When I first heard of 'digital magazine', I didn't expect anything that actually resembled a real magazine. Let's face it, we are in an age of clicking to 'navigate', not turning pages, and quite frankly, I miss the experience. Having said that of course, I think of the reality of looking through a pile of magazines for a particular article I read a while back, and that I want to look at again. The thing that we have all gotten used to is search-ability, or keyword searching ability.
Here's a tip for those of you who didn't know, and are using Windows - try holding down the control key, and hitting the letter 'F'. You should have had a search box appear, that will allow you to search the current document or webpage for a particular word. But it only applies to the current page you have open.
Now there is a great deal going to make life easier. It is a program that creates a magazine, it really looks and acts like a paper magazine, but without killing the trees. It is called 3D Issue Manager and it really has been well thought out. Now, those of you who read this blog will know how much I dislike stupidity, and I have to say, there appears to be none in the design of this program. Like all new programs, it will take a few 'goes' to get used to how it operates, but overall, it is set up to be user friendly. At the website, they have video examples of how it operates, and I was impressed, and I don't mean just by the announcing gal's Scots accent. It has a page flipping feature that turns the pages just like paper ones, but with no licking of thumbs required. The convertibility from other formats is what makes it so great, in my opinion. It is set up to convert PDF files, for example, automatically into a flash magazine format conversion that could be not only a great sales tool, but also an impressive presentation tool that gives a more personal approach than does, say, Powerpoint. Useful for offline editions.
This truly is a new approach to readability on a digital screen, an increasing of usability, rather than a stepping back. And there is even a trial version for evaluation purposes. A very, very, neat program to see working.

The lawn mowing season is here, and my window is open to enjoy the summer air. Together with that air, just about every other day, there is some pinhead with a lawn tractor that has an engine that revs up like a formula one racing car, and it goes on for hours. Hours. Hours, on and on. Loud then soft, back and forwards. Side to side, on and on.
Now, when I mow the lawn, my lawn, I give it about 20 minutes, then I leave it until the next day.
If the dude who is causing the noise had any sense at all, they would realize that the lawn they have is too big. If they had any sense further than that, they would get a larger mowing device, so the continual back and forth trips were no longer required.
So, I am really impressed that they appear to have a large garden. Well done. With land here a few years ago costing about $200 per acre, it is really no big deal.
Now, what I need is one of those rifle thingies with the pointed bomb thingy sticking out of the end of the barrel - that would make things quieter around here, after the initial loud explosion, that is.

It is interesting the way things have gone as far as wheelchairs go, at least during my lifetime. When I was young, if we saw someone in a wheelchair they were normally almost completely incapacitated, maybe suffering from spinal injury, or that kind of problem.
Then, a few years ago, we started to see what they call 'scooters' appear. There are a lot of people who use a scooter or scooter type of wheelchair who are not fully incapacitated. We all get to the point where we just need a little help, and the difference to our lives will be massive - I am currently wearing glasses, for instance, yet for most of my life, my eyesight was not just good, but almost spectacular!
Anyway, back to scooters. The full name of them is Mobility Scooters and they really can make a big difference. Now, I am in no way saying that I need a vehicle of some kind just to get around the house, or locally in the streets, but my time might well come at some point, and the existence of these scooters will be a great boon to me. It is not the traveling that is the issue here, it is the independence. The same goes for items such as those lift things that take a carriage up the stairs. Whoever thought of those was a genius. So, it might be an injury that has given a person the disadvantage, or just old age creeping on, but the independence is the driving force for living. Electricscooters4less.com are not just about scooters, either - they offer related items as well. Like for instance something we never think of until we get old, and that is the increase in personal risk when entering the bathtub. There are, fortunately, bathtub lifts that an assist in this operation. It is very frustrating if when you get old or injured, you lose your independence, or even part of it, but electricscooters4less.com have some good answers.

