Corporate Greed and Upselling - Trialware On Your Computer

None of us has made it this far in life without hearing McDonald's famous "would you like fries with that?" upsell.  Whether its the "extended warranties" that put electronics retailers in the dubious position of convincing us that their products are subject to highly likely and frequent failures, or the person in the restaurant asking "did you want cheese with that?" or "anything to drink", we are constantly surrounded by upselling.  It is the corporation's attempt to extract more money from our wallets than we have decided to give them.  They have a captive audience and are greedy for a little more of our after-tax money.  Sometimes its sneaky like a well placed food-bar at the exit of a big box retailer, other times it is more overtly evil like additional charges on your restaurant bill for items you thought were included in the posted price.  Sometimes it is putting the customer in a situation where they have to work hard and spend their time to avoid paying money.  I have been seeing the same thing happening on the last few computers I have purchased.

When purchasing computers in the last couple years, it has become difficult to ignore the seriously large amount of  CRAP software that is loaded onto the desktop.  It is software loaded onto the computers that promises to disappoint in one of the following ways.  The software;

• will stop working after a time period
• will allow you to create documents in a proprietary format before locking up.
• will offer a narrow range of functionality with enough limitation or irritation that upgrading seems like the only way to make the pain stop.
• offers a service you never would have sought out on your own.
• is ad supported and to make the annoying ads stop you must pay.
• (mcafee) is stuck in a half installed state that is only solved by creating an account on their website.

When did it become OK for some corporation to put something on our computers without our permission, particularly something that advertises at us, or promises to frustrate, or slows the computer to a crawl by starting when the computer starts...  For example there was some DVD software that came installed on a net-book that ran 2 executables at boot time, each of which used several Megs of RAM (you caught that it was a netbook and had no DVD drive right?...

My best guess is that companies like HP and Acer are being paid to install this software on your computer. ($15/computer etc) knowing that a certain percentage of suckers will simply obey the computer and type in their credit card number to continue.

So I am technically savvy and have no problem recognizing these "special offers", but I truly pity the older generations and the less astute who may not understand their computer software is going to "stop working" in 60 days.  To prey on the ignorance of the ill-informed is reprehensible behaviour.  These corporations seem to think nothing of taking actions that will lead to confusion and frustration and disappointment on the part of their customers, as long as they get their $15 per computer sold.  Ok, so they make money by making their customers experience frustrating while bloating their computer's RAM and cluttering the start menu and desktop.   I would suggest that the term "free-trial" is the other meaning of "trial"  the one that means the same as "ordeal" and not a "test-drive".  There is an arrogance with these software manufacturers in that they seem to believe the following about their software;

• that it is so important it should take up space on my desktop where I will see it constantly
• that it is ok to use up your RAM on startup to keep "helpers" and "startup assistants" in memory even if you don't use their software that day.
• that it is OK to hijack file associations and make themselves the default software for use with files of those types
• that your data (audio/text etc) should be stored in a proprietary format that only their software reads/writes

When we recently purchased a computer for my parents, we uninstalled (or modified the behaviour of) the following crap trial-ware; Adobe Reader (does not need to load on start), cyberlink DVD software (does not need to load, this is a netbook), Microsoft Works (ad supported? really Microsoft you are sounding more desperate each year), 15 time limited games, Mcafee antivirus software (60 days).

MS Office student edition 60 day trial, carbonite online storage.

There are lots of excellent and free software packages out there that surpass those listed above, so I've loaded these onto the computers to replace the advertising, crippled trial-ware and deceptive marketing.

Many of these were in my list of free software earlier this year.

Hey Manufacturers....  My next computer will be Linux or Google-OS.  Stop treating your customers like a "market to be exploited" and start putting yourself in their shoes and asking "how would I like to be treated?"

Software vendors.... Your software isn't as good as you think it is.  People aren't delighted to "TRY" your software "FOR FREE".  Get out of the 80s.  Deliver real value to people with no strings attached and you will have a loyal following (anyone heard of Google or open source software).  Stop trying to trap the customer into your profit center.

People...  Use free open source software.  It works, its better, its less of a headache, it costs less.  Be free.

Cheers,

Greg

P.S.  Acer you owe me 8 hours of my life back.  I bill at $60/hour, I think you owe me a laptop.  Email me to arrange delivery.

Good Design and Open Design

I'm speaking generally in this article and not attempting to show too much favouritism, but I am painting history with a pretty broad brush so I appreciate your accomodation of that. 

 

[caption id="attachment_534" align="aligncenter" width="420" caption="IBM clone PC"][/caption]

IBM PC vs Apple Hardware

Until recently the "IBM PC" has absolutely killed more proprietary hardware (like Apple products) in affordability. 

