Customer: Will these headphones work with Windows Vista?

Office Depot Guy: I don’t see why they shouldn’t.

Customer: What about these speakers?

Office Depot Guy: Do you have a model in mind?

Customer: I was thinking about some Logitech

Office Depot Guy: Sir, whether or not those speakers will work with Vista has more to do your hardware, your sound card, than it does the model or brand. The Logitechs should work.

At this point the customer grabbed the speakers and walked one aisle over to where I was standing looking at the webcams. He took a look at the display and said to me, “You think any of those will work with Vista?”

The Consumerist has a humorous response to the reports that the US Postal service is removing all clocks from post offices so that customers don’t feel like they have been waiting in line for long.

A USPS spokesperson said, “”We want people to focus on postal service and not the clock”.

Did a group of higher ups at the USPS brainstorm ideas for better customer service, couldn’t think of anything substantial and decide, “well, if we can’t improve service, we’ll just make it more difficult for our customers to put a figure to the number of minutes they had to wait”?

What I’d like to see is fewer postal employee going on break when the line stretches out the door. Or how about training more than 2 people to work the register? Grocery stores under that when a lot of people need to check out, it’s smart to get more checkers working the registers.

Many companies that offer trial software for download require all sorts of personal information. Almost all require your email which they use to spam you with offers and reminders to upgrade to the full version. Most companies view this practice as the price we have to pay in order to test drive their products.

Well, here’s a nice change of pace. I downloaded the trial version of SnagIt from TechSmith and was surprised when I receive the email below. I like how they respect by time by opting me out of their mailing list unless I confirmed my address. Most companies do just the opposite. I like when companies make it easy for me to tell them to stop sending me junk. One trend I’ve noticed that’s really annoying is when companies require going to a website to “change my communication options”.

Kudos for TechSmith.

I hadn’t seen this mash up of the unintentionally funny Sony press conference at E3 last year until I came across a mention in this months Wired Magazine. This is classic!

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My brother-in-law told me about a very easy to use remote service called LogMeIn. You install a small piece of software on your computer and the computers you’d like to access and you’ll be able to control any computer over the internet through your web browser. I’ve tried a number of products but LogMeIn makes it very easy and they have a free version.

If you upgrade to the Pro version you are able to do file transfer and desktop collaboration in addition to some other features. I suspect the free version will work for many people who just need basic access to their home computers from work.

Chris Pirillo is breaking up with Vista due to a number of problems it’s given him. Scott Finnie is going with a Mac after a three month trial. I’ve upgrade two of our three home computers to Windows Vista and although things didn’t go as smoothly as I’d hoped, I still feel it’s a worthwhile upgrade if your hardware is up to par.

I wrote up a review a few months ago about my experience with Vista and it holds true as I read through it today. I’ve spent enough time with it now that I know my way around the product and can get to any setting I need. I can’t say enough about the integrated search feature. I can’t imagine going back to XP because of this single feature in Vista. It just flat out works! It’s probably a good thing I didn’t know Apple had this feature a lot earlier or I would have strongly considered switching. But I’ve now made a considerable investment in PC gear that switching to Apple probably isn’t going to happen anytime soon. Given the fact that I’m quite happy with Vista, I see no reason to at the moment.

I haven’t experienced the same level of frustration with incompatible software/drivers that Chris has. Nvidia drivers for my 6000GT card have worked great as have drivers from Creative for my X-Fi sound card. No problems with my three printers (Canon i950, HP 4L, HP 4215). I just haven’t seen many driver issues that couldn’t be fixed by downloading the latest driver from the hardware manufacturer’s website. Logitech hasn’t upgraded their drivers for my Bluetooth MX900 mouse but it works with the standard Vista drivers. I’ve had no problems with cameras, flash cards, or iPods.

I really like a number of small feature enhancements they made to Vista. Rotating pictures feels much faster on Vista. On XP it would pause before doing anything. They have done a great job with Windows Photo Gallery. Sometimes all I need to do is crop a picture and I can do that quickly in Vista without having to launch Photoshop or Picassa. I also enjoy the Sidebar which allows quick access to weather, stocks, a notes area, and network activity through the use of widgets.

Although not drastically different from XP, the small touches to the user interface are welcome. Vista just feels like a more mature product than XP in every way. They have paid a lot of attention to the overall experience. I don’t know if Microsoft Vista has reached Mac levels, but it just “feels” right.

Given the amount of time I spend on my computer, spending $250 for Vista Ultimate doesn’t seem outrageous as it has for some people. I’ll probably use it for at least 5 years which comes to $50/year or less than five bucks a month. The cost to upgrade would be less if you chose the Home Premium version.

Maybe I’m not quite as excited as I was when I upgrade from Windows 3.11 to Windows 95 or even from Windows 98 to Windows XP, but I think much of that has to do with the fact that Windows XP has been quite stable for me. I’m no longer dying to upgrade to gain stability so many of the features take a little longer to appreciate. That’s not such a bad thing though.

I think that almost anyone whose machine can pass the Vista Upgrade Advisor would be happy with an upgrade to Vista. I don’t feel that Microsoft’s “Wow” ad campaign is an accurate description of what most users will experience. I’ve found myself uttering few, if any “Wow!” but many “hey, that’s nice”. People want that killer feature to justify an upgrade, and I’m not sure they will find it in Vista. You will find a solid, polished, feature-rich operating system. Whether that’s enough justification to drop a few hundred bucks on an upgrade is up to you to decide.

I thought this was an interesting read because I’ve felt much the same about my time with Vista. I like the new operating system and recommend it (after I disable UAC) to friends and family. But when they ask why they should upgrade I have a difficult time coming up with anything substantial. “The way it handles my digital pictures” doesn’t seem like a very compelling reason to drop $100-$250 on any new system if XP is working fine for you.

If you’re running Vista already, what do you tell friends when they ask if they should upgrade?

“On the other hand, nothing about Vista is truly innovative or compelling. With the exception of security (and we don’t know yet whether Microsoft’s security changes will be enough to significantly change the Windows experience), there’s no transformational, gotta-have-it feature in Vista”

–Link to full article

Sometimes I find myself singing to a song while I’m in the car or at my computer. I don’t give much thought to the lyrics especially if it’s a song I’ve known for many years.

But today I found myself singing the lyrics to “Ventura Highway” from America and realized I’d just said, “…..alligator lizards in the air….in the air….”

That made me stop and think for a minute. Great tune though!

[audio:ventura.mp3]

This is one of the strangest and humorous posts from the Dilbert creator.

“Convert your spare bedroom into a prison cell and charge the government $25,000 per year to house a convict. You could probably put two convicts in one spare room and earn $50,000 per year, minus whatever it costs to feed them slop”

On another note, have you ever worked on a project like this?

David Pogue of the New York Times shows us that Microsoft didn’t steal any ideas from Apple in developing it’s latest OS.

Source – haha.nu

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