You have to laugh.
We all have seen these ads that are tailored to suit the page content. Google Adsense.
Works great most of the time, giving appropriate ads for Bravenet to suit the content I have placed into the blog.
But occasionally they fail a bit.
As any of you who read this blog knows, I complain a lot about companies and governments, and civil servants, etc, and the Google Adsense will often, on the same page where I am calling corporations badly run, will give ads that would be appropriate for if I was a corporate kind of guy, like ads for getting my MBA degree or whatever!

But I have just experienced the funniest one yet - my main blog that I was just working on is called John's Blog, and it has been picked up as 'John's' and the fact that it is Canadian, and it has been linked to ads that are relevant for a city called St. John's , here in Canada!

And that is how Google made me into a Saint!

Today Is Canada Day. Here in Canada, we celebrate the birthday of our country.
There are fairgrounds all over the place, and village fetes, as well as fireworks later on once it gets dark at around ten PM.
So, I have the day off today !
Not really, as being retired, every day is a day off.
But I will probably stroll down the road later on to see the fireworks.

If you are an avid author, you might well have submitted manuscripts for publishing as a book. It is a strange fact that the acceptance of a manuscript is really no measure of quality, it just means that it meets the criteria of the particular individual judging it.
Watership Down, a famous book that was made into a movie, was rejected many times before being accepted.
My point is that you perhaps should not solely rely on others to judge your work, just because their job title involves working for a publisher. There are many people working who make errors, and lots of working decision makers who have little commonsense.
So, how can you bypass this system that might fail you? Simple, just go ahead and publish your book yourself. Self Publishing is available for far less cost than it used to be, and one of the leaders in this field is authorhouse.com - well worth a look at their website. Before spending your money though, it is good to double-check your writing, and maybe have some friends or even better, acquaintances look at it and give an honest opinion. Remember, the whole idea is to make sure your good work gets published, so you can move on further with it.

We know that communism doesn't generally work (Cuba might be an exception), and we will soon have it confirmed that capitalism as we know it cannot withstand a non-expanding market (if you don't have the energy resources to expand, how can you make more and more of everything?).
So, let's take things back a step and see what does work.

There are thousands of people in countries like Vietnam who appear to be surviving without buying stuff all the time. I am in no way saying that they are totally happy, but they are surviving.

The whole world, it seems, wants the American Dream, and yet that dream is already no longer possible.
The reason for political systems not working are generally founded upon factors such as personal greed, either for money, power, or status, or a combination of all three. This has in the past created unsustainable and unequal political systems. The worst effect, I believe has been the system of having political parties. This means that the politicians who are supposed to be representing the voters, are in fact representing the party instead. This in turn gives great power to those at the top in those parties to gain for themselves.

As energy resources are de-centralized, then also other things will follow. If, as householders, we are not dictated to by an electrical generating company then  that is a hold over us that is gone.
If we, as vehicle drivers, drive less miles, then that will force employers to move employment to where the people are. It will also generate more smaller companies that are locally based.
If we as a society accept that we can no longer afford to ship vegetables from California, then that will build local need for market gardening companies.

Can you see what I see here?
The future pattern of living in the future appears to be in changing to the same type of system that is already successful in agriculturally based economies. A smaller version of capitalism that is restrained from massive expansion by natural limitations, and is no longer controlled by the power-broking money holders who manipulate current global capitalist systems, yet give nothing, and take all. In so-called 3rd world countries they are called War Lords and money-lenders, yet we call them by names such as Captains of Industry, and Financiers.

It is an interesting human 'failing' that when all is running well, we tend to sit back and enjoy things.
The same applies to corporations, and to a lesser degree, smaller concerns.

They have a certain capacity to get work done, and little more than that, so, once the main capacity is about filled, then there is the decision to make on whether to expand the operation, this of course then leads to speculation on where the markets for the products and services are going to be positioned in, say, a year, two years, five years.
 
A good example of this would be the current Peak Oil situation. It would be obvious financial suicide right now for investors to help to create, say, a new full-size pickup truck manufacturing plant.

