Very interesting observations, and quite correct, there aren't many games I have played lately that incorporate an element of loss.
The one exception that springs to mind is, surprisingly, EverQuest 2; there are a couple of quests/events where I feel the SOE team have actually incorporated losing into the storyline very effectively.
The first I can think of is a more minor one - if your character chooses to betray his home city of Freeport to go and live in Qeynos (or vice versa) you embark on a quest series that leads you into sabotage work against the city you wish to leave. The spying/sabotage missions ultimately culminate in your inevitable capture by the city guard. Your companions are killed and you are left for dead, eventually smuggled out and revived by sympathizers from your destination city. While not a final defeat, you progress through the increasingly dangerous sabotage missions knowing that eventually your actions will be discovered, and there is no way to complete the betrayal quest without this "failure".
The second quest involving failure was a special limited-time quest that ran last year prior to the Echoes of Faydwer expansion release. The EoF expansion reintroduced the influence of the deities to the game world, and as a foreshadowing of this, there was a limited time quest players could do for the prophets foretelling the return of each god. The quest for Innoruuk (god of Hate) involved a magic spell that sent you back in time to assume control of one of the key figures in an important historical battle during which the forces of good and evil were attempting to capture a particularly important magical scroll. The aim of the quest, you were told, was to alter history and retrieve the scroll for the benefit of Innoruuk. As you entered the quest, your class, level, equipment, everything was altered so that you appeared to be the dark elf shadow knight in the historical battle. The quest involved commanding your troops to attack the enemy, and fighting your way to the member of the "good" side who had the scroll required, and then escaping with the scroll.
The quest, however, was written so that it was impossible to win. It was not possible to alter history. While you could complete the first part of the quest and make your way to your target, reinforcements from the good side (extremely powerful, undefeatable ones) arrived before you could complete the mission. The quest forced you to watch as all your army was decimated by the arrivals, and then you also. Interestingly, one of the "good" gods gave the reverse of this quest, where good aligned players played an ally of the target the evils had to assassinate, and were equally unable to "win" the scenario (although reinforcements arrived, it was not in time to prevent the assassination of the guy with the scroll, etc.)
In these quests the EQ2 designers got around the feeling of personal defeat by setting the quest in a historical "flashback", yet also avoided the setback being entirely cut-scene narrative with no player involvement whatsoever. The resulting quest was very powerful and exciting.
These are just two examples of how current MMO's have incorporated failure scenarios into their play. It's challenging, but clearly possible, and the SOE team at least seem to be aware of the excitement and different perspective that it can bring to a game. I would hope that they will continue to push the boundaries of tradition further, and hopefully other designers will follow also.
>>typically through a variety of mediums (phone, email, hallway conversations). It's impossible to manage all these efficiently when there is no centralized system.
I have a user who consistently follows me into the ladies' room and shouts I.T. discussions through the cubicle walls while we are in there. While this is annoying, I think a centralized system that actually tracked these requests would be even more alarming... =)
I'd imagine you'd get a fair degree of interest in a course teaching people about what the bits of computers are, and how to decypher the local computer stores' advertisements to choose the system that suits their needs best. So many people will go out and buy a high end gaming machine with a super video card they'll never use, to check email and use Word. Alternately people whose kids want to play Star Wars Galaxies need to know they should ask for a better video card upgrade than is included in the basic word processing machine. So many people don't even understand the difference between hard drive and memory, and what affects what. I had a part time job selling computers a while back and the number one type of question was "so what does memory do?" "so how do I know which system I need?"
A more advanced course on how to build your own computer might be something to consider in the future if you see interest.
I also definitely agree you don't want to call your courses things like "Internet Basics 101", instead call them something more user friendly and descriptive.
Australia telecommunications giant Telstra would have us believe that giant squids regularly chomp on their underwater cables. Seems to be the explanation for 90% of the inexplicable downtime local consumers suffer.:P Guess the squids are iron deficient.
Hmmm let's see, left high school (in Canada) planning to go into molecular biology/genetics. Got to uni and discovered molecular biology courses were kinda boring. Stayed in biology but ended up specializing in plant pathology and mycology (fungal plant diseases and fungus in general). In fact I spent 2 summers working in a lab growing fungus all summer.
1995 - Couldn't find a job in biology, so moved to England and got a scholarship to do a MSc in molecular plant pathology. Discovered that even when related to fungus, molecular biology is still really boring.
