I just read this Tablet PC Buzz thread where users are talking about the M1400 (which I bought in December 2004) is being obsoleted by the LE1600 (which will probably be obsoleted a year from now too). alltp writes:

The M1400 is officially “end of life” and Motion has sold out of their stock. Some product still exists in the channel (distributors and resellers), but it is probably only a couple hundred units. Even the accessories are disappearing quickly, although in another post paul from Motion said they would still make the batteries until 2008.

Obsoletion is a computer reality and I anticipated and expected a quicker, better, faster model would come along, I get that. Personally I do not think the LE1600 is significantly better than the M1400 and have also already written that I think it is overpriced. Still, I suspect Motion will come out with a better version at a better price within the next 12-18 months that will really obsolete the M1400 and the LE1600. Just don’t think that has happened yet.

I just called Motion Computing support (1-866-322-9783) 8/10/05 2:55pm PST and talked to *Bill* and told him about this situation and asked to verify whether or not M1400 batteries would continue to be produced after 2007 as well as the official support status for the M1400.

Seems like that post from Paul who works for Motion is, in fact, accurate. At least according to Bill.

Bill came back and told me that they will no longer produce any of the M1400 accessories including the battery after December 31, 2007. So the computer I bought in December 2004 (exactly 240 days ago, as I write this) currently has no official plans to have batteries for it three years later.

That blows.

If this turns out to be true, I will not ever buy another computer from Motion Computing. I told Bill to pass that along to the higher ups that they need to have at least a third party option for batteries.

So often existing and past customers get crapped on by businesses and the emphasis seems to be more on acquiring new customers. There’s an old saying I picked up in sales: when the prospecting ends, decay begins, so I understand and agree that new customers are important, but you can’t forget about and/or abandon the existing/past ones in the process. That’s just wrong and foolish considering the most likely candidate to purchase a new machine is somebody who already has bought one! They know what they are getting. Know the support. Know the company.

Duh.

Therefore, it’s my opinion that Motion should continue to make batteries for at least 10 years after the date they stop selling a product or allow third parties to make batteries. Bill seemed to believe that Motion “would not leave its customers high and dry.”

Hopefully, Bill is right.

Even though it is unlikely I’ll be using the M1400 portably for 10 years or even 5 years, the fact that they are planning on forcing me not to by not making batteries for it at that time is very anti-customer and seriously turns me off to their company.

And I like the M1400 Tablet PC. I think it’s a beautiful machine. I haven’t had any bad experience with the hardware or the support. I’ve called them only two times and both conversations were not even that related to current support issues. They were extremely polite, courteous and respectful. I’ve got no issues with Motion.

In 2005, that is.

And yes I absolutely do realize that there will be a much better Tablet PC computer on the market by January 1, 2008 (maybe Apple will have one by then?) but I don’t see many folks, especially those who bought the M1400 new in 2006, being all that psyched about the possibility of not being able to buy a replacement battery … somewhere, some place, some how.

I suppose if you buy a couple of them in December 2007, you’ll be good for another couple years. I don’t know how long the M1400 batteries last. Mine is still doing good, but my guess is no more than a couple years, even if one takes very good care of the battery.

I still use my Sony VAIO that was purchased in 2000 and that’s five years old. No, not that much admittedly, but it is still really in use on our home network. As a matter of fact the battery is shot in the VAIO so I need to buy another, so we’re not using that portably any more and haven’t for at least a year. Although we did take it on our vacation last month and had to keep it plugged into the cigarette power inverter. Something tells me that I can still buy a replacement battery from Sony for that, though. I will have to check. If Sony doesn’t have it, then hopefully a third party does.

Motion: Grrr.

In Motion’s defense, I fully expected my M1400 purchase to last 24-36 months and that should still be within the 2007 timeframe. Again, I am sure there will be something drastically better by 2008, but still, one can buy a beater vehicle for $2,500 and get at least 5-10 years of part time use out of it with proper maintenance and care. The same should hold for a brand new Motion Tablet PC, shouldn’t it?

Please, especially if you are a Motion customer call support and tell them that they should continue to support making batteries or allowing some third party vendor to do so for at least 10 years. Write something on your blog and trackback it, complain! The squeaky wheels get the grease, so don’t just sit back and say: who cares, I’ll have a much better machine in 2008. Don’t let the computer you bought a couple months ago be non-portable in a couple years. How good is a Tablet PC slate, really, if it isn’t portable?

Man I hope Bill from Motion support is right. Bummer.

Talk about the thrill of victory and … the agony of defeat. A Florida woman scratches off a ticket and thinks she wins $250,000 only to learn that the ticket was a misprint and not the authentic winner. What is it with Florida and machine defects? wftv.com:

“They said it’s a misprint. They misprinted the ticket and they say it’s not their responsibility to pay me any of the money,” Coley said. In fact, they put it in writing with a letter to Coley saying, “There is a printing defect which could make the 22 appear as a 2.” They said, no dice, and offered her $300-worth of lottery tickets for her trouble.