But things are not always as visible as that situation that I have used as an example above.

Corporations tend to get leaner and meaner during hard times, but this raises other questions - it is like a long distance runner - he or she can go fairly fast for a long time, and no doubt can go faster for shorter periods. So the lean and mean situation is probably not so sustainable over the long haul.

As the efficiency increases though, there might well also be a trend towards better customer service, as production is shared by fewer customers.
As sales fall, there arises the possibility of a corporate failure, and it is at these times that the public might remember any bad service that occurred with a particular company, such as in the past where Chrysler Corporation have been featured in TV documentaries where they display what appears to be cost-calculated refusal to stand by a poorly designed and performing product such as some of their transmissions. This might bite them in the butt.

With their detachment from the European Daimler company, they might have made themselves vulnerable to a North American delayed backlash effect from their past irate customers, once the industry is into a non-expansion situation, where offended customers can no longer be simply replaced by greater sales efforts and budget directed at new potential customers.

It will be interesting to see if they are still around in 5 years time - or will it be GM that bites the dust? Certainly the GM advertising, with a jock type guy saying 'I want to grow my fuel, not drill for it" seems to indicate an intent to keep on producing more of what worked in the past but will probably not work in the future, despite attempt by the GM spin doctors to indicate otherwise.

 

Marketing Analytics may sound confusing, but it it just a case of measuring statistically what the markets are doing, and the direction of any visible trends.

The clients of Red Clay Media probably have an advantage here, because as you can read in the Red Clay press release below, Red Clay deal, for instance, with the effect created by recent events relative to mortgages.

They use such techniques as consumer leads, direct mail, as well as mailing lists in order to keep their clients informed of market feedback, thus allowing for strategic adjustments to be made that are market-appropriate.

After the press release, there is the video referred to in the press release.

Press Release:

In this Video Brian Rice of Red Clay Media discusses the impact of the mortgage sub prime crisis and its impact on marketing new mortgage products.

Brian discusses the need for finance and mortgage companies to restructure their customer relationship management systems to meet the needs of customers and react to changes in the market and the needs of consumers that include new loan products as well as the flexibility to work with customers to keep them out of financial trouble.

Red Clay Media's comprehensive direct marketing services include direct mail, mailing list acquisition, data analytics, creative design and production and measurability.

Backed by a team of industry experts and vertical market specialists, Red Clay's agency approach to direct marketing services has helped hundreds of leading finance brands build state- of-the-art marketing programs that optimized results and ROI.

 

Yes, it is true.
This blog, which has in the past specialized in bringing to the forefront the faults with corporations, politicians, the capitalist system, and civil servants, has actually been accepted for the inclusion of advertising material.
I take back what I said, hehehe, you whom in the past I have called morons are not really so, I was only joking!
I also now believe that you could actually have the skill to organize a party in a brewery.
I do, however, have my fingers crossed behind my back!
And to my regular readers, I will be choosing only what I believe in, to blog about - yes, even in the face of money, some morality has to prevail.

Americans Adjusting To The Economy?
Reuters news agency has done a poll in the US and one commentator has come to the conclusion that 'Gloomy Americans' are adjusting to the economic slowdown.

Claptrap!
What a load of claptrap! How can anyone possibly adjust to a situation while it is still in motion. The US economy is doing exactly what I predicted it would some time ago, and that is collapsing because of short term greed. Try adjusting to that! You can surely only adjust to a situation that is current, not to something that will have changed further as you adjust to yesterday.

Perpetuation of the Erroneous System
And it still continues, even as it slides in steps of stock market 'corrections' (the hi tech name they give to make a catastrophe sound like it is planned) the political and corporate leaders continue to do what they have traditionally done, which is to look after the short term, and ignore the long term.

My reason for having confidence in that opinion is that if they were thinking in the long term, they would be building wind turbine farms like they were up until this last month, building gas-guzzling SUV's, namely, in great quantities.
Meanwhile, seemingly in denial, they continue to occupy Iraq, presumably to try to protect the oil supplies that they are continuing to need due to the under-support of the newer technologies for energy supply. The US policies have allowed that reliance just as their production policies has given away production technology to other countries, while at the same time reducing the US jobs that would give the spending power to allow support of the system.

