August 2004 Archives

Imagine my surprise when I went surfing on msnbc.com today at lunch time and I saw this banner:



I have seen political banners before but this was probably the most blunt one I have seen to date. The banner itself was enticing enough to persuade me to click. And I was immediately ushered to the Democratic party's donation page. No preambles and no information, just a simple donation form waiting for me to enter my credit card information.

I guess some people don't mind cutting to the chase and skipping the formalities, but I doubt companies would get far if their banners just funnel the masses to their payment pages asking for money. Usually such banners lead to a page describing the product or service with some information about how the user can be benefited and what the main advantages of such product or service are. If you are asking for money, you need to be a little more subtle and discreet about it.

In this case, it might make sense to highlight Democrats' advantages over Republicans, and once the reader is sold on the concept, then ask for a donation. It’s not about political affiliation, it's about e-commerce etiquette.

To all those frequent flyers out there, you have my sympathy. These days traveling by air is nothing short of a nightmare. This is specially true if your trip calls for a connecting flight. About the only thing these flights don't do is connecting.

On a recent short trip I took by airplane, I found out just how stressful connecting flights could get. Obviously the crux of the problem is the incessant delays that just seem to get worse all the time. Don't you feel stupid rushing to an airport just to find out that your flight has been delayed? And don't you promise yourself to be late the next time, only to find yourself arrive at the airport on time and go through the frustration yet again?

Delays on direct flights are one thing, but they are downright exasperating on indirect flights. In my case the first legs of my trip (both to and from) were delayed, triggering a run-like-hell action to catch the second flights and subjecting myself to the passengers' angry stares who thought my tardiness had held up the flights. What's worse is that on both occasions my luggage never arrived with me. It was delivered to me two days after I had reached my destination, and on my return flight, I am still awaiting my suitcase's arrival.

One wonders if the airline industry is a perfect not-to-do model to gain customer satisfaction. I won't mention the airline here, but what difference does that make? I'm sure my experience would have been just the same on most of them. If you know of a good one, don't be shy and leave a note.

One could call it a historic moment. Hewlett-Packard today announced the shipment of one of their notebook lines with a Linux variant known as SuSE. SuSE was acquired by Novell about a year ago. After watching its fortunes disappear into thin air, mainly due to competition from microsoft on the server side, Novell is now trying to muscle in its way into the desktop market but I wonder if laptops are ideal vehicles to go about this.

Don't get me wrong. I adore Linux. But where Linux truly shines is in a server role. Be it a Web server, mail server, print server, file server, or a firewall, it can outperform Windows any day. Sure, setting up a Linux server is an arcane task, but once up and running, it's stable, graceful, and frugal with the resources.

On the desktop, Linux is a different story. It’s like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Suddenly this splendid product turns into an unreliable and ugly beast with little to offer. Not to detract from the devoted developers, but the desktop still has far to go to catch up to Windows.

Now let's go back to this notebook offering from HP. With only a meager 5% cost savings over an equivalent Windows notebook, only the absolute Linux fanatics would possibly opt for it. Even I wouldn't order a Linux'ed laptop. A laptop is a mobile device designed to be taken on business trips, remote offices, and vacations. Most laptop users are busy executives and salespeople, and many don’t care to get technical with it. The next time they are in their hotel rooms and have a problem establishing a network connection, I wonder how many people in the hotel's IT staff will be familiar enough with Linux to offer a helping hand.

Linux on notebook is a valiant effort, but while Windows soars like an eagle, it does appear that this penguin just wasn't meant to fly.