Recently my Mom has had some serious issue with the Best Buy Customer Service here in Sarasota, Florida. It has gotten so bad that I have decided to blog about it so maybe it will catch their attention. We will see if they follow Robert Scoble’s advice and listen to the bloggers out there. With this being a holiday season I would expect better service from such a well known and respected company.

Here is the issue my Mom ordered a washer and dryer set from the Best Buy appliance department and they scheduled for delivery a whole nine days ahead. Since the house is run on gas she needed to call a plumber in to disconnect the old dryer. As it approached the time for the delivery she was told that the Sarasota store would call ahead to schedule a time for the delivery drivers to come. No one called the night before. She called the store at 6 P.M. and did not get through until 9 P.M. that is three hours for them not to answer the phone. Talk about poor customer service! As it became apparent that the washer and dryer was not going to be delivered she decided she was just too upset with the whole situation and decided to cancel the entire order. Now every time that my Mom tries to cancel this one order of over two thousand dollars she is told she cannot because the washer and dryer is scheduled to be delivered for whatever day she comes in to cancel the order. What a runaround! Basically Best Buy has taken two thousand dollars from my Mom and not delivered anything. The washer and dryer were charged to her account without actual delivery. I did not think that was possible in this day and age but I guess it is.

Hopefully Best Buy will straighten this out sometime soon before we need to go to small claims court about it. Perhaps the local news stations here in the Tampa Bay would like to broadcast this story on their channel. Maybe that is the only way for someone down here to get the work done! I think Best Buy has lost some customers!

Microsoft recently prematurely posted the potential names for their upcoming operating system, Vista. As reported by EntMag.com, they later retracted and stated that the names were posted on the Vista help system as a merely a test.

The names included on that page were the following:

• Windows Starter 2007
• Windows Vista Business
• Windows Vista Home Basic
• Windows Vista Home Premium
• Windows Vista Enterprise
• Windows Vista Ultimate

Now I have to seriously wonder if Microsoft really needs 6 different SKU’s for this operating system. I thought the whole idea was to make things a bit simpler and not more complicated. Is this not simply going to cause confusion among the general population if there are so many versions of the same operating system in the market? One has to wonder if this course of action is truly a good idea. Just my two cents.

So you have decided to take the plunge and take your business on the web. This most likely means you will need a reliable hosting service to host your e-Commerce website. What are the key factors that you should consider when considering various web hosting companies?

When considering a web hosting service you should consider at least three factors, how reliable the service actually is, how knowledgeable and prompt are their support staff and what is the actual cost of using this service. Let's break down each factor and really consider this situation in depth.

The reliability of the web hosting service is perhaps the most important to your business as a unreliable service can seriously hamper the reputation of your business. So how do you determine if a host is actually reliable? The first and perhaps the easiest way is to join a public newsgroup of web developers and simply ask them who they use to host their websites. For instance if  you should want to use a ASP/ASP.Net hosting service I would go to asp.net and simply ask who is the most reliable hosting service. Also, searching through these newsgroups will reveal quite a lot of information regarding how knowledgably and helpful the support staff is as well. Simply stay away from hosting providers that have a poor reputation as those service companies most likely are only concerned with separating your money from your wallet and not actually helping you grow your business.

How do you determine which service has the most knowledgeable and helpful staff? This one is again fairly easy to determine. If the staff of the company takes the time to answer questions on public newsgroups and is willing to share their time and knowledge to help out others then this is the company you should utilize. For instance I have noticed that on some public newsgroups or forums many of the questions being answered are from various web hosting services. This not only reinforces their reputation of being really knowledgeable and helpful but it allows the company to get some "free advertising" as well.

Lastly is the cost factor to consider. There are many low cost web hosting providers out there. All you  have to do is a search on Google and you will obtain potentially millions of hits on that key term. However, even low cost web hosting services can turn out to be

expensive when you consider the various add-ons that you may have to attach to your website to make it truly useful to you. So therefore when considering a web hosting service write down your exact requirements you need to make your website run. Also consider the amount of growth that you anticipate when using this website. A website that may work for you now may not work for you in the near future if your business should really take off and you have not factored that consideration into account. Also take into account any cost of upgrading your service should you outgrow it or you need to move to a high end hosting solution.

When considering a e-Commerce hosting service or any web hosting service these are the key factors to consider before making any purchase. While certainly not an exhaustive listing of everything you need to consider this should get you on the right path to narrow your choices down to at least three or four services.

Microsoft has just released some details on the upcoming version of their Office product, formerly known as “Office 12.” It is now known officially as Microsoft Office 2007. Personally I am really looking forward to some of the improvements in this Office suite. These features include an improvement to the email management, a new user interface and improved collaboration tools through the use of the Groove technology that Microsoft recently bought.

Of all the improvements that I believe that will make the most difference in an enterprise are the work flow management and the improvement in collaboration.  As I am not specifically beta testing this program I can not really speak as to these improvements.

As it turns out a story like this has also hit the web and I have assembled some of the more notable links on the web. These are:

FAQ: Looking into Office 12

Microsoft offers peak at next Office suite.

Microsoft announces Office 2007 pricing, details

Does Microsoft Office 12 equal Office 2007

I am sure that there will be more details coming down the pipeline as now that the official product has been announced. Basically the questions out there are more to deal with how Microsoft will directly integrate Sharepoint into the Office suite. Hopefully I will not keep my expectations too high so as to not be disappointed by what I expect the end product to be.

Today I was looking forward to seeing Bill Gates keynote address that he gave at the latest CES in Las Vegas. I went to Bill Gates webcast website and clicked on the 300K streaming media link as I have a very high speed internet connection. However, to my disappointment the webcast ended up not a fluid dynamic presentation but rather more of an audio show with still images taken from the webcast. So this begs the question as to why is it that Microsoft can not seem to get streaming media correct?

I contrast this with the same keynote experience from Steve Jobs using Apple’s Quicktime media player. What did I see a fluid, crystal clear experience of the presentation with just some minor stuttering and glitches as one would expect even from a high speed connection.

Now you see I am using a brand new Dell Windows Media Center edition PC with one of the best video cards available and one of the highest speed processor that I can buy. Why is it that on a Windows machine the streaming media experience is so much better with Quicktime than with the Windows Media player? It is pure shameful that this should be the case. How can Apple develop so much better of a Windows program than Microsoft?

I would love to see the Bill Gates keynote but I am simply spoiled the sheer quality of the Quicktime experience. I eventually gave up viewing the keynote using the streaming media using the Windows Media player. Hopefully the developers at the Windows Media center are listening and working hard to solve this issue with the program. Because if they do not hurry up Apple will quickly overtake them with the home entertainment experience. Just my little rant for the day I guess.