Note also that the price of oil is doing what I predicted in this blog some time ago, namely fluctuating, so that the money controllers can still make profits, even as the economy of the US and therefore, if we are not careful, that of the world, goes down the tubes.

Yahoo news reports that in the US, some schools are experimenting with paying kids for achieving at school.

I have some far better ideas - how about we start fining the parents for truancy.

How about we stop the kids from gathering around the school entrance to smoke.

How about we make it a school offence to be found with a lighter and or tobacco, punishable by having the lighter etc confiscated, and the child punished by something like, say, writing the numbers 2000 to 4000 by hand.

How about we stop these paying schools from competing with other schools by these  methods, and instead get the teachers to do the jobs they are paid to do.

How about we stop having it so there are groups of kids walking away from the school at 8.45 a.m. after they have arrived there by bus.

How about we stop telling the kids that they must have good self-esteem, and instead allow them to earn it, while at the same time letting them know that they are not adults and do not have adult privileges, as they are children.

How about we stop allowing silly parents to go and argue with the teachers because poor little Jimmy was unfairly treated. Life is like that. Get over it.

We never had kids with guns years ago, because the kids had respect. It is the adults who have put in place situations where that respect is no longer possible.

Wal Mart - Good Service, Or Poor?
If you read this blog regularly, you will know my skepticism for the capability of managerial people to actually use common-sense. I have never thought of this when shopping at Wal Mart, as they seem, from the blurb they put out in their TV advertising (which currently ISN'T annoying, by the way!) to be pretty much on the ball when it comes to what the public want.
They appear to have good procedures, such as when checking out always being asked the question 'Did you find everything that you wanted today?'

Disappointed
I was disappointed then, to find that they are a bit silly when it comes to some items. When you have to use the 'courtesy desk', be prepared for a long wait. Today there was a lady returning what looked like ten different styles of baby feeding bottles, and each one had to be researched, presumably to get a number or something.
Then, when the process was taking a long time, and the queue growing, as there were only two 'associates' at the counter, two more associates arrived and immediately starting helping the associate with the bottles, while the queue continued to grow. At one point, for about 30 seconds, there were actually 5 associates doing the bottles, and one dealing with everyone else.

I Would Do The Same
If I was a minimum wage Wal Mart grunt, then I would do the same. Wal Mart are not paying enough to get the expertise of decision making, so I would just do the basics until told to do different.
It is a management problem, where the proper system and procedure has not been put in place, or maybe it has, and is not being followed.

I Don't Like What Wal Mart Are Doing, But I Still Shop There!
I want to finish by saying that in no way do I think that what Wal Mart are doing is sustainable, in fact, they are creating the problem, or at least accelerating it. But, it fits in well with short term capitalist expansionist thinking, and my overall thoughts are that just by me shopping locally-owned will not save the locally-owned businesses.

Are The Oil Companies And Governments Stifling Renewable Technology?

To get a good answer to this question, we have to look at the structure of things. The information that prompted this thinking was that a good long-time friend of mine mentioned that he had heard that the rights over things such as solar panels was owned by the oil companies. My initial thinking was different from his, he immediately looked at it as being a negative, and that the technology would be held back by the shareholders who had oil interests in order to perpetuate their oil profits.

Market Price Versus Production Costs
Speaking of which, if you have something that is in the ground, and you extract it and sell it, and then it gets scarcer and so market prices increase, then the extraction presumably has roughly the same costs, yet the profits increase.
So, that establishes that it is definitely in the best interests of the shareholders of oil to continue holding those shares until the price peaks, which of course might well be an infinite process, at least until a firm alternative to oil is found, which might never happen, as there is a ratio between population and energy requirements that might depend more upon decreasing overall energy consumption than attempting to replace the actual energy levels that the world is currently using.