Yeah, $300 worth of lottery tickets for the trouble? C’mon! Even if they paid the lady the $250,000, they probably still would make money. Lotteries are some of the worst odds on the planet. You can bet the disclaimer on Florida scratch tickets will have some new text very soon to emphasize how they aren’t responsible for printing defects.

When I first read that Windows Vista would be available in the second half of 2006, I had immediately believed it would be the holiday season. Steve Jobs during the Apple developer conference joked about it being December 31, 2006 but now a slipup during a speech seems to further confirm this time period:

But at the Microsoft Financial Analyst Conference in Redmond, Washington, Thursday, Will Poole, senior vice president of the client division of Microsoft, said the OS would not be available until the 2006 “holiday” time frame in the U.S.

Optimal period to release Vista probably wouldn’t be the late summer 2006, anyway. Better to target the holiday season if they are going to be late. Just make sure when it is released that it works, I think that carries the sentiments of many Windows users.

A study on surfer reaction to websites leads to few surprises: surfers still hate popups but people continue to buy from them:

More than one-third of respondents cited pop-up ads. Other sources of aggravation included having to register and log in (16.7%) and having to install extra software (15.7%).

Mike from Techdirt adds:

This should be quite obvious, but apparently too many sites still haven’t figured it out. It’s also interesting to note, that many of these problems are being solved by third parties.

Of the items listed, “content that is out of date” and “dead links” made up 7.8% of the complaints. Imagine for a moment today’s blog archives in a couple years? Most of that will be out of date and if a blog is heavy linking to third party sites, then those links will likely be moved or dead.

Also, I found interesting the actions the users are likely to take when a site annoys them. 45.1% said they were extremely likely to refuse to visit the site again but only 8.6% were extremely likely to complain to the company. 22.7% said they were not likely at all to complain. So almost a quarter of those surveyed would enter and leave without a word.

I’ve written here before about exercising caution in over advertising and offered some suggestions of what not to do.

Forgive me for being the party spoiler, but I’ve read in a couple places that Microsofties are partying over the release of beta 1 of Vista, the next version of Windows. The first thing that came to my mind is … why?

What are they celebrating? Does anybody celebrating remember that the next version of Windows was originally slated for 2004? Celebrate a wedding, graduation, a product actually shipping on time, sure, but a two plus year late freaking beta 1 release? Houston — or should I say Redmond — you have a problem!

Yeah, yeah, you can get the beta 1 release if you are part of the whole overpriced MSDN subscription game. Hip, hip, hooray!

Sure, I can see something small and dignified for the teams working on it but from the posts I’ve read, it sounds like they ran out some sort of tailgating-style bash complete with band over a beta 1 product shipping to only MSDN subscribers?

Why?

In Scoble’s comments reader Tom writes:

For me, what’s upsetting about all the Longhorn/Vista celebration is that, as your customer, you failed me (well, Microsoft not you personally). Not more than two years ago you trumpeted all these great features, I made (loose) long term plans based on those promises, and you didn’t deliver. I bet on you and you failed me and you seem to think that’s a cause for celebration.

To which, Scoble responded with:

We’re putting in long hours trying to make things better for you. We aren’t just “partying.”

Scoble, you missed the point Tom was making. I got it. Most Microsoft customers get it too.

While other companies like Yahoo are out there buying up smart web properties like Flickr and Konfabulator, Microsoft thinks it’s Geeks Gone Wild time.

So just get the darn thing done — and released to the public. Then party, celebrate, run through the street nude with tattoos of Windows Vista on your behinds and cleavage, whatever turns your cranks. You will earn it when there is a product actually on the shelf.

Until then, the only celebration most of your customers want to hear is by Kool and the Gang.

The Windows genuine program has officially kicked in. What does this mean?

Microsoft is no longer providing updates to non-genuine versions of its Windows XP operating system. From today, the company has switched over to a full launch of its Windows Genuine Advantage Programme as part of its ongoing anti-piracy campaign.

Microsoft will continue to replace pirated software with genuine versions free of charge for customers who submit piracy reports and can provide proof of purchase.

Seems like Microsoft was being pretty nice having a ramp-up period to begin with as most companies wouldn’t reward thieves with any sort of free period. Well, the free lunch is over now.

MSN Virtual Earth is enjoying a soft launch this weekend and along with many others I have been taking it out for a test drive and comparing it to Google Maps. First let’s look at a .6 mile shot from above Seattle.

The first thing I noticed is that MSN Virtual Earth (VE) has a clearer satellite view than Google Maps which makes it easier to see the surrounding landscape. There isn’t as much distortion, nor is at as dark (see below). I’m giving VE +3 points here, because clarity of a map is extremely important.

