Posted 03/16/2009 at 11:51:38pm

I worked at Best Buy and in the Geek Squad from 2003-2007, and yes, there were goals to be met, such as 10% of revenue for service plans (extended warranties) 30% for accessories, etc. All of this is called a business plan people! It's how BB and others stay in business! All of the short sighted internet bargain hunters think there are big bucks to be made from selling JUST the laptop, but there's not much, if any markup on these items, and rebates are the only way they go "on sale"!

Now, with the article in question, lying about the stock is not good, and was something I witnessed from "some" employees during my time at BB. However, those employees were quick to go if caught, and even with the % goals, 30% accessories was not difficult to attain; it's essentially meeting 3 of 10 sales with the "complete solution" of things a new or uneducated computer user might not have.

No one was ever in jeopardy of being fired, and the store's stock was always in the open, so if it was out of stock you could SHOW the customer, and either direct them to ordering it from the warehouse, website or check stock at another BB store. Not difficult at all, and going that extra mile not only makes BB money (regardless of selling extras) but also builds repeat customers and brand loyalty by going the extra mile.

Why would ANY business want to destroy their reputation with nonsense policies that punish employees and customers at the same time? It's beyond my mind!

Posted 02/27/2009 at 02:05:26pm

Ever hear of freedom of speech and press? If the company wasn't named, they can't be slandered. Simple enough. Those in the know have an idea who the girl is talking about, but I don't see it being any of the company's business, unless she works M-F 9-5 and the post was made at 10am during company time, then maybe, just maybe, she could have violated their TOS for internet usage.

Posted 02/18/2009 at 10:37:21am

I believe Orb has been either licensed out or taken over by Winamp; the Winamp equivalent is Winamp Remote and it works REALLY well. Highly recommend it to anyone needing to stream music, movies, etc. You access your media through a web browser, which means that I can stream music to my 3G smartphone. Very slick.

Posted 02/17/2009 at 08:40:56am

I've been playing around with many "test" systems (sorry I don't remember the WEI on each):

Core 2 Duo 1.8ghz 3gb DDR2 800 250gb SATA 3G Radeon X1600 - runs VERY fast, and smokes Vista and XP in performance. Components are nearly 2.5 years old, so I was very excited to see this.

P4 3.2ghz 1gb DDR2 533 80gb SATA Intel Integrated GFX - "Vista Capable" system, 7 flies on this hardware as well and maintains the Aero interface even with the integrated Intel GFX.

Now getting more adventurous:

Pentium M 1ghz "Centrino" platform, 1.5gb DDR 333 30gb IDE Tablet PC - Older Tablet PC that shipped with XP circa 2004. I found a wiki that was written for Vista, which certainly helped get all of the drivers and software working (some in capatibility mode.) Uniquely impressed with the tablet features, many that are new and improved. Navigation, speed and use of 7 makes this PC much more functional than it was with XP, so much more that I've kept 7 on this system for my beta testing. Only downside is Aero disabled due to the internal graphics.

Pentium 4 Mobile 2.6ghz 512mb DDR 333 40gb IDE Sony Vaio - Machine booted and still had about 100mb or so of memory remaining in the performance section of Task Manager (also had Avira AV installed with default 7 settings.) Wish I had an extra 512mb laying around, as this machine worked REALLY well even without it, but peace of mind knowing 7 requires 1gb. All drivers were found with the default install as well!

Posted 01/09/2009 at 03:33:32pm

You hit the nail on the head. If it weren't for it being "beta" and some of the worries that happened with dual-booting XP and Vista (good riddence!) then I would be running Windows 7 only. I'm very impressed with the speed and other features, many that I commented on in a previous post... though I must say again that the taskbar is amazing compared to the ones that came before it. Be sure to try opening your recent documents through the program menu too, ie. hover over MS Word and it will list a few of your recently opened document files. VERY NIFTY I must say!