The Funding To Buy Obstruction Of Progress?
So, if we have a group with major amounts of money, who have a financial interest in stifling alternative technology, then the unfortunate truth is that they have the power to do so if they decide to have a strategy to perpetuate oil consumption. They have the funding to purchase all other probable means of future energy supplies, and so, they could go two ways - one would be to buy up all other potential resources to control the transition to a pace that perpetuates oil and maintains price growths of oil, and the other would be to buy up all other resources in order to have investment income once oil becomes technologically the dinosaur it is made from.

The Middle Road?
But there is a middle road as well. They could be doing both. This would explain why there is very little actual government backing throughout the world for alternative energy research. Bearing in mind that the politicians are generally working for the corporations rather than the people of their own particular countries, then such stifling would surely be successful. Also, if you have read this blog in the past, you will know that the conclusion of the whole global set of problems is due to short term thinking by those in power both in the corporate world as well as the political one, who have their own interests as a priority instead of that of their own countries.
Hmmmm, that is an interesting thought.  If the corporations that the politicians of a particular country are looking after are based  in a different country, then would that make this propensity of politicians to work in the favour of those corporations into a situation that has a name generally connected with spies selling secrets against the best interests of their own country? Probably not, as the corporations will have divisions that are specific to the country that they operate in. In any case, we have to really keep the thinking global, as there seems little loyalty to countries any more, now that the governing is corporation based. Interesting........

Oil Prices At High Levels Benefit Politicians.

Politicians throughout the world have the human trait of wanting as easy a life as they can get (Don't we all!) and so let's take a look at a brief breakdown in simple terms of what they actually do for a living. They supposedly represent the people who voted for them and work in the best interests of those people.

In the course of their work, they distribute budgets that have been created by the collection of taxes, and they use this money for worthwhile projects, each politician dealing with the area that they represent. So, it follows that they please some people, and annoy others.
They please the ones who have the money spent in their particular town or village, and they annoy those who have a need for money being spent but failed to get it allocated to their particular town or village.

Further, it follows that if the politicians had more money in those budgets, they could please more people, and in turn get voted back in for another term of office more easily.
As the price of, for instance, gasoline (or petrol) is made up of generally more of an amount in tax than the actual price of the liquid itself, then it follows that if the price of oil and in particular fuels doubles at the pumps, then the revenue available to the politicians will increase also.
So, it is against the politicians best selfish interests to have low prices for oil, and it is also similarly against their best interests to have a reduction in oil use in order to lower pollution. In fact, they might actually benefit by higher prices, higher usage, and higher pollution.
And that, Ladies and Gentlemen, is probably why we are not already driving electric cars.

Mothers Against Drunk Driving, Viagra - what do they have in common?

There seems to be a tend towards annoying TV ads, presumably in order to get the attention of the viewer.
Well, they certainly have MY 'attention'.
The most annoying one I have seen to date is for an organisation that presumably is a 'charity' of some kind. Anyway, whatever they do, they seems to have lots of money to spend on TV advertising.
MADD - Mothers Against Drunk Driving.
Now, I have to be on their side as far as the drunk driving goes, I figure we all at some time make errors when driving, and, given circumstances, those errors are enough to cause death and injury without adding to the problem.
The problem I have with M.A.D.D. is their tactics. If I was the president or whatever it is they have as a head honcho, I would get rid of whomever thought of having a relentlessly over-volume screaming baby as an advertisement. Did it get my attention? You bet it did! To the point where I have given thought to the actions of the moron who thought of the ad campaign, and have decided that there is a high level of irresponsibility. These presumably are donated funds that they are spending here, so there should be a level of moral responsibility that is higher than normal, not abysmally lower.
People are donating funds to have them squandered, and here is why they will be squandered. I have to assume that the intention is to give the charity publicity in the hope for possible future donations. If they phone me, the answer from me will be:
No, you had some money, and wasted it annoying me with a deliberately stupid, irritating, overly loud, badly thought out advert on TV. So you get none of my money. Why, on God's green Earth would I give money so that you can abuse me? So, MADD, go away, and never ever phone me again, in fact, put me on your 'no-call' list.