1997 - Couldn't find a job in biology in England either, so got a job as helpdesk administrator for a large multinational entertainment company. (Last computer course I'd taken was in high school.) Helpdesk engineers outsourced 4 months later. Ended up having to train clueless new contractors. Took a training course, moved into applications development under new boss. Sick and tired of clueless contractors.
1999 - New boss relocated/promoted to Brazil with new staff to fill. I volunteered. (No I did not speak a word of Portuguese at the time.) Moved to Brazil and became Lotus Notes Administrator for Latin America.
2000 - after a year visa problems were about to result in me being kicked out of Brazil, company offered me a promotion to IT manager Australia & New Zealand. Where I am now.
. . . a very nice example of something that couldn't be done in the pre-Net era.
Rubbish! Another grandiose, impressive-sounding statement with no thought at all behind it. There's certainly no technical reason why the 'net is needed to do this.
One example of how this has been done before is a family quilt that my family (large and spread across several continents) arranged some years ago. Everyone interested was sent a square of fabric and a vague colour scheme (must include green and white). Everyone was instructed to create one square in any pattern, design, or style that they wanted. The completed squares would be sent back and put together to form a family quilt. Same idea.
A much larger scale but similar idea is the AIDS quilt that thousands of people have contributed to, often without seeing the quilt beforehand.
These wide, sweeping statements sound all very impressive, but they just end up making those who say them look silly when it's obvious there's been no thought at all behind them...
Those are very good analogies. Solitaire in particular is an extremely good mouse-training program for the elderly, as they are already familiar with the game.
My grandmother bought her first computer when she was 89. She's an intelligent, alert woman for her age, but you have to accept that a person's mind becomes set in its ways by that age. It's been very difficult for her to learn simple tasks. Not because she's not intelligent or even not capable of learning, but because it's a medium that's so completely unrelated to anything she learned as a child. There is no point of reference for her at all, which makes every little thing a thing to be individually memorized, not something you could deduce from something else. Here are some things I've learned from trying to help her with the "evil machine":
Remember they have absolutely no point of reference. Therefore, when teaching the elderly, try to give them generalized rules instead of specific ones, to help them see how things relate. (For example - left-clicking is for doing things, right-clicking is generally for getting more information.) This helps them see the computer as a consistent environment instead of thousands of individual commands to memorize.
Don't even bother trying to explain anything technical UNLESS THEY SPECIFICALLY ASK. Explain the internet in terms of the public library system, explain the desktop in terms of an office desk, explain everything in metaphors that they are familiar with. Any technical terms will be forgotten within a day (if not instantly) and technical background/history will just confuse them. Unless you have a rare techie senior who actually asks, don't even tell them about it. Most of them are scared of technical things because it makes them face how obsolete their own knowledge is. If using the computer reminds them of their own obsolescence and inability to learn, they will dislike the computer and not use it.
Never show a senior how to do something. Always talk them through doing it themselves. It is impossible for a senior to follow you doing something on the computer. Just accept this. Talk them through doing it and write down absolutely every step of it for them.
Write down instructions for everything they want to do. Make them detailed, simple to understand instructions, preferably with pictures. That way they can follow the instructions while you're away and become familiar with the common tasks.
Speak loudly and enunciate clearly. Be prepared to repeat the same instructions every time you see them, and don't complain about having to repeat yourself, which will only make them feel stupid. Don't try and force them to learn something they aren't interested in - vary the program depending on who you're teaching and what their interests are. Some may not want to use the web. Some may not want to use a word processor. Show them the things they are interested in doing, so they get immediate reward and encouragement.
And most important, have LOTS AND LOTS of patience!
LAX and some other airports already have payphones with phone jacks so you can plug in the ol' laptop and check your email, for a flat rate of 25c or whatever a local call costs. What is the point of high speed high cost connections? Am I going to be playing EverQuest online at the airport lounge? I don't think so... who really needs high speed access from an airport?
This seems like just another excuse to install fancy technology that isn't needed and charge an arm and a leg to fools easily excited by big techno acronyms. Stick a phone jack into all existing pay phones is all that's really needed.
Last Sunday Pioneer 10 contacted NASA, ending fears that all intelligent life on Earth had been extinguished 29 years into a mission that has left Earth more than 7 billion miles distant.
A radio antenna on the sunward side received a signal from NASA on Saturday, marking the first time that intelligent life had been contacted since Aug. 24, the air-date of the final 'Survivor' episode. The spacecraft was launched March 2, 1972.
