Can you believe…. Many conversations in my life have started with this statement.  The proverbial ending is a joke about walking 10 miles to school, uphill both ways, in four feet of snow.  While a lot of fun, all of these conversations have one demographic in common, they always include a person of wisdom, or for ease of statistics, greater than approximately 55 years of age.

What is highly interesting is why Sprint would start a commercial with just that statement.

Interesting since the 55+ market makes up only 8% of the smartphone market (slightly out of date European data).  Is sprint purposely targeting this as a niche market?  Or perhaps their marketing group let this slip?

If this was ex-CEO Gary Forsee, I would chalk the entire commercial series up to superbia.  Put your name and face up in front of the world to gain fame.  After all he did push through the deadly Nextel merger (can anyone honestly build a real business case for that merger?), and proceeded to bleed a million customers in 2007.

The new CEO Dan Hesse has a reputation as more quiet and reserved, an astute no nonsense businessman.  I’m therefore going to believe it was either a slip by the marketing department, or perhaps a cunning business move targeting customers other carriers are ignoring.  Either way I’m hoping his next commercial includes talk of walking to school, uphill both ways,  in very deep snow.

I’m glad to see this commercial seemingly is out of rotation.

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I certainly hope Steve is not seriously ill following this announcement today.  This follows last week announcement of a hormone imbalance, implying his condition has likely worsened.

Hurry back Steve.

Mr. Ballmer, please make every version of Windows that Microsoft still supports into a downloadable bootable ISO CD/DVD image.

The beta download of Windows OS 7 has brought forth the ease of installing a Microsoft OS to the masses.  I have downloaded and used several Linux and BSD ISOs with great success, even with my limited Unix skills.  My Mac and Linux systems have shown the advantage of having a bootable operating CD to make emergency repairs.  Yet this ease of use will likely go away once the product starts shipping.

Contrast that with my recent attempt to reload the OS on my Dell laptop following a hard drive failure.  I don’t have the original OS CDs, the hard drive partition that contains the OS backup is toast, I’m not the original owner so Dell won’t provide another set of CDs, and Microsoft refuses to validate an install using the valid XP Pro Product Key, and a standard Windows CD (in lieu of Dell’s CD).  At this moment it is working perfectly, but will apparently stop in a couple weeks.

There are several advantages to this approach:

• The most important is the ease of using the product!  Windows is receiving competition from Apple and Linux, and the little things will matter to Microsoft in not too distant future to prevent further installed base erosion.
• The user would have easy access to the latest fully patched product.  This would end the hours of updating after a reinstall with anything not released last month.  Linux has shown how beneficial this really is.
• If the ISO was bootable, users would have the ability to repair an installation similar to OS X and Linux users.  At the very minimum , the ability to copy a file from a damaged install to a flash drive is huge.  Many Windows administrators are forced to use Linux live CDs for just this purpose today.

Microsoft would likely argue that this would make pirating too easy.  Although my ethics prevent first hand knowledge, I hear if you really want to pirate Windows, it is not that difficult under the current system.  In fact, a study to determine if it is currently more or less difficult for users to do the right thing and purchase Microsoft’s OS might have merit.

With their current validation system, Microsoft has a system in place that could easily be extended to provide a method to purchase or upgrade Windows OS, and other products.  Making it simple for users to purchase products can not be emphasized enough.  Consider how well Apple’s App store is fairing.  I believe an additional benefit is a revenue boost from this channel.

It is time for Microsoft to do the obvious and provide downloadable and bootable ISO images for supported operating systems.  Today is not too soon.

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I often help my wife with laundry, sorting, hanging clothes, buying the supplies, but actually running the machines only about once a week.  While adding fabric softener recently in one of those rare occasions, something seemed odd, I was adding the cap full of fabric softener from the bottle marked 60 loads realizing there was no way the quantity from 60 of those caps would fit in that small bottle.  Sorta the opposite of buying pizza for a small group, when you believe those two large pizzas will feed everyone, only to go home hungry eating only one slice.

A quick read of the directions revealed that a normal load required filling the cap only to the first line inside the cap.  Looking inside, there was a very faint line about 1/4 the way from the bottom.  Now understanding that my loads had historically used four times the amount of solution required, I queried my wife.  She too had always simply used a cap full as a unit of measure. I felt a little better with the knowledge that others were fooled as well, followed quickly by a bad feeling from the implications of the first thought.

Naturally, my curiosity led to the local big box retailer to investigate packaging of other brands.  The findings were remarkable, in that almost every brand used the same strategy of a small faint line inside a large cap to sell consumers more fabric solution than they required.  In a time marked by brands attempting to build environmental good will with consumers, this seemed absurd.

What I do not know is how many consumers actually follow the label or simply use the full cap as a unit of measure.  I’m sure a fellow MBA tucked away in a cubicle somewhere knows the answer has a small chuckle every time they walk down the laundry detergent isle.

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