It's been a very pleasant week here in the Southport area, although a bit of rain might be a good idea some time. The weather gave me the opportunity to do some pending outdoors work and to get away from the PCs for a while; my clients must have had the same thoughts as it wasn't a panic week, consulting-wise. I also got to take in the classic auto show at the Wal-Mart lot sponsored by the Cape Fear Cruisers. It was a great show this year with a lot of nice "stuff" to look at and drool over.
The big news event of the week was that Dell has relented and started once again taking orders for new PCs with Windows XP as an alternative to Vista. I was very surprised to hear that, knowing how adamant Microsoft was about not doing this. But the issues were overwhelming - many businesses found that their unique software didn't run under Vista, and many people found that things such as device drivers were hard to get. You might think this was only for older hardware but not so. One reader told me that he had purchased a Dell system with a printer included. They could not get the printer running after an hour on the phone, and the reason that finally came out was that in fact there were no drivers for Vista for that printer. Dell had sold him a package that wouldn't (yet) work.
But to me the bigger issue was that the "Wow" just wasn't there. There just isn't that much new or better in Vista to offset the re-education effort. Now, don't get me wrong - Vista will become the new standard in time. But it sure is aggravating to my clients right now. The first Service Pack of fixes should be available around December.
I don't like to comment on particular PC vendors or stores in this column but I feel that I need to address the Circuit City issue. Circuit City has just had a hard time hitting the nail on the head, business-wise. Originally the salespersons in the stores were commission based - this lead to them being overly aggressive and pushy - potentially recommending higher priced alternatives to what the customer needed. In contrast, Best Buy salespersons were not commission based. A few years ago, Circuit City also stopped compensating their salespersons by commission, and many of their better people left because of their now reduced income.
I actually don't consider sales people at either store particularly good, but I do give the education level of the Best Buy people the edge. Best Buy also has the Geek Squad - their service organization. Although I (obviously) don't use that service, I haven't heard any bad words about them. Circuit City recently named their equivalent service "Firedog". I shook my head over that one - what were they thinking? I am still not sure what it means.
But the big issue for me has always been rebates. Everybody universally loathes rebates - you have to pay more up front, fill in lots of paperwork and cut symbols off boxes, mail them in, and pray that you actually get the rebate. There are many, many horror stories about rebates not being honored. Best Buy realized the consumer backlash against rebates and about a year ago eliminated almost all of them. Best Buy also has their Reward Zone program, which gives you redeemable cash certificates based on how much you buy - that was how I was able to buy my most recent PC (Vista) purchase for $539 instead of $614.
Circuit City, on the other hand, has clung to rebates like (fill in your favorite Southern witticism here). For that reason alone, I have been throwing all of my local business to Best Buy recently.
But now we come to the layoffs. For those who don't know, Circuit City recently laid off their high paid floor workers in favor of lesser experienced and lesser paid people. Apparently the people laid off can re-apply for their old jobs in the future, but only at the new, lower salaries, I can't add much to all the news articles and comments about this, but it just rubs my old IBM management training raw. Even if the layoffs were justified, there were certainly better ways to handle them.
So, I foresee bad times coming for Circuit City until they get their act straight.
(Bob Seidel is a local computer consultant in the Southport - Oak Island area. You can visit his Website at www.bobseidel.com or e-mail questions or column ideas to him at bsc@bobseidel.com. For specific inquiries, please call Bob Seidel Consulting, LLC at 278-1007.)