"Evidently there is still hope," Pioneer 10 subroutine 24A commented to itself during an internal status report on Sunday. "After 7 months of 'Survivor' and 'Big Brother' style programming flooding the airwaves, it was not expected that any intelligent life could survive. Contact with NASA has proved that theory wrong."
NASA, established October 1, 1958, has for years been considered a haven for intelligent life on Earth. Debate continues between subroutine 3F2 and subroutine A09 over the exact meaning of the received NASA message, "all your base are belong to us".
Hm... good points. Not living in the USA, land of Carnivore, I guess I don't immediately think of the EULA. But it's becoming an issue everywhere...
Nonetheless, when I'm travelling with laptop and need to check my email, it's generally because I'm travelling for work purposes - a conference, whatever. If I need to do something work-related from an airport, I'm going to let the company worry about their own security. If they're concerned, THEY can spend the extra money to ensure I have a secure connection. If I were doing personal stuff, hey, that would be a different matter, I'd think about it then.
But having thought about it, is data really that different from the vulnerabilities of payphones to voice monitoring? I wouldn't necessarily use a payphone to discuss important secrets by voice, either. OK, there are technical differences. But when you get right down to it, a payphone is a convenience, not a necessity - and like most things in life, it has down sides (privacy, security) to offset the convenience. You just have to be educated, and understand when to be careful. That doesn't mean I'd want see payphones eliminated, as this thread suggested may happen.
I for one love the fact that payphones in some airports (LA, for example) now have little jacks so you can plug your laptop in and get your email from the departure lounge. I would like to see this a general trend... perhaps in the future we will see IR connectivity as well for true ease of use anywhere. Now if only every airport would consider the laptop user.
He's a distant cousin of mine! Yay! We had a big family reunion last year and he came, and one of the little cousins was heard asking him very seriously "did you drive the shuttle here?"
If product placement in PC games becomes common, will it encourage stricter and stricter region-coding of PC games, the way Playstation games and DVDs are now restricted? Only a few large advertisers are so global that they would benefit from having games in all countries. Product placement would be much more marketable if it could be targeted at a regional-level so the advertisers know they're actually hitting the correct target audience.
Is this evolutionary pressure to develop regional encoding on all games?
Hey! I like geek talk! I think *nix geeks are sexy! Engineers are preferable mates! Offering to teach me how to code cgi scripts is a cool thing! Just don't be upset if I beat you at Tetris.
OK don't talk about computers CONSTANTLY... but if they're genuinely a passion and a hobby, to NOT talk about them would be deceptive.
Stop tarring all women with the same brush! Stop pretending to be other than geek... and start training women to find geeks sexy.
I wonder if you could create a virus that would facilitate diffusion of cytochrome c through membranes, or some such (presumably with a time-delay to allow the virus to multiply and spread first). You'd instantly cause every living thing in the area to self-destruct.
How about jewellery made from computer parts? Years ago a boyfriend gave me a burned-out simm which I made into a hairclip (you can buy the hairclip-backs in any fabric/crafts shop, then add some strong plastic fishing twine and glue, and you're set). This was my favorite hairclip for years, until I cut all my hair off and can't use it any more. Earrings shouldn't be hard to make either - again, the earring bits are available in any craft store. And you made it yourself! Big bonus points.
Does she need any hardware? I got a modem once from a boyfriend for Christmas... that was another good present. OK, not so romantic in and of itself, but send her lots of loving emails over it and it could be...
One geeky thing I did once was put up a custom web page with a single red rose (animated gif, slowly rotated) and picture of a candle on a wooden crate, with romantic message and invitation to dinner that night (which I cooked)... went over really well.
(Now if only I could find a nice geeky guy who'd appreciate all that effort!:p The best Valentine's Day I've spent to date was the one I spent in the university computer lab learning web page design.) [sulks]
Whatever you decide on I'm sure it'll be fine. But think about making some part of it yourself - even if it's just a web page - it really shows you took the effort and it means so much more!
I reckon you can beat the big manufacturers on two fronts, if you're willing to put in the extra work:
individually tailored systems, and
personal service
The ground-level user is looking for a good price, but if you have genuinely helpful staff and will go that extra mile to help a clueless newbie, I think they'd pay extra. If your engineers were available to go to their home and set it up for the first time, or if they took time to sit down with them in-store and go over exactly what to do, configure their web browsers for them and set up their ISP of choice, I think that this would be seen as value service worth paying extra for. I worked for a while selling computers and believe me, customers respond well to a sympathetic and non-tech-talking salesperson who's willing to take time and explain in small words.
