Artificial shortages

Like many others, I swallowed the line that the Eee PC was completely sold out.

Apparently not. The Sydney CBD Myer store had a sign announcing a limit of four per customer.

So supplies can't be too short if there's only four per customer.

Making an artificial shortage of stock is one of Steve Job's old tricks. By restricting supply, it only makes the product more desired. This also worked for Cabbage Tree Dolls.

Looking at my fellow gawkers, it seemed to me most of the interest for the Eee PC was with techie and tinkering types. The mums and dads seemed more interested in the Apple section.

I still reckon Linux was a mistake for Asus.

Computer Christmas present problems

A Merry Christmas from the Cranky Tech.

One thing that gets all techs cranky are phone calls from upset computer users on Christmas day.

So we've put our tips on how to avoid Christmas Day tech disasters on our PC Rescue website.

Happy holidays.

Waiting for service packs

I'm currently working on getting the PC Rescue newsletter out, one of the things I'm mentioning is how home users shouldn't play with beta software.

One of the things I can't believe is it's been over three years since the last service pack for XP was released.

IT won't support the iPhone?

I've just read the Forrester Research findings in this week's Fortune magazine on why IT departments won't support the iPhone.

All the reasons are good, but it misses the point about modern IT.

IT departments don't dictate what users use, users decide. Fake Steve Jobs makes this point very well.

While all the points made in the Forrester paper are true. I'd suggest that these limitations need to be flagged to those who insist on using iPhones and other devices, but they won't be able to stop these being used.

IT can't stop staff using the iPhone. It's going to happen, so deal with it.

Skype chat spam evolves

I previously mentioned my scam chats from Skype. These seem to be getting more sophisticated as Jeremy Wagstaff in the Loose Wire Blog found in his chat with sexy Veronica.

Skype don't seem to be too concerned about this. They darned well should be. Nothing will kill a service's reputation quicker than than spammers and scammers infesting it.

I'm wondering if Jeremy's chat was related to this project. I imagine having a real live crook posing as Veronica is a quite labour intensive for our scammer friends.

Are Dell services doomed?

Forbes magazine describes how Dell is going to reinvent itself. Central to the idea of the resurgence is services. Now I have a problem with this on two fronts.

The first is channel conflict. Dell's move into services directly cuts into the business of resellers and integrators. Given the channel is key to growing their sales into the SMB sector, they will have a serious problem getting the local IT guys on board.

More importantly though, is this idea they know how to provide services. My overwhelming experience with big businesses in the IT and Comms sectors is they are genuinely clueless when trying to run a service business.

Dell's recent track record in customer service shows this. In fact, I would go as far as to say the decline in service levels is the number one reason for Dell's fall in market share over the last five years.

This isn't to say Dell can't succeed in this area, it just means that Dell have to invest in the infrastructure, staff and training so they can offer a compelling and useful product.

To do this, they have to have decent margins on the product. If they sell cheap, the product will fail. This is why most service offerings from big corporations are rarely successful.

Margins are at the core of Dell's problems. They made the decision to chase the bottom of the market and now they are paying for it in declining margins, declining customer satisfaction and declining long term prospects.

All of this said, I love the idea of a suicide chip. Blowing laptops up remotely sounds like fun. Although given Dell's experience with exploding batteries, one would think they've had enough of self destructing laptops.

Data loss is no joke

Angus Kidman thinks data loss is a big joke. Angus once nearly lost data when he poured booze on his laptop. He thinks thats funny.

Angus, the joke is on you. As a professional tech writer you should know better.

For computer techs, dealing with data losses are the most stressful moments of their job. In my small business talks I describe data protection as the most distressing subject of the talk.

Data loss is no joke if you've lost your business records or family photos. For the poor old computer tech, the customer's pours all their stresses onto you.

It's a traumatic, stressful time for all. Protect your data. That way, Angus Kidman won't laugh at you.

ABC Now

Before tomorrow's show, I've had a play with ABC Now. It's a useful little tool for bringing together all the ABC media streams.

You can download files and podcasts the old way.

It's important to choose the right media player. Personally I prefer Real Player, but it can be a pain with all the pop ups and advertising.

