The Cost of Windows 7

I just wanted to highlight a good blog post I read today in Information Week about the way Microsoft prices Windows upgrades.

Under the clever headline "Microsoft's Non-Family Values" blogger Dave Methvin lays out the logic behind charging $120 to upgrade a single Windows XP or Windows Vista machine to Windows 7. After all, Apple only charges about $25 for an OS upgrade (and offers attractive "family" pricing for multiple licenses). Not surprisingly the answer to "Why does Microsoft charge so much?" boils down to "Because it wants to and it can." The reason Microsoft wants to is the alliance--some would say "unholy alliance"--between hardware makers and Microsoft.

Basically, if it costs $120 and a bunch of hassles to get your old notebook running Windows 7, and a new notebook can be had for $400 with Windows 7 installed, there's a good chance you will opt to buy the new notebook, which helps the hardware makers--keeps the production lines moving and the cash flow coming--and helps Microsoft justify the huge fees it charges the many different computer makers who need the rights to install Windows 7. Of course, that $400 notebook is usually an under-powered teaser model and the PC makers hope you will go for the $1,000 models once they get you in a buying mood.

A good example is my own Sony VAIO that I bought new with XP installed about 4 years ago. No way is Sony going to support Windows 7 on that machine. Sony wants me to buy a new machine. Period. (And if the refusal to support Windows 7 is not incentive enough, Sony apparently has a backup plan that consists of making the fan get so loud and annoying I am forced to retire the thing or lose my sanity.)

Unfortunately, unholy alliances being what they are, Microsoft can't offer a $20 per PC upgrade deal even if it wanted to. The hardware makers would scream foul. They would lose out on sales of new hardware AND face demands for drivers and support and all the related hassles that hardware makers hate to deal with (mainly because they are expensive).

How ironic that I have a reliable 4 year-old computer that delivers entirely adequate performance under Windows XP or 7 yet is a dissappointment to the company that made it. Reminds me of the car industry.

FCC chairman wants USF to apply to broadband

This is a positive development: FCC chairman wants USF to apply to broadband - FierceBroadbandWireless.

Beware the Impression of Speed in Windows 7

I am still exploring Microsoft Windows 7 on the Sony VAIO notebook I bought a few years ago and, like many people checking out Windows 7, I am still getting an impression of improved speed. But this could be dangerous. I suspect the need for speed is driving a lot of Vista and XP users towards Windows 7 but the question you need to ask is this: How long will it last?

Any experienced Windows user knows that fresh installs of past versions of Windows were pretty nippy compared to two-year old install. Sadly, a machine that has been running the same Windows 2000, XP or Vista install for two years is likely to be slowed down by a hugely bloated registry and all kinds of DLLs and taskbar apps and startup items and such, even if you've been using a registry cleaner and optimizer.

A new Windows machine is bound to seem faster, as is a new install. This is particularly tricky for XP users because you can't upgrade XP to 7, you have to do a fresh install of Windows 7. And when you do that you wipe the slate clean, so to speak, and things sure do seem faster. The big question is: How long will that last?

I'd be interested to hear from anyone who has answers to that. Is there anything in the design of Windows 7 that would lead us to hope it remains fast? Just click on COMMENTS below to share your thoughts.

Web Site Building Bits and Tips

Just a quick post to share some links you might find helpful if you are building a new web site. I've been helping several folks with their web site aspirations lately and came across these, in no particularly order:

First, how about a menu? It is pretty easy to create a nice top level menu using css and an unordered css. The tricky bit is a drop-down menu. That link will take you to a very simple but effective design which requires very little code.

If you are familiar with jquery you can use it to create a menu like the one on the left. The html/css/js code for doing this is available from this page, linked here. But what if you want to sketch out a complete web page design with menus and page elements?

For this there is a tool called Mocking Bird that you might want to check out (works best on a very broadband connection). Another new tool that might be worth looking into is: www.wix.com. It's a web site that let's you build a web site that uses Flash (like Mocking Bird, Wix is an example of an application delivered as a service, in other words, Software as a Service or SaaS, just like Salesforce or the marketing product that I've been working on: Monetate).

With these two web design apps you can create pages or edit templates using a web-based interface. As with many SaaS offerings the feature set is continually evolving so I suggest you check them out rather than rely on my giving you a snapshot of their capabilities.

When you are designing web pages, the grid approach can be very helpful. Here is an article on grid-based design that I found useful, full of links to related content (I am finding Smashing Magazine a good resource in general, for everything from WordPress themes and buttons, to coding tips).

The ability to draw a design on a grid and then have an application generate the required CSS is a huge boon to web site developers. Here's an article that has links to 15 ways of accomplishing this. (What a difference these would have made when I first started messing with CSS layouts.) Another solution, not on the list of 15, is 960 Grid System. As the name implies, 960GS simplifies designing around a width of 960 pixels, which is a common choice these days for page width.