- Google Maps highlights the street names and highways clearer as shown above using their new “hybrid” view (+1 GM)
- MSN Virtual Earth calls the spot to return to the map a permalink and Google Maps says “link to this page.” I think Google will win out with the non-geek/blogger audience with this term (+1 GM)
- In Google Maps, I put “Safeco field, Seattle, WA” and was treated to a red pin of where Safeco Field was located. I put Safeco Field in in “What” in the MSN Virtual Earth and it returned “no results found” even though you can clearly see the words “Safeco Field” on the map above. I then tried the same thing as GM using the ‘where’ field and same thing: “no results found.” So if I’m a baseball fan in Seattle and want to find Safeco Field, how do I do it using Virtual Earth? I did find if I put the keyword “baseball” in the ‘what’ field then that immediately put a red ‘1′ next to Safeco Field. Think I’ll call this one a draw because GM’s map to keyword function seems a little more intuitive, but VE’s makes it clearer to see and allows narrowing searches within the current map which could be really handy if you know the general vicinity of something, but don’t know where on the map it actually is located. I also tried the keyword “baseball, seattle wa” in Google Maps and it returned a bunch of results in the greater Seattle area, Safeco Field among them. (DRAW)
- Next I tried getting directions from Puyallup, WA where our office is located to Seattle, WA in both VE and GM. In VE when I chose “Drive To” it took me to maps.msn.com. It prefilled the location of Safeco Field which was on my last search as the end point. All I needed to add was Puyallup, WA and it returned detailed driving directions with a green highlight showing the path. Unfortunately, it wasn’t tied to the Virtual Earth map, unlike GM which simply gave me two fields: “Start address” and “End address” when I clicked on the “Directions” link. Everything stayed on the same page and it used AJAX to pull in the location without any page reload. Again, GM edges VE in more simpler UI (GM +1).
- My last task was to find bowling alleys in Puyallup, WA and the surrounding areas. I typed “bowling” in the ‘what’ and “puyallup, WA” in the ‘where’ in VE and immediately it rapidly returned the results in Puyallup and the surrounding area. The only problem is it didn’t return Daffodil Bowl which is in downtown Puyallup. I tried the same search in GM using the “Local Search” link and Daffodil Entertainment Center (see, no “bowling” in the title) was the first result returned (GM +1)
- Overall speed of both programs is a DRAW, except when it comes to mapping as mentioned above, which I already gave a point to Google in that department. VE suffers from not having better integration with their very clear and superior satellite view.
- Overall intuitiveness of GM vs. VE, I would give to Google Maps (GM +1). I found it easier to use and more intuitive than MSN Virtual Earth. If it only had better graphics and clarity, it would be the clear champion between the two.
- Overall graphics and clarity VE wins because the satellite view is bigger and cleaner (VE +1).

Overall scorecard
MSN Virtual Earth: 4
Google Maps: 5

It’s tough to declare a winner here, because with a little tweaking MSN Virtual Earth could easily beat Google Maps, but right now VE is weak in a few areas and the nod, IMO, goes to Google Maps — but just barely. This is really a very excellent effort on MSN Virtual Earth team’s part.

Both programs are very good and quite useful when you have an internet connection (if you are lost, didn’t get a map of where you were going ahead of time, and don’t have an internet connection then both of these services are useless — try Microsoft Streets & Trips with GPS instead).

Now, I’m curious how do you score the two programs in a side-by-side comparison?

This is an innovative way to deal with those annoying ATM bank fees: ATM slots. Too bad it’s only in Japan.

From afar I’ve been watching IceRocket since it launched a year ago. They launched blog search in October. Personally, I haven’t really found IceRocket to be more useful than the big three (Google, Yahoo or Microsoft) but it has a few neat features like the thumbnail next to listings. This morning I came across this:

… will soon relaunch his IceRocket search engine as BlogScour. Similar to Technorati or PubSub, Cuban’s BlogScour will search for the latest postings across the so-called blogosphere and return a list of results.

I’m not a big fan of domain name changes. I think one spends time building a brand and should stick with it. If they are abandoning IceRocket in place of BlogScour that wouldn’t be a wise thing, IMO, rather what I hope they are doing is simply making the blog search portal of IceRocket standalone as blogscour.com. When you click through to blogscour it still says IceRocket, so it looks like that’s what is going to happen.

Confusing users is never a good idea.

Update 7/31/2005: According to searchenginejournal.com this ZDnet article misreported what IceRocket’s plans are. Mark Cuban has his own ideas for blogscour.com and IceRocket is now IceRocket Blog Search, not blogscour.

Here’s a neat idea for thwarting intentional and unintentional eavesdroppers: Babble. Privacy Without Walls:

Babble provides voice confidentiality at your desk, offering security for spoken information as well as reduced distraction.

Distraction? I wish a device like this was included with every cell phone in public use. It’s very annoying being somewhere and hearing all of someone’s cell phone conversation when you are trying very much not to listen to it.

An audio demo of Babble is available at the site. The device (pictured above) looks like a cross between a pencil sharpener and Bose speaker and emits “small, separated sounds” which creates the illusion of a crowd of people which are easier to tune out that a single voice.

If I worked in a cubicle I’d need one of these. I could use one in the office as I have a loud voice and the girls are always telling me to simmer down. Perhaps a crowd of my vocals would be worse LOL. Listen to the sample and try to pick out something intelligible. It sounded to me like listening across a band of intermingled voices. Cool stuff, although I think a bit on the spendy side at $395 USD. Available July 2005.