Written July 2010
by Cliff Feldwick
If you thought we would have learned anything from the last two years of recession, bank implosions and other good times, it would be to ignore the advertising campaigns promoting buying things we really don’t need for all the wrong reasons, like “keeping up” with anybody.
Apparently Best Buy, which makes 90% of its living by selling things we really don’t need, like televisions that cover a wall, thinks otherwise. Case in point: their “Put an End to Phone Shame” campaign. Pictured is a woman with a paper bag over her head, complete with unhappy face drawn on it, looking down at a large cell phone with the old style antenna sticking up. Underneath is “1995 called – they want their phone back”. I’m surprised they didn’t have the model from “Saving Private Ryan” – you know, a backpack from the radioman with a handset the size of a dorm refrigerator. Now, that one I could see getting rid of.
I finally got rid of that same model about two years ago (the one from the ad, not the WWII version), when the second generation iPhone came out. It handled email and web surfing and had all of the wonderful features we’ve come to depend on, like address books and appointment calendars. I still have it and don’t expect to be running out for the latest, greatest and up-to-datest version 4 anytime soon, unless I drop this one from a balcony.
And there’s the point: replacing a perfectly functional model with something new because of an insidious ad campaign based on the “shame” of being “behind” is just wrong. Yes, that’s how they make their money, but we should recognize it for what it is and tell them to shove it.
You need to clean that
One of the features of the new iPhone, apparently, is the ability to see the person you’re having a conversation with (assuming they have a similar model). Don’t know about that – I’m figuring that most of the time we’d end up watching the other person’s ear, or acting like even bigger dorks as we stare deep into a phone while in the airport.
Hard times continued
Scams surface in hard times – people desperate to make money fall prey to pyramid sales schemes and people trying to save money get scammed.
What brings this to mind is the resurgence of the fake “buy discount software” emails lately. Bearing subjects like “Microsoft Outlet” and “90% off” they offer Adobe and Windows 7 downloads at silly pricing. One variation, using the old “let’s do this together, oh fellow conspirator” ploy, says it is a Windows disk given out at Microsoft conferences as gifts but available to you for almost nothing. If you wouldn’t post your credit card number on your back while cruising the Mall, you might consider that falling for one of these is pretty much the equivalent.
And another thing
More signs of desperation (although not as bad as in the past) are the illegal roadside signs that merchants (to put it nicely) put out. Now maybe I’m noticing because another IT company has been putting out a series of four signs along prominent roadways like Little Patuxent Parkway, but the old standbys of “Buying houses for cash” and “Junk cars” are out there, along with dating sites. (“Yes, I met your mother because of a sign on a pole”). At least in the summer the grass cutting crews will get them fairly soon.
One of the worst offending stretches has been Route 1 going past CarMax. Every rival car dealer plasters the median with “we beat them” signs, as well as apartment rentals and furniture stores going out of business.
Last time I wrote about this, I received an email from a gentleman in Catonsville who gathered up such signs and turned them in to the district office of his county councilman. The staff there then called the offenders and reminded them of the illegality of posting things on roadways and poles. This is great!
Any elected official here in Howard County willing to do the same?
Instant On – what’s it worth?
One of the selling points of the new iPad is its “ready time” – about 17 seconds. On the full computer side, a version of Ubuntu Linux can now boot and be ready in 15 seconds. For those of us waiting 3 minutes or so for a standard Windows machine, this can seem like a silly competition or a wonderful advantage, depending on our patience.
One of the tools coming out in some strength now is the SSD or Solid State Drive. Really just an array of memory chips that can be read from or written to at a fast speed packaged in a hard drive enclosure, their capacity has been rising and prices falling rapidly in the last quarter. A 128 gigabyte drive is now around $350 – still a lot compared to the 1000 gigabyte conventional drives on sale for $65 today, but larger, cheaper drives are coming.
Of course, you still have to deal with the “bloatware” syndrome of Windows itself, but I can foresee SSD boot drives running optimized versions of Windows sometime soon that may cut start times dramatically. You just have to decide if it’s worth the bucks.