It's easy to change preferences later as the options settings are nice and clean

It worked nicely on my middle of the road test machine.

One warning is that if you are like me you may have a habit of clicking on the heart which adds the item to your favourites list rather than opening it.

It's good to have a TV guide to ABC and ABC2, one improvement there would be to put the details of the programs.

On the radio tab, quite a bit of local programming is missing. One notable exception is Tony Delroy's podcasts.

We also see a lot variations between the stations and programs. For instance, Sydney 702 has nowhere near the variety that Melbourne 774.

A future improvement may be to cross index content between the local ABC stations. For instance, the 774 finance segment would probably be as interesting to listeners of Perth 720.

The predictable criticism is going to be the lack of Mac and Linux support. The Mac version is on its way and the Linux version will be here as soon as possible.

Linux is proving a bit harder, as Nicola the manager of ABC Interactive says,

So Linux dudes, mess with Nicola's developers at your own risk.

All up, it's a fast nicely presented and simple tool that brings together a lot of the favourite streams of ABC tragics.

Driving away customers

I've previously mentioned how I stopped going to my local newsagents because of lousy service.

Recently I started going back to the nearest one (the one that refused me a credit account) simply because it's a nice Saturday morning walk up to the shops and the adjoining bakery does a nice cherry Danish to munch on the way home.

Normally I'd pay cash for two papers and wander off but this morning I splurged on a magazine as well. The total was $12 and being low on cash I handed over my credit card.

"Sorry, minimum $15"

Luckily I had enough cash left over for my Danish or I'd have been a very cranky tech.

Now as an a regular reader of the Newsagent Blog, I accept newsagents operate on tight margins and minimum charges are fair given the fixed costs of accepting EFTPOS and credit cards, but $15 is too high a limit.

From now on, I buy my papers from the supermarket or the servo around the corner.

Incidentally, on the way home I passed a cafe that has a CASH ONLY, NO EFTPOS OR CREDIT CARDS ACCEPTED sign out the front.

I've been there and it's been a pain if you haven't the cash, I can imagine some people have been deeply embarrassed by this.

This cafe's been around for a few years so there's obviously nothing like a delay with the bank to be causing this and the cost of accepting cards is actually cheaper than the problems you have dealing with large amounts of cash.

So the only reason I can think of why this cafe only accepts cash is because the owners aren't declaring their full income to the tax office.

Now I don't particularly care what they do with their tax affairs, but as a customer I shouldn't be stuffed around as a consequence.

Businesses need to remember that customer convenience is everything. The harder you make it for a customer to buy from you, the less likely it is that they will.

While I'll probably go to the cafe again, the newsagent won't be seeing me.

Eee PC: Why Linux is a bad idea

The Asus Eee PC is an interesting beast. A cheap, lightweight and robust laptop is the sort of device the market is crying out for and it's not surprising it sold out across Australia.

While the device is fascinating and it opens up some interesting markets that previously wouldn't have considered PCs, there's a few problems with the product.

Bundling the unit with Linux is a terrible idea if you are going to sell the product into the home market. To make it worse, Asus' channel partner is Myer. The fatal mistake is to fixate on price when selling to the consumer.

The worst possible place to be in the IT industry is at the low price of the consumer market. Not only are the margins horrible but the customers are disloyal and demand high levels of support.

Dell have learned this to their cost and it appears Asus are prepared to make the same mistakes.

Giving Myer exclusive rights to the machine also fudges the issue. Myer are not a low cost channel, so that's going erode Asus' margin even further. Worse for the customer, Myer and Asus is that Myer is not renown for the high tech geeks it employs.

I hope the Myer stores have plenty of stock of Xandros compatible hardware and software and the phone number of a good Linux tech handy.

Which brings me to the choice of operating system.

Going with Linux may have kept the unit price down. It's is probably an excellent choice for the hardware configuration, as opposed to lumbering the device up with Vista. But the fact is the bottom end of the market demands Windows compatibility.

I'd hate to be on the Asus support lines when little old ladies start trying to connect their twelve year old HP laserjets to these system or a cheap Lexmark printer they picked up for $50 at Officeworks.

