Readers surely know that GPS companies are a dime a dozen.  They are all pretty good.  What differentiates them is their integrity and culture – or lack thereof.

I’ve been a customer of Sage-Quest for a number of years.  Like many customers, once you have GPS in, you really don’t need much from the company.  Just recently, however, I was advised by them that my agreement is annually renewable, apparently in perpetutity.  As they explained to me, each year, 90 days or more before the renewal date, I have to notify them if I do not want to renew.

If I had nothing else to do, perhaps that would be fine, but I have a life.  I may have signed an agreement with such a term; I’m not debating that, and certainly some readers would state “buyer beware,” “should have known better.”  What I am suggesting, however, is that it is a provision that is not customer friendly, is so sneaky that it is almost dishonest, and that it suggests a company with a rotten culture. 

When one has done business with a company for a number of years, do they not, in most cases, evolve into something more than a vendor, a “vendor partner,” if you will?  It has generally been our experience, but in this case, due to this manner of doing business, I can’t say it is the case.

My advice.  Go elsewhere.

Some of their listed executives, in case you’d like to check out their policies directly, include:

Excepting a slight issue recently, which was worked out in the end even more in my favor than I expected, after having worked with Cactus Mailing for a number of years and with a number of campaigns, I can generally recommend their services.

More coming soon…

Buying  a laptop can be a pain.  My principal reasons for switching were:

• My previous laptop, which suffers heavy use, might at some point crash on me
• A desire to move to Windows 7, and to have the hardware to handle it
• A desire to get on a 64 bit system, along with the RAM needed to make it work well
• Hope that system locks, which I’d been suffering for a while with multiple heavy programs running, might end
• A desire to have video conferencing capability

I can say that I was able to accomplish these, without exception.  I’m truly amazed at how much this new system can do at once, seemingly without any performance effect (as I use it for other things while multiple programs run in the background).  Also, I love Windows 7, particularly the Windows Live, OneNote, Snipper, and improved backup systems.

I had also planned on switching to a flash hard drive, which I decided against after researching it a bit.  Seems these drives can only be rewritten a number of times, and many do not have good distribution (of where in memory it writes) software to prevent early failure.  Given this, I decided against this option.  My guess is that it will be a good option in a couple of years.

I had a couple of issues with Dell.  First, the touchpad was sticky on use.  Looking around forums, this issue did not seem to be isolated to me.  I eventually ended up with what seemed to be a “please don’t return it” troubleshooter, who installed new drivers, etc.  None of this worked.

I eventually landed on a partial solution that I settled with; I became more gentle with the pad.  I accidentally discovered that my heavy touch, which worked with my prior touchpad, seemed to be the problem with the new one.  A lighter touch made the new touchpad work better, albeit still not as good as the prior one.  As I use it more, it seems to get better.  Thus perhaps my fingers are being trained, if you will.

The second issue had to do with reaching support on this.  Once I got to the aforementioned troubleshooter guy, all was well.  Getting to him, however, was one incompetent “barely speaky English” call center after another.  I just hope no other issues come up with this item.

I think that Dell makes a fine product, but that their support still is lacking in quality.  I can’t, however, speak to their competitors, so I don’t know if the grass is greener elsewhere.

I’d also quickly note here that with the advent of Windows 7, the Mac has become an inferior machine, at least for most users.  Now I find Macs to have more klunky features than Windows.  The iPhone may be noticeably better than the Blackberry, but Macs are now just pretentious.  This pretentiousness is seemingly made worse by the general lack of knowledge about the subject of their devout fans, which use them for the most part as overpriced “Ralph Lauren” e-mail devices. 

Between the Android gaining market share fast, and Macs slipping in any edge they had, I’m beginning to wonder about Apple.

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