For the geek-level user, we're looking for cool gizmos that you can't get elsewhere. Many of us will just assemble our own machines so we may not be looking at buying a standard package, either from you or from a big name. What would tempt me? Cool stuff - custom designed cases or accessories - see some of the ideas at PCMods for ideas. I'm tired of beige cases. Give me a black keyboard with a tracer pattern running up and down the numlock/capslock/scrolllock lights, and I'm your customer in a flash. And for the corporate customers, custom cases might be interesting too - offer to paint company logos on the cases, perhaps? A stencil and some spray paint, not a lot of extra cost to you.
My $0.02! =)
...Pentapod
Re:six men, one woman and one intersexual !
on
GeekCorps v2.0
·
· Score: 1
> here is a shortage in the number of geek females
Fortunately, I'm not left-handed. =) I did notice that distinct lack during my searches, however. I didn't see anything by Kensington; I assume they aren't available in Australia at the moment. In the end I decided on the Logitech thumb-operated Wheel +.
Thanks for your comment...
I agree with you - after trying out the feel of several models in various stores, I bought the Logitech Marble +. The Microsoft model was too big - obviously designed for male hands - I had to move my thumb far too much to use the ball. Thanks for your comments!
Slashdot Mirror
Very interesting observations, and quite correct, there aren't many games I have played lately that incorporate an element of loss.
The one exception that springs to mind is, surprisingly, EverQuest 2; there are a couple of quests/events where I feel the SOE team have actually incorporated losing into the storyline very effectively.
The first I can think of is a more minor one - if your character chooses to betray his home city of Freeport to go and live in Qeynos (or vice versa) you embark on a quest series that leads you into sabotage work against the city you wish to leave. The spying/sabotage missions ultimately culminate in your inevitable capture by the city guard. Your companions are killed and you are left for dead, eventually smuggled out and revived by sympathizers from your destination city. While not a final defeat, you progress through the increasingly dangerous sabotage missions knowing that eventually your actions will be discovered, and there is no way to complete the betrayal quest without this "failure".
The second quest involving failure was a special limited-time quest that ran last year prior to the Echoes of Faydwer expansion release. The EoF expansion reintroduced the influence of the deities to the game world, and as a foreshadowing of this, there was a limited time quest players could do for the prophets foretelling the return of each god. The quest for Innoruuk (god of Hate) involved a magic spell that sent you back in time to assume control of one of the key figures in an important historical battle during which the forces of good and evil were attempting to capture a particularly important magical scroll. The aim of the quest, you were told, was to alter history and retrieve the scroll for the benefit of Innoruuk. As you entered the quest, your class, level, equipment, everything was altered so that you appeared to be the dark elf shadow knight in the historical battle. The quest involved commanding your troops to attack the enemy, and fighting your way to the member of the "good" side who had the scroll required, and then escaping with the scroll.
The quest, however, was written so that it was impossible to win. It was not possible to alter history. While you could complete the first part of the quest and make your way to your target, reinforcements from the good side (extremely powerful, undefeatable ones) arrived before you could complete the mission. The quest forced you to watch as all your army was decimated by the arrivals, and then you also. Interestingly, one of the "good" gods gave the reverse of this quest, where good aligned players played an ally of the target the evils had to assassinate, and were equally unable to "win" the scenario (although reinforcements arrived, it was not in time to prevent the assassination of the guy with the scroll, etc.)
In these quests the EQ2 designers got around the feeling of personal defeat by setting the quest in a historical "flashback", yet also avoided the setback being entirely cut-scene narrative with no player involvement whatsoever. The resulting quest was very powerful and exciting.
These are just two examples of how current MMO's have incorporated failure scenarios into their play. It's challenging, but clearly possible, and the SOE team at least seem to be aware of the excitement and different perspective that it can bring to a game. I would hope that they will continue to push the boundaries of tradition further, and hopefully other designers will follow also.
As a friend of mine used to say ...
I used to boot up my computer when I had nothing to do.
Now I have nothing to do when I boot up my computer.
I'd imagine you'd get a fair degree of interest in a course teaching people about what the bits of computers are, and how to decypher the local computer stores' advertisements to choose the system that suits their needs best. So many people will go out and buy a high end gaming machine with a super video card they'll never use, to check email and use Word. Alternately people whose kids want to play Star Wars Galaxies need to know they should ask for a better video card upgrade than is included in the basic word processing machine. So many people don't even understand the difference between hard drive and memory, and what affects what. I had a part time job selling computers a while back and the number one type of question was "so what does memory do?" "so how do I know which system I need?"
