Please put pricing on your web site

I'm sick and tired of companies that make products, have a web site, sell you and market you on the web, and then don't put any pricing on their web site. What do these companies have to hide?

Now I'm not talking about people who sell their services or do contract work. I'm talking about companies who sell product A and charge X for it. How simple can that be?

Three companies that come to mind (mainly because I'm frustrated this very minute with them) is SWSoft, Iron Mountain, and Compellent. I really hate wasting my time and if I'm checking out a product and trying to see if it is a fit for the company I work for, then I want to find out if it is within our price range first. If it is, then I'll pursue it.

SWSoft sells virtualization products. How hard can it be to provide a list price? I need X servers licensed and it will cost me X. If you want to know more then contact a reseller for better pricing. Easy enough.

Iron Mountain sells off site storage and backup. It should be $X/GB to backup. So tell me already and stop playing games! This isn't a thriller or suspense story.

Finally, Compellent sells a SAN solution for storage. Their site should have a configuration utility where you drop in drives and controllers and figure all that out and it gives you a quote. It shouldn't be more complicated than that. If you want better pricing then contact a reseller.

Server manufactures have been doing this for years and they seem to have no problem at all. There are tons of components and options too and they seem to be able to handle this. Why can't others? Don't tell me the product is too complicated or we need to consult on the solution. We're not stupid and your product is not that complicated. If I have trouble, I'll call. Trust me.

So, would everyone out there who sells something please stop wasting my time and give me what I, the customer, want!! Thank you.

Two kinds of people in the world

There are two kinds of people in this world: (a) Those that read my blog and (b) those that do not. Unfortunately, the former is very small compared to the latter. I'm here to tell you that you can change all that. In fact, if you are reading this, you just did. (Unless of course you've been here before and then it doesn't count.)

So what are you? Are you Group A or Group B? The simple answer is A unless of course you have magical powers of which I know nothing about. Aren't you glad you are part of Group A! Whoopie!

I've had it with iPhone "experts"

I've had it with the iPhone "experts" out there. Network World just put out an article stating how the Gartner group is telling "IT executives to not support it." Whoopie ding dong!

Who the heck is Gartner group to be telling anyone anything about the iPhone at this point. Correct me if I'm wrong but no one outside of Apple and AT&T even have access to one of these things. Even if I am wrong on that point, it really matters little. Since when did Apple start promoting the iPhone to the enterprise customer?

First, let me just say, I won't be buying one. I'll let the others out there run it through its paces first. I'm still in the middle of a two year contract with Verizon ayway and I also don't have $500 to plunk down on a cell phone (although I did get mine run over by a car today...ouch.)

If a user had one in our office and wanted to forward their email to it, fine with me. We'll handle it the EXACT SAME WAY as we handle the Blackberry. Oh yeah, didn't you know, you need to drop a load a cash on software to integrate the Blackberry with Exchange. Sure, you can sync it on your desktop but who the heck cares. If you are a large enterprise, I'm sure you can afford the software but I'm sure those in the $150,000,000 and under sales category (small potatoes, I know) aren't dropping a load of cash on Blackberry software for their servers, assuming they even use Exchange or Notes.

Ok, I'm getting off topic a bit, but my point is that Apple knows who their customer is, they know what people want, and they are going to give it to them. Will it be perfect out of the box? No way, nothing is. It will be nearly perfect and future iterations most likely via software upgrades will close the gap with perfect eventually. Nothing Gartner or any other analyst out there can say is going to change that.

Interestingly, what I find most telling about this and of no great surprise is that people, particularly analysts, like to bring other products down. They produce nothing so therefore they have to come up with crap to feed people and hopefully others will buy it. The more shocking, the better it sells. Since the iPhone is one of the biggest things this year, why not pick on it. Besides, for IT guy who can't stand that he can't have an iPhone, this is the perfect excuse to prevent others in his company from getting. Trust me, once he gets approval for one of his or her own, they'll be iPhones all over the place in that company.

Hello! Message to Gartner! Jobs doesn't give a rip about you or your approval and last I checked, he didn't need your blessing to blow the doors off the cell market which is exactly what is about to happen in 9 days!

Why Wii is (are) successful!

This is for all the Wii fans out there.  This would be funny if it weren't so true.

Penny Arcade - From The Makers of "Beam Kings"

Next Gen consoles too complex!

I thought this article was worth mentioning here as I'm willing to bet it represents a large part of the console development community.  How many other companies out there would say the same thing if given the opportunity?  I'll bet a lot of them.

