Microsoft Works to become free?

Are Microsoft responding to Google Apps with making MS Works free?

Mary Jo Foley reports Microsoft will release the next version of Works for free and support it with advertising.

MS Works is a product I've always disliked. My main beef is that largely incompatible with MS Office with the exception of a period where Word was bundled into it, which they dropped two versions ago.

I'm not sure the last time I actually encountered a mug customer who had paid for Works, usually it's thrown in as an extra by a vendor or salesman desperate to get it off their shelves.

However, one thing going for Works is that it is a far more powerful group of applications that Google apps.

Personally, if you don't want to buy MS Office, I'd go for Open Office or 602 Office over MS Works any time. But for free, it's certainly an alternative although it's probably less compatible with Office than OO.

The only thing I hope is they at least give the next version of Works the ability to save into MS Word, Excel and Access formats. If they did this, people might actually be prepared to buy it.

More Vista shame.

Following my rant about Hewlett Packard yesterday, I see Ed Bott gives a similar spray to nVidia today.

Ten pages of problems!?!

How on earth can a vendor release a product so buggy?

What's even more frustrating is one bug Ed discusses is at least six months old.

After twelve years of working in the consumer IT industry I shouldn't be surprised at how vendors treat their customers with contempt, but this surely is a low point.

The IT industry's failures with the roll out of Vista really make me wonder what the heck is going in the well paid boardrooms of these companies.

I wrote the Vista Hall of Shame on the PC Rescue website back in March. It seems I should have put nVidia towards the top.

It might be time to update that page.

Keep it simple, stupid

I used to have respect for HP, when I was at uni their products stood for engineering quality and reliability. Twenty-five years later it's difficult to have any respect for a company that releases such bloated software.

A client yesterday asked me to set up an Officejet 7410, this is quite a good multifunction printer with wireless networking built in. The client couldn't get the printer to talk over his wireless network.

It only took a few minutes for me to get it right, but I work on this stuff all the time. The computer based options returned a "networking not supported function". I had to use the menu on the printer to setup the WPA security.

That in itself was a frustration, just to nark me more there was an irritating error in the HP Director software about an XML skin not being installed. This is just irrelevant fairy floss which I ignore but customers quite rightly worry about.

The fun really started when I went to set up the printer on another PC. The setup would go through three stages before returning a "the copy functions cannot be used" error.

Beauty.

All up it took me 45 minutes to install the printer. This is ludicrous for a simple, consumer product.

Some of the problem include their links not working on the support website, an estimated time of up to 35 minutes to install, a 240Mb download and installing the .Net framework.

Oh, and the thing requires a reboot every time the setup fails.

All this for a stupid bloody printer.

The key to reliable computing is to keep it simple. The failure of vendors to do this is the number one reason why consumers get upset and computers fail.

I've said before I'd like to see executives held responsible for their dodgy products. Vyomesh Joshi, Executive Vice President of HP's Printing and Imaging group received three million dollars in options last year.

I'd like to see Vyomesh's bonuses tied to how long it takes his grandmother to setup one of his consumer products.

This is what I like about Apple; simplicity. Steve Jobs gets it, Vyomesh Joshi doesn't.

Too many Geeks and Nerds

At a car park on Friday I noticed cars from SIX other support companies. That on it's own should show how crowded the IT support market currently is.

But I'm not cranky about the number of tech businesses fighting in the marketplace: It's about their names.

There's too many Geeks and Nerds: Geeks R Us, Geeks To The Rescue, Geeks On Call, Geeks Central, Geek Chick, Nerds Downunder, Corporate Nerds, Neighbourhood Nerds. I could go on and on and on with variations on this theme.

What these guys don't get is that the term "Geek" or "Nerd" is not a compliment. Some people get upset when they are called a nerd.

Quite rightly too. The term "nerd" or "geek" implies a sexually inadequate young man who gets off on fixing obscure computer problems. To the average person, this indicates your tech will fix your computer because they enjoy tinkering with computers, not because they want to get paid.

I'd suggest the computer tech industry is the only industry where the participants gleefully use a term that's an insult to them.

It's time to drop the "Nerd" and "Geek" names, they are lame and devalue your skills and services. Be proud of your talents and find a name that reflects what you do and the fact you do it well.

Don't let your kids use your computer

The US Congress' oversight committee held hearings on the security of Peer to Peer networking recently. This raised an issue that's bugged me for sometime about programs like Limewire.

Programs like Limewire automatically share parts of your "my documents" folder. For many people there's some pretty confidential information in there.

For business users this can have some pretty serious ramifications. The CNET article on this story has an example.