Viagra - If I Ever Need It, I Will Buy Another Makers Product
Viagra ads are the latest to attempt this stupidity. They have this clever ad that involves two people being quiet, and suddenly one speaks to the other by name, then the rest is left to the imagination.
The problem here is that this is followed by a silent pause, then music at about 150% regular volume plays as a display on the screen says something like 'a viagra moment' or something.

Well, Viagra, I got the message. I am being abused with your sound pollution, so go away. Oh, and in the meantime, change your advertising agency, for God's sake.
I am sure that the ad looked great in the Powerpoint presentation, but in real life, it sucks, because I am 61, and a possible future sales prospect that you just converted into a permanent anti-viagra guy.  I am sure there are others who think the same and will join me in never, ever, buying your product.

So, MADD and Viagra, are you going to annoy people again in the future and set them against you?  Nothing you can now do will EVER make me change my mind - you have lost me as a prospect for any financial future gain.

Customer service - the very name gives an impression of individuals working on behalf of the customers to resolve any issues that might have arisen with the product, or the process of purchasing it.

Who Is The Customer?
We normally regard a customer as being the one who has paid money for a product or service. There is of course the old adage that "The customer is always right" and this is a good guideline to go by, but leads to abuse by some who might know some insider information.
These days, as always, any purchase involves the other side, the making of a sale. We can for instance look at the worst of US Car Dealer advertising on TV, and make a decision as to whether we would be respected as a customer by someone whose policy appears to be to shout in your face to insist that you do something, in this case, buy a car.

Maybe The Seller Is a Customer Too?
What would be the reaction if a person turned up at a car dealer and screamed at the top of their lungs something like "I am interested in buying a new van, what do you have right now"? I suspect the the reaction of the sales staff would be to assume that you are a crazy person, and would try to get you into a room away from the other customers, who might get put off by the shouting. Yet, if we look, you would only be doing what they are doing by shouting at you in their advertising.

Worth some thought....... Likewise, does a salesperson have to put up with this kind of garbage from someone, just because that someone is the customer? As a purchaser, do I have the right to make things difficult for the seller?

Actually, I am not sure if the Prime Minister of Canada Stephen Harper agrees with me or not, but in any case, relative to my blog entry of January 1st 2008, he has recently publicly stated that he is getting the labelling laws in Canada for imported food looked at.

Currently, the food sold in Canada is able to be labelled by cost - if some fish costing, say, 2 dollars a ton in Vietnam is imported in bulk, and then packed in Canada for retail sale, provided the packaging represents the greater cost, then the item for retail can be labelled that it is 'Made In Canada'.

Not only that, but not covered by Mr Harper's recently announced intentions is the fact that it would seem that such items are not inspected to provincial standards, in fact, the provincial regulations are set aside, from what I have been told directly and in writing by such an official as does the setting aside, and the food is inspected to some other standards not under provincial jurisdiction, but rather, under a corporate safety plan that presumably can be rewritten by the authoring corporation at any time that they wish, to say anything that they wish, or not.

Can you imagine the irresponsibility of the moron who created that 'Made In Canada' gem of wisdom?  Certainly not the sort of individual that you would want planning your wedding for you! Or maybe you would.

Actually, to use the word moron might well be totally unfair, and other words would be better, as the person appears to have been working directly in the best interests of the shareholders of Canadian based food processing companies, making it so they can sell foreign goods under the Canadian name. It might be interesting to scrutinise the career path of that particular individual - I bet you a buck that they have been promoted a few times or more.

One wonders if Mr. Stephen Harper is doing this because of being forced to by public opinion, or is just conscientiously doing his best to serve the taxpayers and citizens of Canada, and happened to notice this anomaly in a routine check. Yeah, right!