It gets worse when you throw kids into the mix.

In fact Elissa Baxter of the Sydney Morning Herald should be reported for child abuse for this comment.

if you're thinking of buying a laptop for your school child, this one could be it.

Sure Elissa, if you want your child to be struggling with a Linux based machine in a school full of Windows or Mac users.

If you want her humiliated by the school system administrator's snide remarks when he can't figure out how to connect her to the Intranet.

If you want to see hours of his work wasted when it turns out Open Office's Impress is incompatible with the school's Powerpoint or Keynote.

The idea of packing a kid off to school with laptop running Xandros fills me with horror.

This is not to say Linux is a bad idea, it's a very good idea in the right market.

But school kids and home users looking for a cheapie PC are the wrong market. As a result, we're going to hear people whingeing about the lack of compatibility and how they couldn't download iTunes. In the end, Asus will give this up as a bad, unprofitable idea.

The risk for the Linux community is that Acer's experience will give rise to the myth that the channel can't make money from Linux machines. Worse, consumer will associate Linux with cheap systems that don't work very well.

In my view that's a real shame as the Eee PC and Xandros are both good products.

Choosing a version of office and OEM software

Over the weekend I've updated our choosing a computer page. I've added the pros and cons of OEM software.

In reviewing the different versions of MS Office page, I also realised I'd missed the added option of academic versions.

This only illustrates my earlier rant about just how confusing the whole Microsoft Office Product range is.

Is MS Publisher dying

Following my rant about the versions of MS Office, I'm completing my write up for the PC Rescue website.

While researching it, one of the things I stumbled on was the Publisher blog at the MSDN website.

It hasn't been updated since September 2006. So I think we can safely say the poor beast probably won't make it into the next version of Office.

One of the things that killed Publisher was the failure of MS to ever get a reader out for it. Couple that with the fact it was never bundled with anything less than the premium editions and it made it impossible for most people to read .pub files.

These days, the layout features in Word make Publisher irrelevant for most home and small business users. For the business that do need functions more advanced than that, Microsoft have completely conceded the field to Adobe.

Goodbye Publisher. I'd like to say we'll miss you, but I don't think most of us will notice.

C-change?

I'm a bit baffled at the term c-change in Stan Beer's article on Apple's share of the computer market but he makes some good points about whether Apple's market share is actually higher than the statistics suggest.

Web views aren't a bad measure, although they can very between sites. PC Rescue has a surprisingly low 2% visits from Apple users, while this blog has 12%. So we have to be cautious with statistics for individual sites.

It's somewhat unfair to criticise the shipping statistics from IDC and Gartner as these are the key measure on how much money the vendors make. Apple's 2007 annual report shows Mac sales made up $10bn of their $24bn sales. Peripherals, software and services made up 2.7bn.

So sales do matter for the company and analysts are right to focus on that.

But Stan is right about the Mac's longevity. In our comparison between Macs and Windows systems on the PC Rescue website we made exactly that point. The fact there is a vibrant resale market for Macs changes the cost of ownership dramatically in Apple's favour.

Given green IT is going to be such an issue in the next couple of years, we can also expect the longevity of the Mac to become a factor in people's purchase decisions. The fact a Mac is less likely to end up in landfill after five years is a serious point in their favour.

Greenpeace doesn't take take that into account in their Guide to Greener Electronics. It might be worthwhile considering this in future as re-use is even more environmentally friendly than recycling.

Stan's main point is more people switching to Macs (I'm assuming C-change means "computer" change) and I've certainly found this true with the number of people asking me about it. I wouldn't say though it is a huge proportion of users, more are concerned about whether they should get XP or Vista.

While Stan's right that the shipping numbers probably don't tell us the full story, it's still hard to see how the current uptake of the Mac is "opening the floodgates of an exodus from Windows in the consumer space".

It's good news for Apple, but I wouldn't be giving the last rites to Windows for some time yet.

More MS Office confusion

I've previously ranted about Microsoft's confusing the market with too many versions of Office and Windows but today I stumbled on another problem; Office 2007's Home and Student edition doesn't come with Microsoft Outlook.