..the Department of Transportation experienced an incident in which an employee's daughter installed LimeWire on the home computer that her mother occasionally uses for telework--and misconfigured it in such a way that documents from the department and the National Archives were open to others using the network..

That's a pretty typical scenario for a home office or small business: The kids get on mum or dad's work computer and Very Bad Things Happen.

The moral here is to keep work and play computers separate. Make the kids buy their own computer and stick Limewire on it.

Premium SMS scams

On the day the mobile phone industry celebrates the 15th birthday of the SMS, we find a premium rate SMS operator is fined $150,000 for spamming phone users.

This scam was an irritating little stunt where they'd call you and quickly hang up, leaving an "unanswered call" on your phone. When you returned the call you'd get a recorded message telling you that you'd won a prize and to call a premium rate phone number.

If you fell for this, you would then find that not only had you spent $15 to claim your prize, but also you'd subscribed to a pointless and expensive ringtone service.

DC Marketing is not alone in this sort of behaviour. In fact there are many operators who are far worse.

The attitude of the Australian Mobile Telecommunications Association is laughable. The chief executive, Chris Althaus, believes that 9,000 complaints in a six month period is simply because of new 3G services.

Exactly what 3G has to do with SMS scams is beyond me.

The ringtone and premium rate SMS industry has a serious problem. There's only so many morons who will spend hundreds of dollars a year on this garbage. By definition, those morons are easily parted from their money so competition for them is intense.

So the premium rate operators stoop to some pretty low stunts to trick people. One of the most common tricks is to offer a prize but bury deep in the small print that claiming it is agreeing to receiving two ring tones a week at five dollars a pop.

The worse ones just subscribe people who have never even rung the number. The first these people know of the scam is some charges on their bill.

Many victims of this found the response of Optus, Telstra and Vodafone was "discuss it with the spammer" despite the fact the victims often had no relationship with them and the scammers made it difficult, if not impossible, to talk to anyone.

The real disgrace here is the action was taken against one provider under the spam act. The real scammers should be feeling the heat of the ACCC, TIO and state police forces for the frauds that have been committed.

The phone companies should be copping some penalties too. They are complicit in this and profit very nicely from these scams.

Until the authorities start taking serious action, the premium rate SMS scams will continue.

Anyway, happy birthday to the SMS.

Telstra offer a self install kit

Telstra have another crack at the small business market with a new offering.

AustralianIT reports that Telstra will be offering a small business network self install kit that includes a domain name, two managed Exchange mailboxes and a wireless router.

It certainly sounds like an interesting product. The small business market is seriously overlooked and this is the sort of product small business owners love.

I can see a few problems though; the cost of Telstra's plans, ongoing support and domain name problems.

Choosing domain names is going to be fun. A lot of small business owners don't understand the rules for choosing .com.au names and don't appreciate that most good dot com names are gone. I expect Telstra's support people will have some serious headaches with this.

The cost of Telstra's plans is another major drawback. Telstra are never cheap for Internet access and the proposed entry level plan of $55 for 500Mb of data is recipe for small business bankruptcy.

Ongoing support is the deal breaker here. Telstra's previous efforts in this field have left small business owners on hold and frustrated for many hours.

This product will take a lot of supporting and hand holding. To make it a success, they'll have to be sharp on both marketing and support.

Telstra's moves in the small business market are well worth watching. It looks like competition in this space is going to heat up and if Telstra can do it right, they'll be in the position to grab the best market share.

You are not anonymous

The story that every single page of the latest Harry Potter book was photographed and posted to the web is fascinating on a number of levels.

First, who the heck has the time? This book has a lot of pages. Obviously some people at Scholastic have cushy jobs.

The more compelling point is the news that the poster didn't strip out their EXIF information before posting. This means the camera's maker and serial number are there for the world to see.

As the Electronic Frontiers Foundation points out, it's not just digital cameras that live your electronic fingerprints everywhere; mobile phones, printers and web browsers do a good job as well.

While it's not impossible to be anonymous it takes a lot of work. When I read some of the things people do on the net, I'm amazed they think they have some sort of anonymity.

Wireless USB is coming.

The news that Dell and Lenovo are releasing wireless USB equipped laptops will have those who hate cable clutter rejoicing.

Wireless USB is one of these technologies that's been promised for a long time but never seemed to arrive. With this announcement, it looks like USB devices without wires will be common by Christmas.

This is good news to a lot of computer users. Many people loathe the clutter that comes with a personal computer.

All these technologies have teething problems, so we'll probably see some frustrated people in the next few months. But as the prices drop and the technology is bedded down, we'll see more devices and more people buying them.