Anyway, the main thing is it will be looked into, at some point in time, maybe after the corporations just make a few more bucks cheating the Canadian public by selling foreign goods as being Canadian made.

As for residents of other countries, don't take this as being a Canadian problem, I am willing to bet it is happening all over the world.

UNBELIEVABLE!

Have you ever noticed that if you are driving behind a vehicle that fails to signal a turn, that they will likely also cruise through stop signs in a slow rolling motion, no stopping, and will get in the way of other vehicles, who have to take avoiding action, and so on, and so on, and so on. These people are bad at everything they do relative to driving a vehicle.

Sony do the same re customer service. Here is my list, it seems it gets longer almost daily:

1 - Designed and sold laptop, or notebook or whatever it is they choose to call them these days, with an operating system (Vista) that is noted for being user-unfriendly.

2 - Made the operating system full of garbage programs that many users will not want, and that have expiration dates on the trial periods.

3 - Supplied no disks for the Vista operating system, instead the means of reformatting is hidden on the hard drive, and comes complete with all the other garbage mentioned before.

4 - Have no capability of returning to a proven operating system (XP) as there seemingly are no compatible drivers available.

5 - When I attempt to complain about this, I try to go to the 'contact us' part of their website, and before I get there they ask if I wish to complete a survey, I choose 'yes'.

6 - They ask in that survey for my opinion of the website that they just interrupted my travel to! I respond that I haven't got to the website yet because of the survey interrupting me.

7 - They send me an email thanking me blah blah blah, and suggesting that I take my query (about whether they have drivers for XP or a plain Vista disk without all the crap programs) to another department (they presumably are not set up to communicate internally) I choose not to bother.

8 - Now the latest - they send me an email survey asking if I was satisfied with the customer support I received! They appear to have as much customer support as the LG company, you remember that one, the company with the refrigerators that catch fire, and the dvd burners that have no customer support or operating firmware!

Still, They did invent the Walkman.
Now, let's see, that was, what's this, maybe a zillion years ago!

The Good Name Of Sony
It might be the case that Sony are riding on a good name they made years ago, but have dropped backwards since then.
I decided to let them know what I thought of their laptop of inconvenience that features an irreversible Vista From Hell.

I Contact Them Online
So, I thought I would send an email to the US location, and CC it to the Canadian operation.
But, this is not possible, as they have an online form system.

The Sony Survey - moronic!
So, I went to the website, and a page popped up asking if I would take part in a survey, so I agreed.
Most of the questions were answerable in some way, but best of all was the latter part of the survey where the question was something like:
What do you think of the Sony Website?

My reply was something like,  - "I haven't got there yet, you stopped me to fill in this survey."

Unbelievable, but worrying. Do you realise that people like this also get jobs with places like Boeing, or the Air Transportation Safety Board or whatever?

The Sad Facts
I cannot for the life of me understand the culture. Everyone in the outfit no doubt thinks that they are doing a great job, as most people do not bother to whine like I do. They could have an excellent product, instead of an irritating one, just by taking care of details. Sad thing is, there might be well-meaning sales people  working their butts off trying to increase sales that are being sabotaged by stupidity.


Customer Service That Irritates
The customer service stinks too. Now, admittedly they do say online that they will not respond or something as equally hopeless sounding, but in fact they did.
Why should I, having just asked a couple of questions online that they actually email forward a copy of back to me, have to then contact some other place and go through the whole irritation over again?

Give me a break, Sony.
No, SONY, I am not prepared to keep following links to type in questions that are already within the Sony system. How about YOU send my questions on to where I might get an answer?

My Questions
My questions, by the way were something like:
Do you have hardware drivers for XP so I can abandon the Vista and install XP?
Do you supply a disk so I can install Vista without all the extra garbage programs you have forced me to install?

Conclusion - Sony Are Overrated And Possibly Customer Disrespectful
Overall, I would say Sony are overrated, and living off fame that was generated in the days of the Walkman. Well, those days are gone, and so have I as a future customer.