

OpenOffice.org 3.0 is now on general release

Finally, the long awaited OpenOffice.org 3.0 is on general release now. Strong demand of this state-of-art open source office application suite made them to temporary changed their website into a simple download page only to overcome the traffic.

Pre-compiled installation package is available for download for Windows, Linux, Solaris and Intel-based Mac OS X in various languages.

Right from the opening screen, OpenOffice.org 3 has a fresh new look, with a new start screen, new splash screen, new icons, and a host of usability improvements.

The Writer word processor has a cool new slider control for zooming, allows multi-page display while editing, has powerful new multilingual support, and boasts improved notes capabilities. As well as conventional office documents, Writer can now edit wiki documents for the web.

The Calc spreadsheet has been given another increase in capacity - now up to 1024 columns per sheet. It also has a powerful new equation solver, and a great new collaboration feature for multiple users.

Draw can now cope with poster-size graphics (up to 3sq metres), and Impress supports multiple monitors for presentations. Chart now produces much more clean looking graphics by default, and has a range of additional features requested by power users.

The popular built-in PDF export facility has been further enhanced with PDF/A support and a range of new user-selectable options.

OpenOffice.org 3 is now also available for the first time as a full Mac OS X application, bringing the power of the world's leading open-source office suite to a whole new group of users. And it's even easier than ever to persuade MS-Office users to upgrade to OpenOffice.org, with new support for MS-Access 2007 'accdb' files, improved support for VBA macros, and a new ability to read MS-Office Open XML files (MS Office 2007 and Office 2008 documents)

OpenOffice.org's support for extensions is really coming of age with OpenOffice.org 3. A rapidly expanding number of additional features are available from different developers to add great features such as an Impress presenter console, support for business analytics, PDF import, and a whole new way of supporting additional languages.

Click here to read their official press release.

The OAC Centennial PA Personal Accident Insurance

I believe most of us already insured with some kind of life insurance, which covers compensation on total permanent disablement (TPD). Have you ever think of what if the disablement is "non-total", for example, you just lost one single finger in an accident?

Life insurance won't cover for that, and in fact, you need to find such insurance under the general insurance category (note that not every life insurance agent is also agent for general insurance). I think you should have heard of the term before, it is called personal accident (PA) insurance.

If you are an employed employee, most probably you are already covered under the group PA policy that your company buy for you. You might also be insured with PA under some promotion of car loan, car club, credit card, bank account, etc. The question will be is the insured amount enough? What if you change company and the new one doesn't provide such employee benefit? What if you are retired?

After some consideration, I finally signed up with the Overseas Assurance Corporation (OAC) Centennial PA Personal Accident Insurance this year. What do you think of when you see the word "centennial" here? Yes, OAC is part of the Great Eastern group.

The premium of this policy is RM100 per year (less than RM9 per month) with the sum insured of:

• Accidental death: RM100,000
• Permanent disablement: RM100,000
• Medical expenses: RM5,000

There is a "no claim renewal bonus" with an increase of 10% on the above sum insured for renewal each year up to 100%. This mean if no claim is made, 10 years later, the sum insured will become:

• Accidental death: RM200,000
• Permanent disablement: RM200,000
• Medical expenses: RM10,000

If any claim is made, the sum insured will be reverted to the original amount.

Under this policy, the following are covered:

• Accidental death
• 26 items of permanent disablement
• Medical, surgical and hospital expenses for injury
• Bereavement allowance for death resulting from accident, dengue fever, malaria, Japanese encephalitis, yellow fever, scarlet fever or coxsackie
• Repatriation expenses if the accidental death happen outside Malaysia
• Rehabilitation allowance
• Disapperance for more than 1 year (while travelling)

I believe this policy will complement my life insurance policy as well as cover up any shortage in my company's group PA insurance scheme. It is very affordable too although the premium will be burnt off every year and does not carry cash value like most life insurance products. It is renewable up to 100 years old (and I believe when we get old, we are more risky in getting accident).