Thankfully, I hadn't sold it or recommended it to the fellow I was discussing this with, but he made a very good point that at a time when are looking at alternatives like Gmail and Yahoo! or even ditching email altogether, it makes no sense to be discouraging customers to go elsewhere.

To add insult to injury, installing the Home and Student edition over trial edition that's been bundled with a system leaves Outlook on. When the user opens it, they are prompted for an installation key. Naturally the Home and Student key doesn't work.

I wonder how many phone calls Microsoft get on this topic, my guess is the support costs and ill-will generated dwarf the money MS make from customers upgrading to the full Office versions.

I'll be adding the different flavours of Microsoft Office to the PC Rescue website this week. The buying a computer page will be revised to include choosing the right version of Office as well.

Gartner ITxpo

I've spent the last week at the Sydney Gartner ITxpo which was a very useful, if exhausting week.

Despite being critical of Gartner surveys in the past, I found a lot of the analyst's comments to be very interesting and thought provoking.

Two of the themes that really stood out to me were education and Green IT: where the IT industry has to come to grips with the issues of global warming, sustainability and higher energy costs.

The education statistics cited for Australia were absolutely stunning. We are in trouble on all levels and this is going to be the number one challenge for the incoming Labor government.

I'll be going over my notes from Gartner this week and I'll be posting here and on the Austechblog website.

Linux at home

Stan Beer's column on using Linux at home raises some interesting points, but I'm still not convinced that Linux is right for most homes.

One of the compelling reasons for ditching Windows at home is security. There's no doubt about it, kids are the best way to get your computer infected with malware.

The stupid thing is Windows can be locked down, it's a simple matter of setting up the kids (and any music or porn obsessed adult) with a Limited User profile.

There's no doubt about it though; for the vast majority of users Linux and Mac systems are more secure simply because users don't have root access.

The problem for households going to Linux is compatibility. The very people you want to protect are those who are going to need Windows features for school and/or work. Stan touches on this when mentioning Intuit (an outfit guaranteed to get this tech cranky).

Another problem with Linux is that it's the OS of choice for tinkerers. Another of Stan's columns touched on this when he discussed moving from Ubuntu. He decided other Linux versions weren't as user friendly.

The comments were surprising polite, but still argued with Stan's view.

This is the big problem for Linux. It's supporters can't accept the majority of computer users don't care about the operating system or customising it.

It's like cars; a few people enjoy tweaking them and hotting them up but for most car owners it's a tool to get you and your family around in.

Personally I think Linux is great, particularly if you want to understand how computers work.

But for home users, I'd tell 'em to get a Mac before trying to get their heads around Linux.

Choosing your markets

Further to my Aus Tech Blog post on the TIO annual report, Dan Warne picks up on Dodo's problems with the TIO.

While Dodo hasn't covered itself in glory with it's "free" Internet plans and support that does leave a lot to be desired, I do have a little sympathy for them.

Dodo has chosen to chase the cheapest customers. This is a mistake for anyone in the tech services sector.

The simple fact is if you choose to chase the sort of customers who buy your services based on your being the cheapest, or the fact your ads feature bikini clad babes, then you are getting yourself a nasty pile of headaches.

At the bottom of the retail technology market lies a big, seething mass of demanding, whingeing customers that want gold plated, Rolls Royce standard service for the price of a Hyundai, if they want to pay at all.

Even if they do get what they want, they will still whine and take up your time.

The trick to succeeding in selling technology is to avoid these customers like the plague. Let the bloke up the road have them. Even Bigpond have sussed this out.

It's not just an ISP or IT thing either. Steve Neil's HiFi Gossip diary the October 19 entry describes how he's learned this lesson through selling some cheaper sound equipment.

My advice to Dodo is stop selling to the bottom end of the market. Increase your prices and use some of that extra money to improve service levels.

You'll have fewer customers, but they'll be happier and you'll make more money from them.

Say no to door to door Internet salespeople!

We've starting hearing stories from customers who've been duped into Internet contracts by door to door salespeople. The common theme is the salesdroid has made ridiculous and impossible claims about the service.