Our family owned a Laser 128 apple clone, but apart from that we have over the years owned 1 TRS80, 2 386s, 1 486, 2 Pentiums, 1 Celeron, 1 Athlon64, 2Athlons, 1 zeon  AND zero apples.  Now this is with all the exposure to Apples in the school system (hence the Laser 128)

There was only 1 "Apple" computer company making hardware, but there are many many computer companies building "IBM clones".  We could purchase a 386 for $1500 or we could purchase the same computer from Apple for double the price.  IBM decided to "open" the form-factor for their IBM PC so that low cost manufacurers overseas could "clone" or copy the hardware without paying licensing fees or battling an army of lawyers.  Suddenly this meant there were 5 -10-15-20 soundcard manufacturers, and 20 video card manufacturers, and 10 hard drive manufacturers and 40 Motherboard manufacturers all able to design compatible products and compete on features and price.  While Apple design has remained compelling, it is like Ford's model T. "Any colour you like as long as it is black".

I attended a wedding a few years ago and listened to a man chatting at a table who had worked for IBM for years comment; "It's really too bad that IBM opened up their PC design, they could have made a killing if they had just held onto that and not let others use their design and build components".  He missed it.  He didn't understand that it was precisely because others could have the blueprints that we had commodity computers and incredible demand.  (Understand there is high demand for affordable computers, and very little demand for unaffordable computers) 

Open Standards let us cooperate and work together

There are lots of smart people out there.  They don't all do things the same way, we have chaos or war unless people can agree on how to work together.  that is why we have "standards".  Those attempts to get everyone playing by the same set of rules so we can work together.  Some examples;

• A green light in traffic means...?


• In my country we drive on which side of the road?


• A Meter is exactly how long?


• Do you use POP3 or SMTP for receiving or sending email?


• Are you reading an HTML web page right now transferred by HTTP (HyperText Transfer Protocol)?

So standards are smart right? They allow people who are willing to negotiate or compromise to choose a common method (often it is not the "best") but it is reasonable for the greatest number of people who are willing to collaborate.

Open versus closed design

Some silly companies think that cooperating with others reveals "weakness".  They think that they are smarter than everyone else.  They think everybody should do things their way and they work hard to avoid cooperating with others.  Lets call them "big brothers" because they like to be in charge of the customer and remove choice.  Here the 2 philosopies collide.  The collaborators and the "big brothers.  Collaborators try to make things like software and file formats work with others including "big brother's.  The "big brothers" work hard to obscure and continually update their formats to make them difficult to copy.  Big brother is all about control.  Ironically Apple chose imagery from 1984 for their 1984 Superbowl ad where they were urging people to break free from the IBM PC. ROFL!  OK, when it comes to file formats, there are many "big brothers" out there.   Kudos! It was a brilliant Ad anyways Apple! (as was this um... "modification")

 

[caption id="attachment_532" align="aligncenter" width="300" caption="Big Brother knows best!"][/caption]

Office document formats and the battle for useability

For years, Microsoft's office formats have been the only game in town.  MS Word, MS Excel etc.  If you try exporting to another format, they you "lose features" and the docs never did look quite right.  Microsoft is no longer the only game in town, but they are holding on hard to the idea that they know best, that cooperation is not as good as being uncooperative inovation.  Every version of Microsoft office introduced new formats that would not work with the old versions of the program (or would not work well).  In order to make things work, you would have to "upgrade" to the new version.  (Now there was nothing wrong with the old one, its just that Auntie Sue bought a new computer that had the new version and now  you can't read what she writes..)  So pull out your wallet and pay money every year to be able to continue doing the same things you did last year.  That is how the "big brothers" make your life. Expensive and difficult.

Enter the giant killers.

Open Office has been looming on the horizon for years.  Their converters for MS Office documents have been getting better and better.  Now you can use free software that works pretty much as well as the MS Office programs, and it can convert to and from those formats.  Open Office saves you paying hundreds of dollars to Microsoft, and new versions address the version issues Microsoft creates.



Google has created an online system called Google Docs that allows you to create, upload, edit and download documents online. No software other than your web-browser is required, and there is a a high level of compatibility with other office formats.  

These companies are making your life easier, more affordable, and are being open and transparent about their formats so that  you have fewer hassles.  Their "open design" is translating into "Good design" and putting money back in the wallets of people who have been paying "rent" on their software for far too long.

Free long distance telephone calls

I don’t like being taken advantage of. When I pay $0.10 cents a minute for a long distance call and my friends tell me that they only pay $0.035 per minute I recognize that their phone company still makes a profit and that my phone company is extracting a $0.065 stupidity tax from me for sticking with their dumb prices. For years there have been programs to let you talk from computer to computer, but it required 2 people being at their computers at the same time, running special software… well that doesn’t sound as convenient as the phone, and who wants to leave their computer running all the time?

Skype and Jajah let you make long distance calls for free or low cost.

My friend Dan King introduced me to SKYPE. He had friends in the UK and wanted to call them from Canada but without the ridiculous long distance charges the local phone company would charge. The critical difference with Skype was a service they offer which allows you to make calls to conventional phones. It is called SkypeOut, and it costs about $0.03 cents CAD per minute. Definately a better price than the one offered by local phone companies.

The Skype website says:

“Skype is a little piece of software that lets you talk over the Internet to anyone in the world for free.”

SkypeIn is a phone number your friends can call. You answer in Skype.

Use SkypeOut to call from Skype to traditional landlines or mobiles.