Problems with Vista? Apple does help
I had to get my daughter a new laptop. The old one had bit the dust after 3 years of faithful, if erratic, service.
We head on out to Staples/Office Depot as they usually have discounts/good deals on open boxes, weirdly configured ones, etc. Most important, I was hoping for one that had XP pre-installed.
Alas, no luck, I got a special price on a new Toshiba with, Vista Home Premium or Uranium Edition, I can't remember.
Anyway, we get it home, fire it up and get it in it's happy place. It is ready for her to load up EverQuest II. As it starts to do the install thing, there is a process where the program downloads some stuff, scans it or some such, and goes on to the next.
Michelle wanders into my office and says:
"It doesn't work."
As she starts to describe what the program is doing and before I get a chance to say a word, she says:
"Damn. Remember that stupid Mac commercial where they have the secret service guy making fun of all the permission stuff? I'll bet Vista isn't letting my program load."
90 seconds later the young lass has turn off the offending 'security' and off she goes into whatever, which is costing me something a month, I'm sure.
[Bonus observation] I asked about back ups. Naah. I asked if she had anything on the old one I needed to recover. Naah, all online between Hotmail, writely, facebook, flickr, and myspace. 19 years of age, folks. In University and basically requires no software, no fancy applications. Worth thinking about.
Now all she needs is to get off Hotmail :-)
Posted by: Zoli Erdos | April 30, 2007 at 22:29
You are coming to a sad realization. Cancel or allow?
Posted by: David | May 01, 2007 at 05:12
Interesting... so lets follow the money trail. Staples/Office depot make a few bucks. Microsoft makes a few more bucks and the online gamer makes a few. As for the online applications - everything is free - I'm presuming she doesn't click on any ads because none of them are that contextual.
It just makes me wonder about all these new services that are springing up everyday. 99.9% of them have no ability to produce measurable sustainable profitable revenue. The trick is finding out what problem the customer will pay to have solved.
Looks like the younger generation don't really have any major needs right now that aren't being satisfied for free.
Peter
Posted by: Peter Cranstone | May 01, 2007 at 08:46
The observation is a good one. I think it applies to all casual computer users - I can't think of anyone I know that really needs any software on their computer (professional life excluded). That being said, the same is happening for work related software - who needs MS project when basecamp will fit the bill and allow me to work on any computer, anywhere?
It will be interesting to see how this influences the hardware market.
Posted by: Matt MacGillivray | May 01, 2007 at 12:08
Heh. Makes you feel old, eh, Rick? :)
Posted by: Aaron Brazell | May 01, 2007 at 14:00
As someone quite north of her age, I'd throw in Jungle Disk/ Amazon S3 just so I can be boring and back up music and old fashioned files. Key for me, is that loss of my laptop is inconvenient but not critical.
Posted by: Colin Henderson | May 01, 2007 at 21:15
No software... other than Everquest of course, which is a pretty fancy application that has a heckuva lot of client-side code. And that, along with Windows Vista, is the only thing she actually _pays for_ on her computer.
(At least that you listed - I don't mean to make gross assumptions about your daughter!)
Could that be a bigger lesson for the software entrepreneur?
Posted by: Ray | May 03, 2007 at 18:24
Ray,
The big lesson? Dad's credit card is alive and well, thank you very much. :-)
Thank you for stopping by.
Posted by: Rick Segal | May 03, 2007 at 20:42