In some cases the client's been on a much better older plan and has found the new plan doesn't give them the same data limits as the old plan. When they try to go back, they are told "tough luck".

We recommend all consumers avoid signing up to commitments like Internet plans through door to door sales.

I personally did some work for a company that was doing this with mobile phones some years ago. These folk would hire a bunch of backpackers, bus them out to one of Sydney's more remote Western suburbs and unleash them on the locals.

This worked well for the backpackers; they would sign up children, invalids and even the family dog. They would get the commission and by the time the complaints started arriving they would be sitting on a beach in Thailand.

For the company it looked good too at first, they'd get fat cheques from the big telco every couple of weeks. But when the complaints started coming in, they found those cheques stopped arriving. Eventually they went bust.

The biggest loser in that saga was the telco. They had to deal with hundred of complaints, it tarnished their brand name and they lost money when the selling company went broke.

All of this is predictable when you use commission driven subcontractors and don't supervise them closely. I don't understand why big companies do this as it ends up costing them money and damages their brand.

The fact one of Australia's biggest telcos is doing this again just shows these people don't learn.

Morons and shysters: Apple virus hype and tripe

I suppose it was predictable that the revelation of a virus aimed at OSX would start the choruses of that Macs are now as vulnerable to malware as Windows users.

This "security through obsurity" argument is absolute tripe. The simple fact is that if the Mac OS was easy to exploit, it would be. A 1, 2 or 5% share of the computing world is still a lot of computers.

Should you encounter any "security expert" who says something like ""I don't care what operating system I use. The issues are the same but unfortunately people do not agree" tell them to get back to emptying your rubbish bins, because that's all they are qualified to do.

That rant over, there is no doubt a lot of Mac users are cavalier about security. I've come across a number who think they are immune from phishing scams because they use a Mac.

It's clear too that some Mac users will be fooled into being infected. The simple fact though is that the majority of Mac users don't have root access and that one fact makes it difficult for malware to spread.

A Mac virus was inevitable and it is a risk to mac users. But it will not create the problems we've seen with Windows viruses. So let's cut the hype and BS.

Making rebates work for you

I last mentioned rebates over a year ago. I notice this week that a lot of advertising for cheap computers, with offers of "cashbacks" for anything up to $250 per computer.

I hate rebate schemes; they stink of excessive red tape and you can't shake the feeling the whole business case for these schemes is that a large proportion of customers will fail to claim their cashback.

For the customer trying to claim the rebate, this involves a lot of filling in forms, attaching the correct paperwork and doing all of this before the the cut off period.

Even if you do all of this, there's a still a risk your form might end up unopened on a rubbish tip anyway.

We recommend you don't base your purchase decisions on cashback and rebate schemes. Treat these as a bonus.

If you do buy something that offers a rebate, by all means go for it. Follow the points below to make sure you'll get your cheque.

1. Read the instructions and conditions carefully while still in the store. Make sure the shop has given you all the details. Many promotions require the invoice to be machine printed, not handwritten.
2. Deal with the rebate immediately. Don't pin the form to your fridge and leave it there. If possible, fill out the form while you are still in the store. Ask the salesperson to make copies of the documents before you agree to buy.
   
3. Confirm the cashback applies to the model you have bought. Often the scheme applies only to certain models.
   
4. Make sure you are eligible for the cashback. There are often rules that exclude businesses or multiple purchases.
   
5. Make sure you follow the conditions exactly. If the form requires you to fill it out in black pen, make sure you do.
6. Make sure all your details are correct and all required fields are filled in.
   
7. Attach all the required documents. Send copies unless the conditions state you must send originals.
   
8. Make copies of everything.
9. Consider sending by registered mail with delivery confirmation. For a rebate worth $250, the five dollar investment is money well spent.
10. If you haven't received your rebate after a reasonable amount of time, call them. Note that these cashback schemes often have processing times of up to 90 days. We think 30 is long enough.
11. Do not hesitate to complain to your state department of fair trading or the ACCC if you think your claim is not being properly processed.
    

Generally though, we'd recommend steering clear of rebate schemes, they are a pain and they shouldn't be encouraged.