Will Windows 8 Hybrids have Win8 Pro?

When Microsoft release the Surface on the 26th October 2012 it will be the WinRT version. The Windows 8 Pro models are slated for release 90 days after this, in 2013 (or rather ?? December 2012).

The question is, will there be Windows 8 Pro "hybrids" available before that date?

Surely, if the "competition" get a "toe-hold" on the market before "Balmer's boys" they will be behind the 8 ball?

The WinRT models, in the shape of a Surface or another "Hybrid" device are likely to reveal that they are not any more use than an iPad. Let's hope they are priced accordingly.

Logged visits:

Montgomery Village, Maryland

Salesforce.com

It appears that if you submit listings to salesforce.com you can earn points and kudos.

It also appears that the listing information does not have to be accurate! Within 24 hours of tempusfugit.ca being resurrected a listing was found (due to looking in an AWStats report) for me at an address that is incorrect.

Looking to see who posted the listing it appears that the individual was involved in a thread on the salesforce.com forum where the discussion about the number of points that are earned for a given number of listings.

My previous postings on Social CRM (Customer Relationship Management) seem to have my suspicions on their value as a viable business tool confirmed.

Links:

• My previous post on Salesforce.com and Social CRM

Taking advantage of the WIndows 8 RTM announcement

Most of the SERP listings when you search for Windows 8 Loader are You Tube videos and file download services.

This is not really a good sign and an indication to me that there are those out there that are trying to take advantage of the Windows 8 RTM (Release To Manufacturing)

If you look at the search result above you will see that the majority of entries are from those that claim to have a download for a Windows 8 Loader. If you read the mydigitallife posting you will see that even the "experts" don't think a loader solution is going to work.

The listings for downloads are your typical "bait and switch" offerings that you see common on file-sharing sites. Promises of the "goods" that will often be "password protected" for you to find that once you have visited the website that you are told to obtain the password you will have to sign-up to a service to get the files. Or worse, your computer will get infected!

---

Install windows 8 without product key:

This was a search that was logged from Wheaton, Illinois

Links:

• File Download services reviewed 
• The MyDigitalLife post on Windows 8 Loaders

Kindle Ireland online shop

This store uses Blog Spam techniques to promote their website.

In other words they comment on other blogs and include links to their website with the sole purpose of generating inbound links. The theory behind this is that the greater of incoming links that you have to a web page the higher its page rank. This does not happen on this blog as when comments are detected of this nature they are either deleted or they are re-posted without a hyperlink.

In this case an additional post was made, this one, that indicates the placement of a spam link.

Other links related to this marketing technique:

• Comments with the sole purpose of promotion 
• More about Blog Spam 
• Why I delete or re-post some comments on this blog - because it is TOTALLY non-commercial! 
• The post that the offending comment was placed - RPi as a Media Server (not sure what the relevance to Kindle is?)

TigerDirect compared to Canada Computers

A shopping experience comparison

Most of what Tiger Direct Canada have in their retail stores is crap! You vast on-line cannot ignore the catalog that is shared with the US. If you order on-line you can get anything that appears on their websites, both sides of the border. If you find an item on the Canadian website it will not necessarily be available in a store. In fact, my experience is that it is more likely NOT to be.

I have ordered things on-line from Tiger Direct and I can report that the orders were filled on time and correct. However, the only reason that I have ordered on-line is that the same components were not available from Canada Computers.

Canada Computers have the advantage that they have a store availability feature on their website, while, not entirely accurate, is better than the "lottery" of Tiger Direct

• My post on Canada Computers

The Shopping experience at Best Buy and FutureShop

In general this is quite favourable. The fact that you have a 14/30 day return policy makes all the difference.

FutureShop tend to be more aggressive when it comes to pressuring the customer to purchase an extended warranty.

As FutureShop is owned by Best Buy the product ranges are pretty similar as are the prices. I have purchased a lot of equipment from both stores. I have even purchased product from the FutureShop on-line store. The on-line experience was very positive and the product was ordered and delivered with minimum fuss and on-time as promised.

The return procedure for both stores is excellent, even when the purchase was made on-line.

