Stories have been circulating overseas for some time now about Dell's attempts to sign up channel partners.

A recent report by Baird - a market analyst company - suggests the giant PC maker has been quietly making overtures to VARs in the US and Europe. But, as the Baird commentary makes clear, there's not much trust for the company among traditional resellers.

While there may well be a number of New Zealand VARS willing to partner with Dell, here they probably less worried about trust, than having to recommend a brand that, in this country, is closely associated with The Warehouse -- the down-market retailer. Would you bet your business on products that can be found piled high between vinyl shoes and stale chippies?

Posted by Bill Bennett October 28, 2006 2:01 PM | Comments (0)

Back in my early days as a technology journalist one of the most common types of story was, what we in the business referred to as, the football results. At the time I was living in London so the sporting metaphor of choice was soccer (American readers are just going to have to live with this).

Things have been a little bland lately, can the race between Intel and AMD help bring back those football result headlines?

We used to talk of home wins (say if Bull won a French government contract from Nixdorf) away wins (usually an American firm beating a European company), no-score draws (where all the tendering companies came away empty-handed) and score draws (shared spoils). In those days there was no such thing as a penalty shoot-out.

A typical headline would have been along the lines of ICL beats Digital Equipment to Ministry of Silly Walks.

As an aside, the three proper nouns in the last sentence give you a good clue about the era we’re talking about here - pretty much prehistoric for most people currently working in the IT business.

These stories were always popular with readers. However, we don’t see them so much these days. Technology companies generally don’t want to brag about sales wins - mainly because they worry about upsetting customers. Customers don't want to talk about them because, well I'm not entirely sure, maybe they worry about tempting fate -- the fear that the gods of technology tend to come down hardest on those who boast the loudest.

Either way, it’s great to see chipmakers Intel and AMD issuing their contrasting quarterly results more or less at the same time. We've got something that looks like a football result.

Intel has had a string of poor quarters; AMD appears to be on a roll. The story is a classic: the bloated stumbling giant getting its comeuppance and a feisty underdog making steady headway. It reminds me of the days when non-league football clubs like Leatherhead would give the (pre-Premier League) First Division clubs a run for their money.

Of course it isn't over yet. Intel could be on the comeback trail with its latest releases.

Posted by Bill Bennett October 19, 2006 12:26 PM | Comments (0)

The other day I was talking to a colleague of mine about this wonderful video editing program that worked. He was getting excited over a simple little program that came bundled with a video recorder because the program did what he wanted it to do.

Now, I've installed and used thousands of programs through my life, so why in the world would I get excited about one that works?

It strikes me as odd that out of all the programs I use and have ever used, very few seem to do what I want them to do. Microsoft Word? More like notepad on steroids. iTunes? Don't even get me started. Winamp? Nice try, but bugs galore and an interface as intuitive as tying a tie puts this one at the back of the class.

Don't get me wrong, I don't want a program so packed with features it makes Photoshop look like an etch-a-sketch pad. All I want is a program that does what I want it to do, and nothing more.

We shouldn't have to get excited over the ones that do. In a world where complexity and ever demanding programs become harder to use, it's nice to be able to pick up a small program that does one thing, and does it well.

I also do not want five different music players, even though they come bundled with other software. I have taken a distinct disliking to both Real Player and Quicktime, if only for the reason that when I open up the program for the first time, I have no idea what to do. Photoshop and Flash? They're great programs for those who have studied them, but most people haven't.

Paying $3000 for a program that does two things you want, and 67351 things you don't want, is nonsensical.

Just because the population in general is getting more technically mature, doesn't mean that programmers should set out to create more complex and feature packed programs that will have users calling helpdesks with tears streaming down their faces.

Posted by October 17, 2006 3:05 PM | Comments (0)

It's nice to see highbrow literary references in Reseller News, but let's get them right. The maze of anti-piracy security Microsoft wants to add to its Vista operating system is more like something from the works of Douglas Adams than the writings of Dante and Kafka.

Microsoft wants users to register its new generation operating systems before gaining full access. Those who don't register will have severely limited functionality. There's nothing particularly new about this -- similar restrictions apply to WIndows XP.