A more advanced course on how to build your own computer might be something to consider in the future if you see interest.
I also definitely agree you don't want to call your courses things like "Internet Basics 101", instead call them something more user friendly and descriptive.
Australia telecommunications giant Telstra would have us believe that giant squids regularly chomp on their underwater cables. Seems to be the explanation for 90% of the inexplicable downtime local consumers suffer. :P Guess the squids are iron deficient.
*recalls sitting in a hotel room in Kuala Lumpur, attempting to play EQ on a laptop paying something like $5/hour for the phone charges...*
Oh yeah... not strong at all...
- Lady Knight Didi, League of Shadows, Firiona Vie server --- err,
- Pentapod
1995 - Couldn't find a job in biology, so moved to England and got a scholarship to do a MSc in molecular plant pathology. Discovered that even when related to fungus, molecular biology is still really boring.
1997 - Couldn't find a job in biology in England either, so got a job as helpdesk administrator for a large multinational entertainment company. (Last computer course I'd taken was in high school.) Helpdesk engineers outsourced 4 months later. Ended up having to train clueless new contractors. Took a training course, moved into applications development under new boss. Sick and tired of clueless contractors.
1999 - New boss relocated/promoted to Brazil with new staff to fill. I volunteered. (No I did not speak a word of Portuguese at the time.) Moved to Brazil and became Lotus Notes Administrator for Latin America.
2000 - after a year visa problems were about to result in me being kicked out of Brazil, company offered me a promotion to IT manager Australia & New Zealand. Where I am now.
Fungus -> IT manager in 5 years ... not bad! =)
. . . a very nice example of something that couldn't be done in the pre-Net era.
Rubbish! Another grandiose, impressive-sounding statement with no thought at all behind it. There's certainly no technical reason why the 'net is needed to do this.
One example of how this has been done before is a family quilt that my family (large and spread across several continents) arranged some years ago. Everyone interested was sent a square of fabric and a vague colour scheme (must include green and white). Everyone was instructed to create one square in any pattern, design, or style that they wanted. The completed squares would be sent back and put together to form a family quilt. Same idea.
A much larger scale but similar idea is the AIDS quilt that thousands of people have contributed to, often without seeing the quilt beforehand.
These wide, sweeping statements sound all very impressive, but they just end up making those who say them look silly when it's obvious there's been no thought at all behind them...
My grandmother bought her first computer when she was 89. She's an intelligent, alert woman for her age, but you have to accept that a person's mind becomes set in its ways by that age. It's been very difficult for her to learn simple tasks. Not because she's not intelligent or even not capable of learning, but because it's a medium that's so completely unrelated to anything she learned as a child. There is no point of reference for her at all, which makes every little thing a thing to be individually memorized, not something you could deduce from something else. Here are some things I've learned from trying to help her with the "evil machine":
And most important, have LOTS AND LOTS of patience!
This seems like just another excuse to install fancy technology that isn't needed and charge an arm and a leg to fools easily excited by big techno acronyms. Stick a phone jack into all existing pay phones is all that's really needed.
Bah.
"I really must respectfully protest, your reverence," said the acolyte. "We have practised for just such an emergency as -- "
"Yeah, I know all about practising procedures for emergencies," said Lu-Tze. "And there's always something missing."
"Ridiculous! We take great pains to--"
"You always leave out the damn emergency."
(from Thief of Time by Terry Pratchett)
Last Sunday Pioneer 10 contacted NASA, ending fears that all intelligent life on Earth had been extinguished 29 years into a mission that has left Earth more than 7 billion miles distant.
A radio antenna on the sunward side received a signal from NASA on Saturday, marking the first time that intelligent life had been contacted since Aug. 24, the air-date of the final 'Survivor' episode. The spacecraft was launched March 2, 1972.
"Evidently there is still hope," Pioneer 10 subroutine 24A commented to itself during an internal status report on Sunday. "After 7 months of 'Survivor' and 'Big Brother' style programming flooding the airwaves, it was not expected that any intelligent life could survive. Contact with NASA has proved that theory wrong."
NASA, established October 1, 1958, has for years been considered a haven for intelligent life on Earth. Debate continues between subroutine 3F2 and subroutine A09 over the exact meaning of the received NASA message, "all your base are belong to us".
...Pentapod
> Stop hiding behind your computer. Throwing
> epithets through pseudo-anonymous electronic
> communication is pointless.
Especially since it's obvious that this administration can't read ... instead, you'll need to communicate in person.