AO725-0684 Review

The model did not at the time of this post on the Acer website and only appeared on sites scrapping content from the FutureShop site:

• www.wishpond.com
• www.meilleursprix.ca
• shop.amd.com/ca - this is an interesting one as it looks like a legit AMD site, but references back to FutureShop.

The above links all have images that have the ConnectPro screen showing on the computer.

The model could probably be an AO722-0684 -  I own an AO722-0468 and it seems to have the identical specifications.

Update:
Since the original post an AO722 has shown up on the Best Buy website and weekly flier. This was a 2G RAM model with an AMD C-60 APU.

So, maybe it is not a misprint. I do recommend this unit as it is all you really need in a laptop. I am typing this from a very similar 11.6" Acer.

Links:

• Full Specifications for the AO725 series
• How to unlock the BIOS on an AO725
• FutureShop as compared to Best Buy.

Creating a website to discredit a company or individual

Just because you may have done this it doesn't mean that if you find a website that mentions your name or company that it was created to discredit you or your company.

There are many cases where this is the case, domains such as microsoftsucks.com and futureshopsucks.com have existed at some time. They are probably blocked now as this is one of the aspects of impersonation  that is hotly pursued by companies that have had domains registered with names based on their company name or very close to it.

• futureshopsucks.com on RedFlagDeals

I was thinking that my website tempusfugit.ca may have appeared that way if you were searching for your name or company and happened to find it. This was mainly due to the limited menu system that I was using and the fact that there was no search or way to determine the number of pages that comprised the site (however, if you made a Google Site: Search you would have seen that there were thousands of pages).

So far there are almost 1,000 posts on this blog. There were many more pages on my website. It is my intention that the relevant pages from the website are re-posted on The Technology Muse.

Registration of a Domain  Name:

Frankly the registration of a domain that is similar to the company that is targeted with just the word scam or sucks appended to it doesn't really show much thought has gone into the attack and it is obvious that the website is one that is created to discredit the original company. It is far better to choose a name that is far more subtle. In any case for an attack of this type to be successful the site needs to be promoted or else nobody will see it.

Commenting on a blog post with the sole purpose of promoting your own company

This post was prompted by a comment left on one of my posts related to my experience with Acer and their customer service.

It was obvious to me that the comment was placed purely as blog spam. The ressons for this conclusion are that the comment was just a link to a website that the commenter was trying to promote, both from the Blogger name and the embedded link in the comment body. In addition the visitor, who searched for "acer support + blogger", did not visit any other posts on this blog and the comment added nothing to the original post.

The visitor was from iGennie Technical Services Pvt. Ltd. Nodia, Uttar Pradesh, India 


What iGennie say about themselves:
iGennie is an autonomous online computer support provider through remote access for software, and peripherals. We have expertise in handling issues with a huge array of products of third-party companies and brands.


While I have no objection to placing links on this blog, I do object to comments that promote services in a covert manner. I have placed a link to iGennie at the foot of this post so that anyone who actually reads what I have written will see what the comment really meant. I have also re-posted the comment on the the original blog post with the links removed. I clearly state that I will do this on the comment form - another thing that iGennie did not read!


I do have a problem with on-line customer services that provide support in this way as it seems to be just a Business Opportunity. Anyone with a real computer problem is not likely to find the blog post and if they did is unlikely to follow a link made in a comment. In this case, although I have seen others that do, there was no attempt to tie the comment into any form of relevancy to the blog post itself.


Links:

• What is Blog Spam
• My post on Acer Customer support
• iGennie website

Trialware - Bloatware

This is why equipment is as cheap as it is.

The vendors of computers and those of software programs team up to pre-load "free" trial versions of their wares on to their hardware in the hope that you will eventually buy.

Symantec, the makers of Norton AV and their Security suite are the biggest participators in this practise. All the major computer vendors are also guilty of this some are worse than others!

When you purchase a new computer a lot of the set-up time is taken with the activation and configuration of such software - just to keep you safe when you connect to the Internet.