To some extent Microsoft's measures are understandable, the company has lost a lot of revenue to pirates in the past. You can't blame Microsoft from taking action to cut out the crooks.

However, the process can be painful for legitimate users, which isn't good for business. Remember programs with hardware 'dongles'? Nobody liked them, people stopped buying them.

So what's wrong here?

For a start, there's a whiff of spyware about the security technologies. And bullying. Microsoft already gets sniffy with Firefox users wanting to, say, install updates. But there's something else.

I recently suffered one meltdown too many on my home system and had to reinstall XP from scratch. This is a good idea if, like me, you're regularly installing and removing applications, drivers and other software.

As the install finished a message told me I'd installed my copy of the software on too many machines (don't ask me to repeat the exact words I don't remember)

I hadn't. My copy of XP (I have three) is only installed on the one machine, but the machine has been modified over the last couple of years. Either way, XP wouldn't work and I had to reinstall an old copy of WIndows 98 from scratch to get a, barely, functioning computer. I might have spent an hour on hold waiting for Microsoft support to help me out here -- but I've been there before and, trust me, life's too short.

Something similar happened last night with Microsoft Money. The program has been reinstalled and I can't open the data file. Apparently my previous install of Money was automatically updated and files created with this version can't be opened in the non-updated version of the program. The problem is the program can't be updated without a valid data file.

This isn't like anything in Dante. It's possibly a little Kafkaesque -- being stuck in a nightmare. It's also covered by Catch-22.

But for my money it's actually more like dealing with the Vogon civil service (from the Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy). You get sucked into a vortex of mindless bureaucracy with forms to fill, queues to join which only lead to more forms and more queues. Then someone says something like "Your call is important to us, please listen to Wagner's Ring Cycle extended disco mix while we find you an operator. As the last note fades another message tells you the office is now closed, it will opening again at 2.00 am next Michlemas Eve.

Incidentally, Adams wrote a computer game about this kind of mindnumbing bureaucratic nonsense. I suspect Microsoft mistook this for a training manual.

Posted by Bill Bennett October 10, 2006 10:37 AM | Comments (0)

Reuters is reporting that Intel may be about to aquire graphics card company Nvidia.

After AMD’s acquisition of ATI, a natural move for Intel could be to buy out ATI’s nearest competitor.

Danish Computerworld Reseller News has reported that a statement is expected tonight, New Zealand time.

Nvidea is thought to have a current value of around US$ 10 billion.

Posted by October 6, 2006 2:41 PM | Comments (0)

A number of people commenting on the Zune and iTunes blog post believe Apple's program is intuitive. What exactly do they mean?

We can argue dictionary definitions, but in the context of information technology the word 'intuitive' is mainly used to mean something so obvious you don't even need to think about it. The implication is, you can pick a piece of technology up and use it without being trained or told what to do.

Yeah right.

Does anyone really believe pushing a mouse pointer across a screen and clicking and holding to move files is really intuitive? It's clever. It's pretty. It's technically elegant and it's easy to learn. But it isn't intuitive.

You can say the same about the iPod user interface. It's functional, well designed and easy to master. But the last time I looked rolling a thumb around a dial to select tunes didn't strike me as intuitive.

Sex is intuitive. Eating is intuitive. Finding a warm place to sleep at night is intutitive. Running away from Sabre Tooth TIgers is intuitive. You don't need a user manual to do these things.

Posted by Bill Bennett October 5, 2006 10:34 AM | Comments (2)

This blog has pointed out previously, when it comes to fashion credibility Apple trumps Microsoft every time. And, let's face it, most of the time, Apple's hardware and software products are simply better designed than equivalent Microsoft products.

But the computer maker's iconic iPod music player has a soft underbelly the world's largest software company might just be able to exploit.

If you're an iPod owner and Windows user you've probably already figured out where the weakness lies: the awful iTunes software used to load music onto an iPod.

I can't really comment on the Macintosh iTunes experience. For all I know it may be great. On a Windows PC, the software stinks. On the other hand, Microsoft's Windows Media Player works really well. If the company can parlay this advantage into Zune sales it could have a winner on its hands.

