AIB finally upgraded our company account to use their new system which supports “real” Java and my choice of browser (Firefox).
It seems they have been migrating companies across to the new system over the last few months.
We now all have a little calculator sized “doda” called a “digipass” which basically generates a lot of random numbers.
Downsides
- I had to change my password’s format again!
- Passwords aren’t case sensitive – huh?
- You have to have your digipass with you in order to login
- the digipass is battery powered – I’m betting that the batteries will die on payday
Upsides
- It supports Firefox
- It uses Java as opposed to the Microsoft Virtual Machine which has been defunct for years
- It should be cross-platform (see above)
- Did I mention that it should be cross-platform?
AIB’s business banking was one of the few reasons I kept Windows XP installed on my office PC at all. The only thing stopping me from switching over now is finding the time to actually do it ie. migrate data from local hard drives (if there is any) and import mail from Outlook into Thunderbird (that’s going to hurt!)
Now that is some good news! I haven’t had to deal with the horrible AIB interface in a while (one of the few upsides of being out of work), but you know, I can’t think of anyone who had a good word to say about it.
The batteries in the Digipass last a pretty long time, even with regular use (Rabo have been using them for years).
It seems to me that AIB probably only got the finger out because Vista users got on their case – from any interaction I’ve had with their support people, “cross-platform” means working with more than one version of Windows. Hey, even if that was the reason, at least it’s done now!
You lucky sod. Ulster Bank still insist on IE6 with MS JVM for Business banking (they moved Consumer over to a far superior system last year).
So we have one machine entirely dedicated to these idiots just so we can do online banking.
Conor – AIB’s changeover should save me in licensing costs 🙂
Is the MS JVM even still available?! I thought that their license to distribute it ran out in 2005 or so.
Robert
It’s not officially available, so you had to trawl google looking for valid downloads if you needed to install it on a new PC 🙁
Michele
The outlook to thunderbird migration is not that bad..i have no bad memories from doing it over 2 years ago.
I’ve been badgering Ulster for 3 years now! I even sent them the URL to Microsoft’s page explaining how to transition away from the MS JVM. It’s probably cost them more in support resources to deal with all the irate users who can’t login with IE7 than it would to move to a real JVM.
@Kevin – Out of interest, how many PSTs did you import and how big were they?
@Conor – I had that conversation and numerous others with AIB 🙂
4 pst files, they came to about a gig i think.
Hmmmz….. I think my main PST is probably about 2 gigs and I’ve another 3 or 4 of about a gig or so each. The last time I tried to do an import it took forever and didn’t really work, though that could just be that PC being dumb