Often the completion of the installation of the operating system is interfered with by the constant "nagging" of Norton to activate your "free trial". Quite often processes hang (dialogs have popped up in the background wanting you to click 'ok' for instance) or the program is so busy updating itself the computer seems really slow - not a good thing when you are trying out a new piece of hardware and possibly a new operating system which has been reported to be slow!

When you configure a new pc for the first time, and it comes with a "free trial" of a Norton product, you will findthat there is a "race" (one that Norton often wins!)  between Norton trying to update itself and do a full system scan and Windows downloading and installing the latest updates to the OS.

As the computer is brand new - one would hope that there are no viruses on the hard drive, the necessity for a full disc scan is not required - you are far better off with letting the operating system update itself - Don't allow Norton to reboot your computer until the system updates are complete and installed. You will have to reboot then anyway!


Other Examples of bloatware

Apart from games (which some would not consider unwanted) the main contenders are:

• Anti Virus and Security suites including Norton and McAfee
• Norton Online Backup

Update: Removing "trialware" from my latest Acer

This was done for the second time after the computer was returned from repair after the HDD and memory had been replaced under warranty. This time, on first boot, I didn't have to go through the "Preparing your computer for fisrt use" crap. The Acer service dept had already done that for me. However, my desktop was festooned with icons from everything from games to McAfee Antivirus Suite.

In fact, it was not long before McAfee was telling me that my computer was at risk and that I should click on their dialog, presumably so that they could guide me through the resistration and update the virus defintiions. This is all very well but I had no intention of using McAfee as my virus protection in anycase. Some people may be of the view that it was free and came as a free subscription with the new computer. But, as nothijng is free in this life (when you are told that fact - you have to search out the free stuff for yourself). I intended to use Microsoft Security Essecials as my malware protection.

The first thing that I did was to uninstall McAfee using the Windows "Programs and Features" utility.

As you can see Bing Bar, Microsoft Office and eBay are still on the computer. I have no intention of using them and I am not short of disk space so I decided this time to leave them. The same with the games.

Acer Customer Service - Chapter 4

I have the computer back from repair.

It arrived at around 11:30am on the day after they closed the case, Thursday. Seeing as I dropped the computer off at the FedEx depot at around 2:30 on the Monday I think that this is a pretty good turn-around. I guess the moral of the story is: Acer are not bad as far as their service, it is the communication with them that is the problem. None of the times that they said they would confirm by email, did they. I did get an email saying that the repair had been made and to expect another email with a Shipper and Tracking Number. That never came.

To monitor the progress of your repair it is essential to use the on-line status tool and not rely on them keeping you informed by the promised emails.

They replaced the HDD and the memory.

I had to remove all of the "trial-ware" that the computer came with originally. McAfee was the most problematic as is started "squawking" at me as soon as I switched the computer on. The un-install using the Windows "Programs and Features" method took a while and left me with the impression that the McAfee un-install program was in some way flawed and caused a corruption of some of the files that led to a CHKDSK needing to be run. Still, this seemed to be a one-off although I am keeping the computer under a watchful eye until I don't see the CHKDSK going on again.

• Chapter 1- The failure and reporting
• Chapter 2 - The shipping
• Chapter 3 - The repair

Acer Customer Service - Chapter 3

I am impressed - well so far I am, I have yet to see the repaired computer and see what they had done with it.

I dropped the computer off at the FedEx depot at around 2pm on a Monday and it was guaranteed delevery by noon on Tuesday. Just for fun, not expecting the status on the case to have changed I checked back on the Acer support page around mid afternoon on the Tuesday. The status had changed to "Being repaired", I didn't even have to check the FedEx tracking but it confirmed that it had been delivered and signed for, I was expecting that Acer were going to take their time and maybe have a problem with the fact that I had shipped without a battery. As it turns out, that may well be the best thing to do when returning for repair. In any case not only was it being repaired when I checked later the status had changed to "Prepared to ship" and I recieved an email saying to expect a tracking number and a shipper.

I also checked back on the Acer support page and the status confirmed the same thing. There was a place for a shipper and tracking number but that hadn't been assigned. I checked again early on Wednesday morning and it had not been updated. I expect that it will either be back on Wednesday or Thursday. This is not bad turn-around as it will have been less than a week.