Risks with wireless networks

George OU at ZD Net makes a point well worth considering about wireless hotspots.

"As ubiquitous and convenient as Wireless LAN Hotspots are, it is probably the single most dangerous technology to the mobile computer user"

He's right on the money. I've often wondered how many crooks have set up a honeypot of a free wireless access point to steal users data or passwords.

Another similar risk that's disturbed me for a while is how vulnerable many access points are. George illustrates this with the Wall of Sheep at the Defcon convention. For a competent but crooked tech it's easy to pick passwords up off a wireless network.

This is also a risk if you have unsecured wireless network, once someone is on it they can sniff out your usernames and passwords.

It's important to take care when you are using a wireless network. Like everything else on the internet; if you don't know them, don't trust them.

Bidding on Ebay and other auctions

USA today has an article on irrational Ebay bidding. Apparently researchers found bidders often pay more than they could if they just accepted the "buy it now" price.

The researchers put this down this down to bidders getting carried away with auctions. While that's almost certainly true, I suspect there's also a mentality that an auction will always result in a bargain.

I used to go to technology auctions and and was an early adopter of the Grays Online website. One thing I discovered very early was that the average punter pays way over the odds for computers and electronics at these auctions and it's why I rarely bother with them these days.

One thing I've always noticed is that bidders don't know the retail price of items. Often you see somebody paying well over what it would cost to buy at the local computer store.

Another factor that trips buyers up is not understanding hidden costs. An observation in this article was that Ebay bidders are suspicious of hidden charges but often didn't consider shipping fees.

In computers there's even more hidden costs. Usually an auctioned second hand computer doesn't come with software licenses and warranties. My view is this alone reduces the value of the box by 60%.

I reckon auctions are a good way of buying and selling. But when you're buying the most important thing is you need to be aware of the retail price before placing a bid.

The joys of selling a business

Over the last nine months I've been looking at exit strategies from the IT support business and to say the process has left me scarred and bitter is an understatement.

When selling a business, the prospect buyer quite rightly wants some certain that wheat they are buying is what's been represented. For the seller, this means quite a bit of work. What's more it's quite reasonable for the buyer to require the vendor to spend some time helping with the transition to new owners.

So given the amount of work involved for the business owner, the sale price of the business needs to be worthwhile.

My experience was that the prices on offer weren't. I even had one prospective buyer claim they had just bought a 30 year old business with a turnover of 750,000 and gross of 180,000 for $18,000.

With those sort of numbers it was hardly worth selling.

I thought this was just me, that I really hadn't built a business that was worth anything. Fair enough, such is life and it's time to move on.

But then I started talking to others who've owned businesses and tried to sell them. I was surprised to find my experience was not unusual. Many people just walk.

So when I read a recent article on the Smart Company Blog about the under-representation of services businesses I couldn't help but add my two bob's worth.

This lead to this interesting reply from Andrew Kent at Biz Exchange. His view is the idea that these business are worthless is bunk.

I agree, all businesses have a value, but the market price for many businesses make it not worth selling for many business owners.

My suspicion is a service business needs to get over the two million dollar turnover threshold before it's attracts the attention of investors and serious buyers. Below that you are largely selling to people buying their own jobs or competitors who are at best half hearted about building a client base.

Andrew to his credit has decided to test this by making an offer on his blog: The first ten IT and construction business that approach him will get a free listing on Biz Exchange. It's an experiment I'll be watching with interest.

Why the ACCC is wrong about Google

The Australian Consumer and Competition Commission's action against Google has generated a lot of interest. One article that caught my eye was James Kirby writing in the Sydney Morning Herald about his experiences with Google and the Eureka report

I don't agree with James, the size and cost of the Search Engine Optimisation industry is irrelevant to this issue. The point is that some businesses and SEO consultants are gaming the system and deceiving Internet users.

For instance, we hold the trademark for PC Rescue a search on the term "PC Rescue" in Google brings up our name as the first search item.

On the ads on the right of the screen, we find five ads that use the PC Rescue term and the top one is a local business that has almost certainly included "PC Rescue" as a phrase in their adword campaign.

Are they engaging in misleading conduct or breaching our trademark? Quite possibly.

Is Google? I don't think so. They aren't pushing or endorsing these services anymore than the SMH or Eureka report does with their advertisers.

Our trademark has been breached numerous times by IT businesses advertising in newspapers, Ebay and the Yellow Pages. While we've sent them sternly worded letters, we've never considered threatening the advertisers simply because the advertisers aren't responsible.

Just as the local paper, Ebay and Yellow Pages aren't responsible for these bozos who are too lazy to think of their trading name I can't see why Google should be. So far, the US courts have agreed with this.

