Bill Sux

Are you referring to our site? It's fast, simple, needs no plugins or Flash crap, no registration, and my customers like it. "Contact us" pops up email, not a form, on purpose. I sell electronics, not glitz. The last internet boom proved conclusively that flashy web sites don't imply revenue.

What's wrong with this?

or this?

People are buying them.

John

I buy mine from the local PC Club outlet.

I made a mistake last month and ordered a Dell delivered to my 87 year-old father in West Virginia. I'll NEVER do that again :-(

...Jim Thompson

-- | James E.Thompson, P.E. | mens | | Analog Innovations, Inc. | et | | Analog/Mixed-Signal ASIC's and Discrete Systems | manus | | Phoenix, Arizona Voice:(480)460-2350 | | | E-mail Address at Website Fax:(480)460-2142 | Brass Rat | |

snip

I bought my Fujisu siemens laptop ( for video editing ) in a shop in Gibraltar, a hour away from me (no tax to pay). This was a couple of years ago

The internal psu died, I took it back to Gib, Fujitsu, flew out/UPS a flight case for its return, fixed it in a week.

Fujitsu/Siemens Rock as far as I'm concerned. They get the Bill and Ted award for "Most excellent"

I will probably buy a cheep dell, so I can put OSX on it, just for fun,

martin

My customers are no-nonsense aerospace engineers who probably don't notice fonts and wouldn't care if they did. Really, engineers are the most style-clueless people on Earth... we shouldn't be allowed to dress ourselves, and most of us in fact let our wives do it for us.

My biggest customer recently introduced a new product line, very spiffy megabuck scientific instruments, heavy FPGA and DSP stuff replacing all sorts of old analog gear; very impressive technology. But they decided to have a new look, and set up a committee of

John

Having read that I can understand why I can't get the Device Manager to find the "correct" drivers for my CD-R-W-RW hardware and audio. It thinks everything not approved by MS is a CD-ROM.

I think it's about time I dump Apple and MS systems.

Don

Nope, I'm a true hillbilly, raised in West "by gosh" Virginia, "Country Rose" and all that rot, humidity that can kill.

See

"A country mile is an exaggerated distance. Mile is from the Latin for

...Jim Thompson

I can think of a variety of reasons, none of which are flattering.

Actually, I think the answer is very simple. Software is licensed not sold, and the license terms clearly state its operation (or lack thereof) is irrelevant, so tough tumshy (oops, betraying '80s cartoon preferences).

If software were sold, it would have to comply with relevant fair trading/consumer rights legislation - just like everything else we buy.

Interestingly enough, its not clear that such an approach is legal here in NZ (or anywhere else) because one cannot agree to the terms until well after one has purchased it, and few if any vendors give refunds on software (although I have had such). Hell, you cant even see the terms & conditions.

Cheers Terry

about aesthetics? If you do not see it...

preferred aesthetics. You are the one

annoying downloads &c do.

(YES!!!) No animated crapola,

Take a look at this:

I have Flash disabled, so I don't see anything!

John

Most of the big US semi sites - Maxim, TI, Analog Devices, National - are pretty fast and clean. LTC is a little over-java'd, but not too bad. Intersil is all Flash.

John

one of my pet peeves is the "My Documents" folder. And all the similar-such folders you cant get rid of.

My preference is a whole 'nother HDD, containing only data. That way when windows snots itself, I can get the data really easily, and of course it makes backups easy.

I also loathe the tedious "search files or folders" utility, that doesnt let you pick a folder (say My Documents) within which to search. And I absolutely hate waiting a few seconds for the puppy to stop moving before I can select "files or folders"

Cheers Terry

Hello Clifford,

However, if they ever tried to use it maliciously or in any way carelessly they would be peppered with lawsuits to the hilt. Because they have deep pockets. They are piling up a huge liability exposure here.

But then the piece of software often returns to an embryonic state where many features will not work. 'tis the way a monopoly works. Either you buy at the company store and accept their condition or you are going to stay hungry. So, you bought our software, heh? What, you want to use it? Well, then give us all this information or we turn the software you just bought into a pretzel.

Come to think of it, that process alone could lead to liability exposure. Maybe I should have become an attorney.

Regards, Joerg

Hello Clifford,

However, if they ever tried to use it maliciously or in any way carelessly they would be peppered with lawsuits to the hilt. Because they have deep pockets. They are piling up a huge liability exposure here.

But then the piece of software often returns to an embryonic state where many features will not work. 'tis the way a monopoly works. Either you buy at the company store and accept their condition or you are going to stay hungry. So, you bought our software, heh? What, you want to use it? Well, then give us all this information or we turn the software you just bought into a pretzel.

Come to think of it, that process alone could lead to liability exposure. Maybe I should have become an attorney.

Regards, Joerg

Thanks Kevin, I just learned something (not hard to do wrt PCs and me). The name also pisses me off though. Most of them are not documents, and I'm a pedant. practicing to become a grumpy old man :)

Cheers Terry

Despite your website, they want the instruments I guess. How can I explain about aesthetics? If you do not see it... Look at the home page. There are these ugly buttons with two different fonts(looks like aerospace /photonics has been added lately) and then the monstruous photos, with perspectives in all directions. Is that a deep look into the grab-box with rejected gear at RS, or are these precision instruments? And then you do not have customers who work with a Teletype and can only print 80 characters/line on their 286. I'm shure each of your customer has an up-to-date computer with XP and IE6, or Linux for the geeks. And nobody is on a dial-up connection, everybody has 1024x768 and better. I'm sure you could increase sales with a well-made web presentation, it is your business card.

I trust you've learned your lesson re. Dell?

We bought 6 Dells when setting up a new engineering office, and thought they were great, on-site warranty, the works. Until a HDD crapped out (emitting loud shrieks, getting hot) and one of the boys had to spend 4 hrs on the phone to some twit in Malaysia going thru a humongous procedure just to "prove" it was the HDD, before a tech came out. Grrr.

Cheers Terry

I've never drowned anybody in a pool (or anywhere else). At boarding school in Tasmania I once helped save one of my class-mates from drowning when he got into difficulties when we were swimming in the North Esk river, down the hill from the school - but my contribution was - unintentionally - passive, in that he panicked and pushed me under to keep his own head out of the water. I was a pretty good swimmer and got out from under without too much difficulty, but - at that time - didn't know the moves for getting a behind a panic-stricken swimmer and grabbing them in such a way that you could drag them to the edge while keeping their face out of the water.

Happily, a couple of the older kids did, and it was one of the things I subsequently learned at that school.

It was also a pretty good example of how easy it is to drown yourself if you panic in deep water. The kid would certainly have drowned if he'd been on his own, though he'd been getting around more or less adequately until he stopped concentrating on kicking his feet and they began to sink ...

------------- Bill Sloman, Nijmegen

about aesthetics? If you do not see it...

Consider that YOUR preferred aesthetics may just NOT be everyone else's preferred aesthetics. You are the one who does not see. Mixed fonts don't bother me, but animated crap, useless annoying downloads &c do.

I prefer John Larkin's site to most of the other things online. No Flash (YES!!!) No animated crapola, no sounds. AND I don't have to fire up IE in order to read it!

Yup, Rebecca does it herself. She's my VP and runs the company, except she lets me do the engineering.

John