Posted 01/09/2009 at 03:30:30pm

Thanks for the tip. Didn't realize those programs weren't there. I typically use Outlook instead of Windows Mail, but the Movie Maker is a good little app and quite useful.

Posted 01/08/2009 at 07:43:09am

To answer a few questions:

1. You can do a full install and not just an upgrade, unlike the Vista Beta from a few years back (it's closer to the Vista RC.)

2. At the moment, it appears to be MUCH faster than Vista. In comparison, the Vista Beta was slower than the final release, sans the slow network transfers, unpacking archives and flash drive transfers that felt like I was on my G4 Mac! The Windows 7 Beta boots up about the same as XP, and doesn't get "stuck" on a loading screen like Vista. The file transfer methods mentioned above were A LOT smoother as well. (Still running the same system from the Vista Beta, a Core 2 1.8ghz 3gb DDR2 800mhz SATA 3G system.)

3. Of course, most of the MS crap I would expect on the system is not there yet. IE8 (still in beta) and WMP11 are installed by default. No signs of Windows Defender or Firewall at the moment, so one less thing loading at startup.  UAC is FAR less intrusive than it is in Vista, which is great. On the downside, it still hogs at least 512mb on bootup, and that was before loading any additional apps.

4.  The new taskbar. The Windows "start" button lights up. The menu is the same as Vista, but faster. The taskbar buttons can be grouped, and by default do not have text labels. The coolest features are the thumbnail previews, which they have now added an "x" to to close the windows from the thumbnail. Also, the taskbar buttons can show a progress bar, say if a program is downloading or being installed. Both features are very handy to keep you from switching between windows. Also the new start menu pairs recently opened documents with their program. If you were to mouse over MS Word, another menu pops up next to it with "doc1, doc2, etc." that you recently used with the app. Pretty neat feature.

5. I installed a few apps. Firefox 3 ran smooth and stable, as did all plugins. To install AntiVir, I had to right click on the setup executable and "run as administrator" since it would not load the setup just by clicking on it. I didn't have the fortitude to even try iTunes, considering the fiasco when Vista was launched. Also, the Snipping Tool (built into the OS for screenshots) locked up in the taskbar, and I was unable to close it. Outside of those issues most tasks were smooth sailing for a beta OS.

Posted 12/12/2008 at 07:59:00am

Today’s hard drives are fast enough to make fragmentation largely irrelevant, and our benchmark tests have repeatedly borne this out: On moderately fragmented drives, defragmentation will offer negligible to no performance increase. For seriously fragmented drives (think 40 percent or more), especially those running XP or older OSes, defragmentation can help, but don’t expect the world.

Well, that's not exactly true, and goes hand in hand with clearing temp files. Some users at my company have NEVER had a disk cleanup run on their system, and combined with software installs, and windows updates/service packs, the fragmentation on the machine is crazy. After wiping thousands of temp files that could equate to several gigabytes, a defrag is certainly necessary and will help an ailing system perform like new again.

As for 3rd party defrag apps, Diskeeper is much better than the Windows variety. It will allow an automatic defrag in the background when the system is idle, or have it run on a schedule (similiar to antivirus apps) so your system's performance is in "set it and forget it" mode. It can also defrag the page file while booting up, something that can't typically be touched within Windows (you'd have to shut off the page file to completely defrag the system.) Combine Diskeeper with the free Process Explorer, and you can crank the process for the defrag to a "realtime" priority, thus further speeding up the process.

Though it lacks many of the advanced features of Diskeeper, the freeware IObit Smart Defrag is a decent alternative as well. Keep in mind, all of these apps run on Vista and show some form of progress window, which even Windows ME has a leg up on Vista in that category!

Posted 11/24/2008 at 02:53:16pm

Firefox users can use any download utility to get .FLV files to their hard drive and then use one-click converting in Videora iPod Converter, which I believe was recommended a few issues ago in Maximum PC itself! (You can also d/l movies with Videora, but I find the software to be too much of a hassle.) That's my two cents!