(Written late last night, this addresses the long saga I've had with Google in confirming my name on their services.) Busy week this, given we have so many great people in town for TechReady 14 in Seattle , but I'll still try and find time to celebrate my eleventh anniversary at Microsoft. In my time...

As I noted earlier today, It's Time To Fall Back An Hour in the US and Canada as Daylight Saving Time Ends This Sunday . I know of several customers who use Apple iPhones in their Windows environments and of note is an issue in Apple’s iOS that impacted their European customers recently… http://www.zdnet...

Someone asked today on a local mailing list for suggestion on local television options: Dish, DirecTV or Comcast (our local MSO). I noted that it used to be that if you wanted to get reasonable TV service throughout your home, cable offered the best option requiring no additional set top boxes for...

I saw this evening that my friend Beth (aka techmama ) is considering a new tablet for general computing, like surfing the web, editing her blogs and (no doubt) tweeting. I mentioned that she should consider getting an inexpensive Windows 7 convertible tablet PC vs. an iPad. There are lots of nice...

On today's WSJ.com in Mossberg's Mailbox from Nov. 18, 2009 on the allthingsd.com/ site (the blog where venerable technology columnist Walt Mossberg answers readers' questions) Mr. Mossberg answers several reader questions, including one on Microsoft Office 2003 and Windows 7.  This must be a popular...

I recently solved the Word Completion problem I was having on my AT&T Fuze (HTC Diamond). I received a new phone from AT&T in late December and found that Word Completion was not working, even when selected in Settings>Input. I found that the phone is configured out of the box with Word...

I recalled tonight an old quote: Fortuna favet fatuis.  If you know me, you'll likely understand my personal, off-hours affinity for such a quote and my penchant for Monty Python humour. But in all seriousness, I'm reminded of a past post in which I noted that fools may find fault with ease. It...

My life as a customer. This week, it's cable television and the proposed digital television transition... not be confused with that other digital TV transition … as Tweeted today . If you read my post about my email and Tweet exchanges with Comcast , you'll recall that I wrote to register my complaint...

As noted My life as a customer: this time, I'm repairing a Microsoft Zune .  To be specific, an 8GB model that my son relies upon for his daily dose of everything from Disney pop to grunge to classic rock (he's all atwitter about the rock opera Tommy ). Well, UPS dropped off the return shipping...

When we discuss customer and partner satisfaction at the office, I often tell people to remember one thing: never forget what it is like to be a customer. Well, this week (as I posted previously when I'm returned an Xbox 360 for repair, on a Friday the 13th no less) I am just another Zune customer calling...

As you may know from previous posts, we have both Macs and Windows PCs at home ( think that we even have some CPM and Unix lurking around somewhere).  One benefit is that I get to be the IT administrator for both, although the family uses Windows Vista exclusively.  As such, I was a bit mystified...

It's been and will continue to be a busy week filled with reviews, planning and report, not to mention some real work with some of our best folks on product quality, customer service and satisfaction. So here's a quick post of what I've read over the last week. I love it when words that don't somehow...

Some days, the comics are just so right on the money. ( http://tinyurl.com/3qsahl ) Tags: Humour , Dilbert , customers , customer feedback . http://tinyurl.com/3rcl82

Over the weekend I twittered about a follow up visit to Best Buy.  Given the volume of mail I received in response to my post on shopping trips to local Apple Store and my neighbouhood Best Buy (the good, the bad... you get the picture), I thought that it would be a good idea to revisit the store...

Well, the news has hit publicly, so I can now talk about the coming of help at retail in our new Microsoft Gurus.  No, not that Guru .  I just twittered about the new technology help coming to a major computer store near you. The "Microsoft Gurus" were announced today (as noted here...

(Note 030609: A thanks to Rob Pegoraro's Tweet today . You should also read my follow up to this post, "Best Buy Revisited: Buying a PC at retail isn't as bad as I first found" . In this economy retail needs to shine. See more in my Apple Store experience post: http://tinyurl.com/c28vuf . ) I twittered...

I twittered tonite (I can stop any time) that Matt Richtel wrote in his article in the Times yesterday, Industry Rethinks Moneymaking Software Practice ... "Before they ship PCs to retailers like Best Buy , computer makers load them up with lots of free software. For $30, Best Buy will get rid of...

Jim Goldman writes today that Netflix Goes Dark And Finds It's No Place To Be ... " It started this morning with an email apology from online movie rental powerhouse Netflix, confirming to its 8.4 million users that the company was suffering a shipping and distribution outage. "I called the company this...

From Seth's Blog: Learning from frustration "If you have to put me on hold, don't play bad 1980s music. Play me Bill Cosby or Steven Wright. Or why not give me a choice of 100 songs/audiobooks to choose from? " Here's the big lesson, I think: The person calling in is a person, a customer, potentially...

Of interest from today's news... HP to Open Service and Support Centers in Arkansas, New Mexico HP HPQ today announced plans to open new, state-of-the-art customer service and technical support centers in Conway, Ark., and Rio Rancho, N.M. The centers are designed to meet HP’s growing customer requirements...

Before we prepared lunch for the kids yesterday, I was forwarded an article from Advertising Age this week, A Digital Conference With Some Humility: Day 2 . In it, editor Matthew Creamer highlighted some of the action at the recent Ad Age Digital Marketing Conference, including a brief report of Linnea...

Breaking: Sony Won't Charge $50 To Remove Bloatware | Gadget Lab from Wired.com Peter Sayer of infoWorld noted noted in an article yesterday that Sony initially offered to remove some of the trial software installed on new laptops for a fee... "Buyers of the configure-to-order versions of its...

Don Tennant of ComputerWorld has an interview this week with Steve Schuckenbrock of Dell Computer in his article, Q&A: Dell exec addresses service woes in run-up to IT-as-a-service launch . Tennant caught up with Schuckenbrock, the president of their global services division and CIO, at the Premier...

NJ.com (The Times site) has an article this week, How to Get Some Satisfaction Customer complaints can pay off with several basic steps by Greg Saitz... "It's likely almost every adult resident of New Jersey has felt stepped on and ripped off, insulted and ignored, bullied and browbeaten by a business...

In the article "The Future of Customer Service" on msnbc.com (from - Entrepreneur.com), writer Sarah Pierce looks at the impact of the Internet and now-ubiquitous mobile technology on consumer expectations of customer service. We've come a long way in the last few years since PC World's report a couple...