Finally, for this post, I want to mention XAMPP, software that let's you test a lot of stuff on your Windows laptop or desktop before putting it on a Linux/UNIX web site. With XAMPP you get the ability to run Apache, MySQL, PHP and Perl (the AMPP). Of course, this then gives you the ability to install WordPress on your Windows box which is very handy when developing sites in WordPress. Fro Mac OS X users there is similar functionality in MAMP.

Happy page building!

Can You Hear Me? Radio interview at ad:tech

As you can see from the lack of recent posts on Cobbsblog, things have been particularly busy this month. My November started out with a trip to a trade show in New York called ad:tech. This event brings together a very interesting mix of companies that are in some way or another related to digital marketing.

Digital marketing is one way to describe what my work for Monetate is all about, so I was at the show checking out the digital marketing scene and looking to learn whatever I could. (Quote du jour: "A real expert always looks to learn more and does not always try to look like he's learned everything.")

Judging by the huge crowds, digital marketing is doing well these days. For all our sakes I am hoping that the larger-than-expected attendance bodes well for the economy in 2010.

Shortly after I fought my way through the check-in lines and gained entrance to the exhibit hall I was interviewed for WebmasterRadio by marketing guru Bryan Eisenberg. Here is a link to the interview. (I apologize for sounding out of breath but I had to shout to be heard above the crowd--the sound engineers at WebMasterRadio did an amazing job of filtering out background noise but they couldn't change the fact that I was shouting.) Oh, and here's a link to Bryan.

Anyway, if you take a listen to the interview you will get an idea of what Monetate is about and what my role as "evangelist" for the Monetate technology involves. (If you can't listen to the audio right now, the short answer is that my role as an evangelist is to get people excited about what the technology can do.)

I carry out my role by communicating across multiple media, most of which don't charge for participation. Over the years I have learned how to do this out of necessity, often working for startup companies that did not have a marketing budget to speak of (or we had a budget but it got eaten by engineering, or product delivery, or something else that was deemed a priority over marketing at the time).

Starting from back in the days when this type of thing was called guerilla marketing, I have pioneered the idea that if you offer up free content that is also valuable content, people will find that content, consume that content, and give some respect to the content creator. So when I created a web site back in the mid-nineties that was full of high quality computer security information, people who had read the content would call up looking for security advice, which we sold as security consulting, creating a blue ribbon client portfolio that became very valuable and was eventually snapped up by a much bigger company that paid us a premium for it.

A dozen years on and I am working on marketing a marketing product, finding that a lot of people have twigged to this strategy, so things are not quite so easy. But the strategy is still sound and I will keep persevering, adding new tactics like social media (an umbrella term for Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and blogs) to my arsenal. And of course, radio interviews whenever they present themselves.

Zombies, Swine Flu, and Kindling: What a Difference 6 Months Makes

Wow! I did not realize it was THAT long since I had posted here. I blame the day job, which is often the evening job and weekend job as well. Fortunately that job is going well and I am racking up kudos for my blog posts on marketing. I am also getting quite adept at the social media thing. (Here's a link to a personal post where I rounded up 19 things you should do if you want to promote your company, band, film, book, profile).

A lot of people are somewhat familiar with some of the social media basics, but it is how you employ them all in concert that makes social networking work, from Twitter to Facebook and LinkedIn, to your blog, your pics, your videos, your tr.ims, your stats and your Google Analytics (which reminds me, I need to add these last few to the list, maybe: Hey 19, Part 2, the Remix).

What has this got to do with art? Everything. There may be some artists who seek obscurity (like the Buddhist monks in Shangri-La that were on PBS last night). But most art is intended to be experienced. And that seldom happens without a push from somewhere. Consider Jeremy Dean, the Brooklyn-based artist who created the indie doc Dare Not Walk Alone (that I had the honor of producing). He has been cooking up some cool conceptual art for several years now, but it was connecting with a gallery that gave his private art a push in the public direction. Jeremy will be showing at big art events in December and March and already has some cool art video online.

Speaking of that aspect of pushing art forward which is often referred to as "publication" and/or "distribution," we are seeing the "and/or" converge taking place right now in technology like Amazon's Kindle. You can now read Kindle books on your iPhone and PC as well as on the actual Kindle device.

Which brings me to the book I wanted to review here: World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War. This is a novel by the first "new" author I have read entirely on the iPhone. The book came out in print a few years ago and sold well. It is currently around #300 on Amazon. But the book is in several top 10 lists on Kindle, which is how I came to see it while using Kindle on my iPhone. I was intrigued enough by the reviews to download the free preview and on reading that I figured I would like the book, so I paid for the full Kindle version.