There's no doubt that some advertisers are abusing the Ad Words system. They are deliberately using other's trade names as their key advertising terms.

In my non-lawyer reader of the Trade Practices Act, the ACCC certainly has a case against the Trading Post, if the allegations are true then their conduct was likely to mislead or deceive.

It's not the first time big Australian businesses have been accused of this and it's good the ACCC has decided to step in. I just suspect Google is the wrong target.

Ignoring Vista

Computer Reseller News tells of how many computer resellers and vendors, including Dell, are offering non-Vista systems and even ripping Vista off and replacing it with XP.

While I've been critical of Vista, the fact is that it is here and it will eventually be bigger than XP. Ignoring it is not an option if you work in general support.

So my mind boggles at the attitude of Jay Tipton, vice president of Technology Specialists, who is quoted as saying "Technology Specialists won't even run the operating system internally on any of its production systems because Tipton does not want his technicians taking time out of their day to "debug Vista.""

Apart from the obvious cheap shot that a business calling itself "technology specialists" is pretending the latest Microsoft operating system doesn't exist, the other question is how on Earth can Mr Tipton expect to support his customers when the inevitable happens.

I recall this was an issue when 98/ME was phased out for XP. At the time many, if not the majority, of suburban techs refused to support Windows NT/2000. I was telling those I spoke to that they had no choice if they wanted to stay in the business.

Most of them did stay in the business, but I suspect a lot of them still don't really understand Windows XP, let alone Vista.

This is another reason why computer techs need to have a training path similar to other trades like motor mechanics and hair dressers. Not only would this give techs better skills but it would also improve their image with consumers.

When you see comments like Mr Tipton's you can understand why many consumers are deeply worried when they have to ring the local computer tech.

Strangling the data flow

One of the things that's always rankled me about the Australian broadband market is the way the big operators are determined to strangle demand in order to make a quick buck.

Alan Kohler picks up this point in his Fairfax column, he found he started copping a fat bill when his kids discovered the joys of Limewire.

I've always maintained these "cheap" Telstra Bigpond plans are dangerous as they mean you are writing a blank cheque to Telstra. A cheque that almost certainly will be cashed when someone in your family discovers file sharing or video downloads.

But that risk is a smaller issue. A slightly bigger issue is how the Internet providers have messed the whole market up by offering too many complex plans. My guess this was inevitable given theboth Telco and IT industries love complexity and the Internet combines the worst of the two.

The biggest issue of all though is how the providers use data pricing and limits to strangle demand.

While Telstra is the obvious bad guy with it's consumer and wholesale pricing policies, Alan identifies the underseas cable operators as the biggest villains. Despite their only operating at 25% capacity, their charges are outrageous.

In my view, this is where the problem really lies. We can roll out as many high speed domestic networks as we like, we can put WiMax in every village, ADSL 2 in every phone exchange and fibre to every home but it makes a spit of difference is the data is strangled under the Pacific.

This is a classic example of how successive Federal governments have misunderstood communications.

The Keating government screwed up seriously when they allowed the old Overseas Telecommuncations Corporation to merge with Telecom to create Telstra.

They then compounded the problem by creating a Telstra competitor out of a bunch of cronies who were more interested in building high rise monuments to themselves rather than provide a real alternative for Australian telcoms consumers.

The following Howard government further compounded the problem by privatising Telstra and allowing the existing operators to consolidate their power.

One of the beauties of the capitalist system is that big profits attract competitors. Telstra is planning to build it's own cable to Hawaii and PIPE networks has their own proposal as well.

I hope the proposal by PIPE networks get up. The Telstra cable will only increase their dominance and the only surprise is that taken Telstra so long to get around to do this. We need as much competition as possible in the market place.

It would be good to see the Federal and state governments support the PIPE proposal by committing to using some of their capacity. It seems to me the economics of the PIPE proposal rely on the goodwill of the smaller Internet Service Providers which is a risky proposition at best.

Hopefully our leaders will see the benefits and importance of these proposals.

Charging for drivers and upgrades

A little storm was whipped at ZDNet about Creative charging for ALchemy software. This raises the question of when is it fair for a vendor to charge for an upgrade.

The initial ZDNet report was that Creative were charging for software to run their popular Audigy sound cards. Ed Bott's later report clarified the charge is actually for the ALchemy software which replaces features Microsoft have dropped with Vista, the drivers themselves are free but don't have the advanced gaming features.

To be fair to Creative, they are at least supporting their product. Plenty of other hardware vendors have told customers that it's tough luck, they won't support Vista for relatively new equipment.