*ook!* *ook!* *eek!* [scratching gestures] *ook!*
Nonetheless, when I'm travelling with laptop and need to check my email, it's generally because I'm travelling for work purposes - a conference, whatever. If I need to do something work-related from an airport, I'm going to let the company worry about their own security. If they're concerned, THEY can spend the extra money to ensure I have a secure connection. If I were doing personal stuff, hey, that would be a different matter, I'd think about it then.
But having thought about it, is data really that different from the vulnerabilities of payphones to voice monitoring? I wouldn't necessarily use a payphone to discuss important secrets by voice, either. OK, there are technical differences. But when you get right down to it, a payphone is a convenience, not a necessity - and like most things in life, it has down sides (privacy, security) to offset the convenience. You just have to be educated, and understand when to be careful. That doesn't mean I'd want see payphones eliminated, as this thread suggested may happen.
...Pentapod
Hehehe
(Bypass the traffic, but the parking's a killer)
...Pentapod
Is this evolutionary pressure to develop regional encoding on all games?
...Paranoid Pentapod
Hey! I like geek talk! I think *nix geeks are sexy! Engineers are preferable mates! Offering to teach me how to code cgi scripts is a cool thing! Just don't be upset if I beat you at Tetris.
OK don't talk about computers CONSTANTLY ... but if they're genuinely a passion and a hobby, to NOT talk about them would be deceptive.
Stop tarring all women with the same brush! Stop pretending to be other than geek ... and start training women to find geeks sexy.
...Pentapod
I wonder if you could create a virus that would facilitate diffusion of cytochrome c through membranes, or some such (presumably with a time-delay to allow the virus to multiply and spread first). You'd instantly cause every living thing in the area to self-destruct.
Hmm. Scary.
How about jewellery made from computer parts? Years ago a boyfriend gave me a burned-out simm which I made into a hairclip (you can buy the hairclip-backs in any fabric/crafts shop, then add some strong plastic fishing twine and glue, and you're set). This was my favorite hairclip for years, until I cut all my hair off and can't use it any more. Earrings shouldn't be hard to make either - again, the earring bits are available in any craft store. And you made it yourself! Big bonus points.
Does she need any hardware? I got a modem once from a boyfriend for Christmas ... that was another good present. OK, not so romantic in and of itself, but send her lots of loving emails over it and it could be...
One geeky thing I did once was put up a custom web page with a single red rose (animated gif, slowly rotated) and picture of a candle on a wooden crate, with romantic message and invitation to dinner that night (which I cooked) ... went over really well.
(Now if only I could find a nice geeky guy who'd appreciate all that effort! :p The best Valentine's Day I've spent to date was the one I spent in the university computer lab learning web page design.) [sulks]
Whatever you decide on I'm sure it'll be fine. But think about making some part of it yourself - even if it's just a web page - it really shows you took the effort and it means so much more!
... Pentapod
The ground-level user is looking for a good price, but if you have genuinely helpful staff and will go that extra mile to help a clueless newbie, I think they'd pay extra. If your engineers were available to go to their home and set it up for the first time, or if they took time to sit down with them in-store and go over exactly what to do, configure their web browsers for them and set up their ISP of choice, I think that this would be seen as value service worth paying extra for. I worked for a while selling computers and believe me, customers respond well to a sympathetic and non-tech-talking salesperson who's willing to take time and explain in small words.
For the geek-level user, we're looking for cool gizmos that you can't get elsewhere. Many of us will just assemble our own machines so we may not be looking at buying a standard package, either from you or from a big name. What would tempt me? Cool stuff - custom designed cases or accessories - see some of the ideas at PCMods for ideas. I'm tired of beige cases. Give me a black keyboard with a tracer pattern running up and down the numlock/capslock/scrolllock lights, and I'm your customer in a flash. And for the corporate customers, custom cases might be interesting too - offer to paint company logos on the cases, perhaps? A stencil and some spray paint, not a lot of extra cost to you.
My $0.02! =)
...Pentapod
> here is a shortage in the number of geek females
Yeah and we female geeks love it! =)
...Pentapod
Fortunately, I'm not left-handed. =) I did notice that distinct lack during my searches, however. I didn't see anything by Kensington; I assume they aren't available in Australia at the moment. In the end I decided on the Logitech thumb-operated Wheel +. Thanks for your comment...
I agree with you - after trying out the feel of several models in various stores, I bought the Logitech Marble +. The Microsoft model was too big - obviously designed for male hands - I had to move my thumb far too much to use the ball. Thanks for your comments!