Just how bad is iTunes?

Let me count the ways:

FIrst, it installs Quicktime on your system and changes settings so clicking on media files opens the program. But it doesn't play your file until you click a nagware screen trying to extort money for a full version of Quicktime.

Second, iTunes doesn't allow you to sort your music in any logical fashion. If you've accumulated a huge pile of MP3 files, the ID tags are totally confused. Fixing the tags is a long, labourious process. I'd like to see a proper album or artist view. For some reason the iPod library shows dozens of duplicates of songs that only appear once on my hard drive. I'm guessing this has something to do with the ID tags.

In stark contrast, Windows Media Player absolutely shines when it comes to sorting and organising music. You can use an online service to update the ID tags.

Did I mention iTunes keeps crashing? It needs restarting every 15 minutes or so -- this is seriously buggy software.

iTunes also chews up a huge chunk of system resources -- I'm no technical expert, but I think it may chew things even when it isn't running or perhaps that's Quicktime causing the problem. Either way, my system runs slower since iTunes was installed. Maybe this has something to do with the way the software links to an iPod.

For my money the worst feature of iTunes is its appalling, inscruitable, user interface. It's pretty damn hard to figure out what's going on, what files are where and so on. It's horrible and it is certainly not good if Apple hopes to woo PC customers away from Windows.

I live in a three iPod household. I've also got a non-Apple MP3 from Laser. The Laser player isn't quite as slick as an iPod, it's user interface is clumsy and the documentation is in pidgeon English. But loading songs is a breeze -- you plug it into a USB port where it appears as an additional drive and then use Windows Explorer to drag and drop MP3 files. The simple process takes a few minutes. It can synchronise easily with Windows Media Player. If the Zune can do the job as well as the Laser then I want one.

Posted by Bill Bennett October 3, 2006 2:52 PM | Comments (32)

Jan Birkeland writes:

In what smells like a my-dad-is-stronger-than-yours story, HP went ahead and bought Voodoo PC late last week. Undoubtedly a response to Dell’s acquisition of Alienware last month.

Gaming and high end systems are a market largely overlooked by the IT giants until recently. Both companies have tried, and failed, in building their own brands fitting this segment.

So the obvious solution was to buy someone who has enjoyed prolonged success in the market.

But what’s in a name? Enthusiasts and gamers alike cringe at names like HP and Dell. They despise corporatism and rebel against it by buying overly expensive independent systems.

Alienware, which used to belong to an elite club of high end equipment, can now be found in The Warehouse, along with obsolete Dell models and CRT screens.

So what will HP do with VoodooPC? A smart move might be to keep quiet about it, stick with the old name and not change much. Chances of that happening? Slim to none.

Posted by Bill Bennett October 3, 2006 2:00 PM | Comments (0)

If you ever doubted the power of competition, take a look at Intel. The company’s recent product announcements underline the power of markets to deliver progress. Telecom should take note.

For more than two decades, the US chipmaker had an effective monopoly on the processors that power desktop PCs, portables and, for the last decade or so, many servers and handhelds.
Intel’s market power meant the company could dictate the rate of technological progress. Rather than develop products for maximum customer benefit and hence sales in a aggressive battle with competitors, Intel could sit back and roll products out on a schedule designed to maximise corporate revenues.

And it did.

Intel made buckets of cash and squandered billions attempting to enter alternative markets. Remember Intel-brand PCs and digital cameras? There were desktop videoconferencing products and plenty of other wacky stuff customers neither cared about nor wanted.

A few competitors snapped at Intel’s heels, but the chip giant wasn’t seriously threatened until AMD got traction two or three years ago.

Now the company has its groove back. It is rolling out dual core and four core processors and addressing the power issues (its early processor designs delivered a lot of heat alongside all those megaflops). It’s got competitive server chips, desktop chips and portable chips.

Of course, few users know what to do with all that processing power - but they love having it.

Posted by Bill Bennett October 2, 2006 11:34 AM | Comments (0)