There were three things that I enjoyed about World War Z. First and foremost I admired the extent to which author, Max Brooks, had thought through all the implications of zombieism (sp?). Then he extrapolated a new reality from a defined set of data: zombies eat flesh, zombies can only be killed by destroying the brain, zombies can survive under water, zombieism spreads through biting and the dead re-animate after infection, and so on. The book explores the logical and logistical end game. By doing so it reveals worrying weaknesses in current technology, science, cultures, and religions. (Hint, this is a global catastrophe of 2012 proportions.)

Second, the narrative structure created by the interview excerpt device was refreshing and very effective. You learn very little about zombies or the war through direct description. You get most of it by inference. And you get a lot of rich characters too, which keeps things fresh. Brooks is skilfull at giving each a unique voice and strong presence, using little more than their recorded words. He also manages some great humor of the dark, battlefield kind.

Third, I found this to be a fascinating book to read against the backdrop of the global H1N1 Swine Flu pandemic. Indeed, I think that may be part of the reason for the book's success, the series of epidemics the world has been seeing, coming from far distant places right into our everyday lives and forcing us to think hard about a lot of things we would rather keep to the back of our minds.

I am not a big fan of horror stories, particularly ones that dabble in the supernatural. The genius of World War Z is that Brooks makes fighting zombies seem very real and anything but a figment of the imagination. Consider this: In talking about the book over dinner one night I found myself saying "If this zombie thing ever happened for real, it would be really bad." Talk about willing suspension of disbelief.

Lack of Broadband Access Further Depresses Property Values

Today we encountered a prime example of how the refusal of telecomm companies to adequately serve rural Americans with broadband is hitting home, literally. We spoke with a family that is having to sell their home and move just so they can get the broadband connectivity they need to continue their business and maintain their livelihood.

As if the perpetration of a giant sub-prime Ponzi scheme by the banks had not done enough damage to property values we are now seeing a rising tide of property devaluations due to a lack of broadband. Driving this trend are the following factors:

1. A growing expectation of broadband access in all sectors of commerce and government. It is now normal to expect someone with whom you do business to be able to watch a video online, attend a webinar, log into the company network remotely, and download large files, all activities that are impossible without broadband.
2. A growing realization that satellite Internet service, the connection of last resort in rural areas, is not really broadband at all. For example, it does not reliably support any of those 4 essential business activities in trend 1.
3. A growing education gap is emerging in which children and adults without broadband access are being left behind, in K-12 and further education, not to mention distance learning. 

While trends 1 and 2 affect the ability of rural residents to conduct business on a level playing field or work remotely, trend 3 affects the entire family, sealing the fate of homes in areas without broadband access. The market for homes that lack broadband access is shrinking rapidly. The downward pressure on valuations will only continue.

Handy Tech Tip: Vista and Windows 7 Device Driver Uninstall

As you may have discovered by now, your PC may be able to run Windows 7 but the maker of your PC does not plan to support you in this endeavor (Sony is a "good" example of a PC maker that is telling loyal owners of "older" Viao machines you are out-of-luck and on-your-own when it comes to Windows 7 drivers).

Of course, with the aid of Google and the many good folks who like to share on the 'net, workarounds abound. However, one problem you can end up with, given the hit-or-miss nature of manufacturer support for Windows 7, is a bunch of installed drivers that you don't need. I found this page helpful in dealing with this:

Uninstall Drivers from Vista & Windows 7

Do bear in mind the author's advice to make copies of drivers before you remove them. The thing that surprises me about drivers for Windows 7 is that XP drivers often work okay. I will try to blog more about that when I get my Vaio VGN-S460P fully configured. (Hint: This is one of the machines that Sony has no intention of supporting under Windows 7, but you can do a clean install of Windows 7 and so far it is working well--thanks to a set of original XP drivers.)

FireFox + ScribeFire = A great way to blog

I just added ScribeFire to Firefox on my "new" Windows 7 laptop and I have to say, this is the way to blog, particularly if you are blogging web pages, i.e. posting links to pages of interest with some added commentary. This is a good page to start at ScribeFire:

Getting Started With ScribeFire - Scribefire: Fire up your blogging

I have barely scratched the surface of this app but already it is way ahead of things like the Blogger "Blog this" add-in. Hopefully this functionality will enable me to blog more of my experiences getting Windows 7 running on my "old" Sony Vaio, which is now my "new" laptop.

Comcast protests broadband stimulus grant applications

Comcast protests broadband stimulus grant applications - FierceTelecom

David Cohen, Comcast's executive vice president, claims that since the U.S. Broadband stimulus funding program was designated to bring broadband services to areas where service is not available, targeting areas where it already provides service could 'violate eligibility rules.'

Of course, "provides service" is a term that Comcast defines to mean one access point somewhere in the vicinity, not actual "service" that is available to all.