I'm on Creative's side on this. Creative have obviously spent money and time developing the software so it runs on Vista. As a businessman I think they deserve being paid, although as a customer I wouldn't be happy.

The real problem for vendors is that with dramatically reduced margins, it's difficult to provide service like this. You certainly can't afford to build it into the profit from selling the original card.

This is the downside of cheap hardware and software. The cheaper it gets, the harder it is for vendors to supply after sales service.

One of the biggest challenges for the IT industry is educating customers that you can have a cheap product, but after sales support is going to cost.

Of course you don't have to do this if you don't compete at the cheap end of the market. But that's another issue.

The real cost of Macs

Australian Personal Computer makes the point that Macs resale value makes them a better investment than Windows systems.

The fact there's a healthy second hand market for Macs 0is no surprise to anyone working in the industry. For years, you've been able to sell your two or three year old Mac for a decent price. While PCs are just run until they can run no more.

As Danny Gorog points out, this makes the Mac more attractive as an investment.

Most consumers and small business probably don't care; they'll just run it until it fails, then buy a new one and leave the old one sitting in a closet somewhere.

For a canny business owner, this is probably a good way of managing your IT investments. It's just a shame many business owners don't think this way.

Confusing the masses

Not content with confusing us with five different versions of Vista, Microsoft throw seven different versions of Office into the mix.

In answering a question in our sister site, IT Queries, I was looking at the Microsoft Office website and the list of different versions of MS Office 2007.

What a mess!

On top of having the seven different types, there's also the added fun of OEM and boxed product licenses.

I won't even mention the Value Licensing scheme for larger organisations which is so complex even those who follow Microsoft for a living find themselves falling into a coma when trying to explain it.

Microsoft really need to look closely at this complexity. It too hard for professionals, let alone consumers and small businesses.

Software companies have to get it through their heads that all the messages they put out about software piracy are pointless if no-one can understand the rules.

Eating your own dog food

I've always liked the term "eating your own dog food". While it's a computer industry term for using your own software on yourself it could apply to any to any industry. There's a few executives at Telstra, Coles Myer and Hewlett Packard I'd love to see with a face full of Pal.

A good example of what happens when you don't try your own product is when you launch a crook website. I had just such an experience today.

As part of our new IT Queries website, I've been exploring advertising options. Yesterday I spent 45 minutes filling in a sign up form for a division of a multinational. So imagine my irritation when I receive a confirmation email telling me to click on a non-existent hyperlink to proceed with my application.

At least they have a phone number, unlike many others these days. So I call them first thing this morning to see if it has been processed.

The girl that answered the phone was charming and delightful, except she didn't speak English very well and had trouble even taking my name, let alone figuring out my problem. She transferred me to the webmaster.

Again he was very helpful and friendly. The website's under construction he said so there might be a few hiccups.

That's nice, but I really didn't feel like waiting a fortnight and then spending another 45 minutes so I explain this and ask to speak to someone who can confirm my application for the privilege of becoming one of their partners has been approved.

"Oh you'll have to speak the general manager for that"

Huh! WTF?!? "Okay, can you put me through?"

"Oh no, he's not in at the moment. I'll take your details and get him to call you back."

Now, as a small business owner I respect and admire other businesses that keep their management structures flat, but the GM of a division of a multinational dealing with a straightforward issue like this is a bit strange.

The real lessons here are that if you are going to automate your processes, make them simple and concise: Someone more pig headed and stubborn than me would have given up well before 45 minutes.

The other lesson is not to launch a product when the website isn't ready. This post is being written at the beginning of July 2007, the product was launched in October 2006. The website should have been tested and ready a year ago.

Another lesson is to test your systems. Sending a confirmation email with a missing or inoperative link is sloppy to say the least.

I believe every manager of every organisation should have to eat their own dog food. In this case it would have saved me a lot of wasted time. I wonder how many potentially profitable "partners" these guys have lost.

No advantage to Vista

Computerworld reports Gartner Research is finding there is no "real competitive advantage" in upgrading to Vista.

Unlike Gartner research director, Martin Gilliland, we don't find this surprising at all. No business, big or small, should be plunging into a new operating system without doing their homework first. For a large company, that's a lot of homework.

Our experience with Vista has been largely positive apart from some really irritating UAC issues and so far we've seen few issues with spyware.

For an upgrade to Vista, we'd be suggesting a new machine is the way to go. This means at least $1,500 when you include the machine, Office 2007 and Vista Business. That's not a minor investment across a dozen machines, let alone ten thousand and we're not including the migration costs.

While Vista will become common in small business over the next year, there's no real reason to junk your existing XP machines.