I will be interested in whether the hard drive has been changed out and if any of the files that were on the computer have been recovered. I somehow doubt that especially if they have changed the drive. In fact if there are files and/or programs still on the computer I will have to open up the computer to see if the drive has been changed. I have the serial number of the original one, and as I was saying before it will be interesting to see if the drive is warranted in Canada this time.

I now suspect that the computer may have been dropped by its original owner and the HDD had been "stressed" thus causing a premature failure. The AO722 was purchased from FutureShop as an "Open Box" so I am unsure of its heritage.

7:00PM Wednesday:
No email or update on the status. It is still ready to ship back to me (aparently) but no shipper or tracking number. Of course no email.

Links:

• Western Digital Corp - warranty and repair service
• Chapter 4 - the return and what they did with the computer 

How the Do Not Call List works

or rather how the DNCL is supposed to work.

If you do a search (Google) for a telephone number of someone who calls you, you will find many websites that will have a "forum" of respondents that have an opinion on who the caller was and what they want from you. It is clear, to me at least, that both telemarketers and the consumer (the person that gets the "cold call") do not understand what the Do Not Call List is and how it is supposed to work.

This list is one that you can sign-up for and if you are on that list a telemarketer is SUPPOSED TO CHECK that list to see if your number is on it. If it is on that list then they are breaking the law if they call.

The problems are that the telemarketers DO NOT CHECK THE LIST and there is no consequence when they don't.

If there is governmental issue here, CRTC or other agency, is that people who are on the DNC list and are continuing to be contacted by telemarketers should report the offenders to the administrators of the DNC. Is then, and only then, that anything can be done about it. Just because you are on the list it does not mean that you will not be called and the number of telemarketing  calls will decrease. YOU NEED TO REPORT THE OFFENDERS and once they have called you should point out to them that they are breaking the law and that they should check the list BEFORE they call. Tell them that you are reporting them.

The problem with this is that you have to get the full name of the company that called, where they are located and if you can who you are speaking to. When challenged that they should not have called as you are on the DNC you will probably be told that they will put you on their list and they will not call you again. No No No! This is not how it works! IT IS NOT THEIR LIST, if one exists, it is the official one, the one that you registered with. In any case it is doubtful that they would check that list either.

Only if these idiots are reported will the calls you continue to get diminish. I don't think that this is going to happen any time soon. In which case just have fun winding the callers up. They waste your time, waste theirs as well - this is more likely to stop their calls in future.

• Where to register, check and report your telephone number on the National DNCL 
• Various forums that feature those looking to see why their number was called.
• Example 1 
• Example 2
• General forum crap.

Advertising - a dirty word

There used to be a time when "Advertising" was a dirty word.

I think that I got this quote from the BBC Two program on the 70s

The activities of advertisers was seen as being crass North Americanism.

• A Short History of British Television advertising
• A review from the Telegraph - I like comment about the Archers
• Comments on Social Networking on The Technology Muse

Nimble Social CRM Business Edition

•  Social CRM on The Technology Muse

Nimble - award-winning Social Relationship Manager

The interest that I have in the Social CRM product is due to a Blog Spam email that I received yesterday from Brenda Christensen of nimble.com.

I am not sure what the use of Social Media brings to the table, in fact I am dubious of the value of CRM. Having said that I had my own version of CRM that I developed for my own use many years ago. This was before "Social Media" existed, also before computers were "personal" - I am of the belief that it is not to tool but the desire to keep track of this information that is the key to Customer Relations. Having a method that is designed by someone else is not likely to reflect what you are trying to capture. In my day customers were impressed that you knew what you talked about last time you spoke - today customers are not impressed that you know the today is the anniversary of their dog dying!

GIS - geographic information system

as per blog spam Renee Hewett American Sentinel University’s GIS degree courses.

• GIS according to WikiP

A geographic information system is a system designed to capture, store, manipulate, analyze, manage, and present all types of geographical data. The acronym GIS is sometimes used for geographical information science or geospatial information studies to refer to the academic discipline or career of working with geographic information systems. In the simplest terms, GIS is the merging of cartography, statistical analysis, and database technology.

