Pixel Concept

The blogs were all buzzing yesterday with Microsoft announcing the October 22 release date for Windows 7. A release date is a great start, but as Kevin points out in his post, we still don’t have any pricing information for the many flavors of Win7. Well, we may now have an indication of some special pricing for students. Yesterday, I happen to have received an e-mail from Microsoft with a link to a survey on Windows 7 RC. The survey had all the usual “What did you think of…” questions, but towards the end, a very interesting question came up. As seen in the screen shot above, the survey asked how likely I would be to purchase Windows 7 at a special student price of $30. The next question followed up by asking how I would feel if the student price was $30. I can only assume that these specific questions came up because I specifically stated that I was a full-time student at the beginning of the survey, but nevertheless, it indicates that MS may be considering a low student pricing scheme. This would not be too far stretched of an idea given that they already offer a “Home & Student” version of Office. Also, given that Macs seem to be so popular among students (through my own observations on campus), this may be an attempt to gain or keep some of that market share. Of course there is no telling if this will actually happen or what version of Windows 7 is offered at the lower rate, but it’s nice to see MS considering something new with their Windows license pricing. Check out the second survey question and survey e-mail after the jump. (continue reading…)

Fig. 1 (Click to enlarge)

Fig. 2 (Click to enlarge)

A couple of weeks ago, Kevin, James, and Matt discussed the gross lack of advertising for the Palm Pre on the Mobile Tech Roundup podcast. They pointed out that although there has been a lot of buzz and anticipation in the tech community, the general consumer public is not aware of the Pre. This being the case, it’s quite surprising that Palm/Sprint have not been marketing the device as heavily as they perhaps should. One thing that Kevin points out is that although the Pre itself has popped up in commercials, it is only in passing while pumping up Sprint’s network. The phone is never mentioned by name nor are its features touted. Instead, it has been relegated to two seconds of face time at the end of the commercial. This odd approach became more evident when I came across the advertisements in The Wall Street Journal pictured above. (continue reading…)

I have been an avid user of Windows Media player since version 9 which wasn’t always a good thing. I remember giving freeware players like WinAmp and Real Jukebox a shot a while back but ended up sticking with WMP for better or worse. Over the years I have noticed and appreciated the vast improvement that Microsoft’s bundled into the media player along with great synchronizing management with most MP3 players (iPod & Zune excluded). The sync feature in WMP has evolved from syncing music, to pictures, to video files; but there is still a medium missing from WMP: podcasting. It was understandable that a podcatcher be missing from WMP 11 since Microsoft usually lags a bit on implementing simple features, but it is very surprising to me that Microsoft has not included this capability in WMP 12 which will come with Windows 7. Initially, I thought this may be simply because there would not be enough demand for this feature, but I reached out to a few podcasters to get an idea of what clients are being used by their subscribers to pull down their podcasts. Although the numbers varied greatly from podcast to podcast due to the difference in audience, all together it seemed like ~60% of subscribers were using either iTunes or Zune, and the remaining 40% were using other clients like Juice, iPodder, Nokia, and even direct web downloads. Although it would be wrong to assume that this 40% would use WMP if it had a built in podcast client, it still indicates that there is a rather large portion of podcast listeners that WMP would appeal to. Microsoft loves to integrate all functions into its Windows OS (which has gotten them in trouble before i.e., Internet Explorer anti-trust case), so why would they exclude an increasingly popular medium like podcasting from this? (continue reading…)

A very interesting article by Miguel Bustillo was published in The Wall Street Journal last week about Best Buy shifting its focus to Wal-Mart as a competitor now that Circuit City is out of the picture. Best Buy CEO to-be, Brian Dunn, seems to have the right idea in the advantages Big Blue holds over Wally. Rather than compete solely and directly on price, Mr. Dunn plans to “…morph [the stores] into a series of experiences.” Mr. Dunn also said that “he intends to win customers by matching Wal-Mart on prices, and then offering something more, building on Best Buy’s existing strategy of helping customers navigate increasingly complicated technology. The key will be making the most of Best Buy’s tech-savvy sales force.” Although this sounds like a solid strategy, Best Buy has more work to do than it thinks. Here are some thoughts on what Best Buy needs to do to accomplish its goal of building an “experience” for its customers. (continue reading…)

In today’s age of automated touch-tone IVR menus, voice recognition prompts, and outsourced customer service agents, it’s refreshing to find a company that is willing to use technology to its advantage and take a different approach to customer service. Over the past two weeks, I’ve had two of my shipments back to Netflix gone missing. Concerned that my account might be flagged, I decided to call customer service rather than report the discs missing via their website. I went to the Netflix help page in search for the customer service number. There was a large ‘Contact Customer Service’ box on the main help page prompting you to select the topic you are calling about. Once you select your topic, you are directed to a simple page which has some of the more frequently asked questions on that topic on the left. On the other side of the page you are given a number to call and a ‘Service Code’ as well as the time you can expect to wait (Fig. 1).

Fig. 1

The fact that you are given an approximate hold time is impressive enough, but it does not end there. When you call the number, you are prompted for the service code that has been given to you on the site. After entering it and waiting in the queue (which was pretty accurate by the way), you are immediately greeted by a customer service rep who has your account information ready to go including the general reason for your phone call. In my opinion, this is much more efficient than having your customer dial through menus that are five to six branches deep, most of which the customers end up pushing zero through until they are routed to someone. Even for those of us who decide to punch in series of account numbers and option prompts, usually end up having the customer service rep ask for the account number and reason for calling yet again making all that button mashing pointless. Netflix’s service code approach and direct to agent routing allows both the customer and the customer service agent to get right to the issue and resolve it. This also alleviates the frustration of the customer which is good for customer satisfaction ratings. Kudos Netflix for setting a new standard and thinking outside the box; hopefully others will follow suit.