Personally, I couldn't care less about the games but to have what, in Japan anyway, is a major force in the gaming community basically write off the 360 and PS3 is big news.  This is a very big endorsement for the Wii and DS platforms.

Safari on Windows

This is going to seem anti-climactic to my Mac friends but the WWDC announcement that Windows will finally get a decent web browser made by an innovative company is absolutely fantastic. For those that haven't heard, Apple announced Safari 3 is going to be released for Windows. The beta is posted and everyone should jump in and get their feet wet.

Don't get me wrong, I've got nothing against Firefox, but I want something designed by an innovator. Something like Firefox that is groupthink designed just doesn't strike me as a product that will ever push the envelope much. Opera is very nice but you have to pay for it.

I guess time will tell if this latest strategy by Apple works but I applaud them for giving this a go.

Incidentally, I've spent about 5 minutes with Safari on the PC and it is lightning fast and has great looking, easy to read text. Personally though, Apple made a big mistake by not letting us grab the edges of the window and resize it. Apple's been hammered about this before even in OS X so it strikes me as odd they wouldn't have this feature in a Windows version of Safari where it fits in naturally. Thank goodness it is still a beta and they have time to fix this.

Happy 30th Birthday Apple ][

I just had to say Happy Birthday to my old friend the Apple ][ computer. I cut my teeth on this or technically the Apple ][+ (although my first love was a Compucolor a friend of mine had - those dot addressable COLOR graphics via peeks and pokes were so much fun - Jay if you are out there somewhere, please say HI). I still remember going to Radio Shack and picking up this big black tape cassette player/recorder so I could hook it up to my Apple with an audio cable to read in the tapes. Games like Lemonade Stand and Penny Arcade are fondly remembered (I really hated that little bolt of lightning signifying a rainy day and low lemonade prices) and Planet Miners from Avalon Hill.

I used to visit the Computer Tree and spend hours and hours and hours looking at and tinkering with everything they had in the store. The first graphics tablet I ever played with was there and was a blast but was around $700 (or was it $1100, I can't recall) and certainly out of the reach of most people.

After my Apple ][+, I added an Integer Basic card and Floppy Disk Drive, then it was on to the Apple ][e. Eventually I graduated into the a Mac 128 (yeah - but can you say "disk swap") but that is a whole other story. (I also had the fortune or misfortune of using an Apple ///, Apple IIgs, and a Lisa - Lisa fun, Apple /// not so fun, gs...well what can I say, it was there.)

Those were the good ol' days!

The aweful internal combustion engine

It is now time for me to rant about the unbelievably crappy internal combustion engine that powers most of our vehicles. I've got problems with my vehicle and it is in the shop now which made me think how aweful the automobile is in terms of design and engineering. Sure, it gets us from Point A to Point B but I have to guess that if nothing was around today and you started from scratch, the design we have today would be the last thing anyone would think of or want.

Personally, I'm sick of how complicated these things are. I have THREE fuse boxes on the vehicle that died and there has to be 100 fuses in this thing. How many systems does it take to make me go forward (and back if necessary)!?! These vehicles should be simple and elegant in design. Maybe Apple needs to make a car for the rest of us too.

At one point I had high hopes for the Rosen brothers (Ben Rosen started Compaq) but their marvel of engineering elegance failed. I tried to see if I could buy stock in this company once and I guess it is a good thing stock wasn't available. It would be nice to see a new car company break into the market with something new and radical that the masses could afford. (The Tesla doesn't count, it is too expensive.)

It seems unfortunate that with so much innovation and amazing technology, the basic design of the car is fundamentally unchanged from the car of 100 years ago.

Jobs, why couldn't you be a car buff!!

Coincidence or is there a glitch in the Matrix?

I had a very odd thing happen today.

I went to work and followed a truck most of the way there on my motorcycle. Normally I don't follow anybody if you get my meanin' but for some reason I was stuck there and the confusing logo caught my eye. Was it SLH, STH, SZH, or what? Let's just say it was S(x)H Transport (replace the x with whatever you want) and go with that.

Anyway, I noticed the license plate too and it was from Quebec and had an odd combination of letters and numbers. Again, normally I wouldn't think of these things but all the oddness stuck in my brain.

On a normal day, I'd never think of this truck ever again but this was no normal day. Would you believe I went home and ended up behind the exact same truck! That just doesn't happen does it?

Very weird!