The GIS courses offered by the American Sentinel University are related to the study of Geographic Information Systems.

In the world of Social Networking and mobile devices Location (and/or Geo Tagging) is possible.

Canadian tax filing deadline

The April 30th tax deadline is just a date for which is only relevant it you owe tax.

I wouldn't mind betting that this is a very small percentage of the tax paying public.

True, if you are due a refund then you want to get your return in as soon as possible. This has got nothing to do with the deadline. This is nothing to do with the advertizing campaign that Inuit seem to use - they are talking about a MAXIMUM REFUND and hopefully an accurate return. If you are after a maximum refund and you know that you are due one (you have made some deductible investments or you want to realise a capital loss ***) you maybe better off taking your time with your return.

**** the loss has to be in the year you are filing it or possibly carried over from past years - it is too late to sell and make a loss on a stock in 2012 and claim it on your 2011 return (did anyone say RIM!!!!?)

I really don't understand the Tax software industry, surely they would be better off not trying to scare their customer base into filing before they are ready.

Catchall

Why I gave up on a "catch-all" email scheme.

One of the reasons is the recent spat of spam emails that were addressed to random addresses at tempusfugit.ca. Some of these addresses have been used by me, webmaster and support for example, however, it is too easy for cyber-marketers to "fish" for addresses that might get through.

You may have noticed that there is no email address on this blog that can be used to directly contact me. This is by design. Instead, I have a note that if you need to contact me you should leave a comment on the appropriate post that you are interested in.

In the rare case where I may want a visitor to contact me directly I will create an email address for that purpose and post it on the post in question. It is easy for me to do this as editing this blog is very easy.

Using Social Media to Bully

With the recent press on Trip Advisor and bogus reviews posted by disgruntled guests trying to get discounts and refunds to hotel owners posting overly positive reviews about their own establishments - I see it only getting worse as Social Media becomes every more popular.

Both Facebook and Google stepping up their efforts to use user profile information as a marketing tool. This information is being made available to 3rd party app developers and is generally brokered. Google has recently seen fit to update their privacy statements. Facebook is in the process of an IPO.

The abuse of the Internet in general  is going to get worse.

This bullying is just one of the "scams" that seem to have developed on the new "social web", others include Groupon and other sites designed to cull consumers information with the pretext of helping the consumer get a better deal when all that the website owners want to do is to maximize their profits and broker the personal information.

TripAdvisor

I am of the opinion that using the Internet in this way is despicable and those that use these techniques need to be "outed".  However, I am a great believer in the ability to make an anonymous comment about something you do not see as "right". These comments should be restricted to opinion and not extend to the "you will do X or I will say Y"  Taking the case of TripAdvisor, the threat of a negative review unless a discount or a free night is obtained does not mean that an honest review can be made even if the proprietor does not like what is said. In fact, commenting on any enterprise should be free from "come-back" from the owner of that enterprise just because they don't like what was said. The owner may think that what has been said is false, but that is what the Internet is all about, as long as what was said was not fabricated. Saying that something seemed too good to be true or a company has appeared to have changed their name so that they are not associated with previous activity are only opinions.

The Twinlinks Scam

If you receive an email from Rebecca Wilson (Mary McKibben) claiming that she has a unique scheme to help you build your page rank by participating in her link building program, then you may wish to know that many see this as a scam.

Hello,

Let's do a 3-way link swap with your website www.tempusfugit.ca. I'll give you 
two links in exchange for one from you.
3-way linking is a very effective link building strategy. Since you're getting 
the links from third party websites, they appear totally natural to search 
engines. Such inbound links help your website rank higher in Google and 
other search engines.

    Visit (link removed) to submit your website.

    Thanks,
    Rebecca Wilson

    Founder & CEO, TwinLinks

The difference between a "normal" and "deep" links

With reference to the screenshot above, there is no definition of what a "deep link" is and how it differs from a normal one. It is assumed that if you fall for this scam you are also likely to be taken in by the promise of these extra links. 
  

• Other SEO Scams
• Three-way Links
• My definition of a scam