And unprecedented case. Seemingly abandoned spaceship on the streets of Moscow - it is something from the realm of fantasy. But alas, this is the true reality. Correspondent "MK" discovered orbiting Soviet "Buran" play like garbage on the outskirts of the capital. Nobody cares what was once a symbol of cosmic power of our country.
Surprisingly close to accurate.
Actual translation:
"Sometimes impossible is possible. You would think that an abandoned spaceship lying on the streets of Moscow is something out of science fiction, but unfortunately this is reality. A Correspondent of "MK" discovered a soviet orbiter "Buran" lying like trash in the capital's suburbs. Nobody cares about what once was a symbol of the space might of our country"
(And yes, "Buran" is not a name of a ship, its a type of ship.)
Google Branded DOES mean it has the word Google on it.
Not as far as Yankee Group is concerned. From their response:
So what is the right statistic for Android owners? The honest answer is that we don’t know. You’ll note in the excerpt above, we were careful to say “Google-branded Android phone owners”. That’s because our data keys on the manufacturer of the phone as the way to determine what type of phone a consumer owns.
Well, I'm not sure how you got that out of TFS, but from TFA, it's a lot simpler:
20% of "google-branded phone" users plan to buy an Android phone. 77% of iPhone users plan to buy an iPhone.
IIRC, 34% of "google-branded phone" users plan to buy an iPhone, FWIW.
Note that these stats are pre-iPhone4, but it's not clear (and I didn't do any digging to find out) whether this was before or after the barphone prototype was publicized. The presence of a new generation of iPhone with (this is important) the highest resolution display available could well be responsible for the spike in iPhone interest among all users.
Guess its not as simple as you thought. Actual stats they are claiming them now are:
20% of ALL smartphone users would buy Android,
34% of ALL smartphone users would buy iPhone,
77% of iPhone users would buy another iPhone , and
32% of users of phones manufactured by "Google" (NexusOne) users would buy another phone manufactured by "Google" (not same thing as Android or "with Google" labeled phone !!!)
Hope this helps people to understand this mess of misinformation.
Some non-nexus phones are google branded. For example, I have a samsung moment, and it says "Google" on the outside in permanent lettering. So some android phones are additionally google branded
Still, it's pretty stupid to equate android with google branding.
If you read the links, "Google Branded" only includes phones manufactured under Google name (i.e. Nexus One) - does not include the "Google Inside" stickers on some Android phones. They only collected data on manufacturer name of the phone, not os - so they have no idea on Android stats as same manufacturers would manufacture non-Android phones.
That's 77% of apple users, not 77% of the market. That was 20% of the market buying androids (or 'google brand phone') so these numbers do indicate an increase in android market share.
Its 20% of ALL users with smartphones (including iPhones) say they would buy an Android phone next. The comparable number for that from same study is 34% of all users with smarphones (including iPhones) would buy iPhone (if you do math, that means 12% of non-Apple smartphone users). From same study 77% of iPhone users would buy another iPhone, while 32% of Google Brand phone users (meaning pretty much G1 or NexusOne only, not Android in general) would buy another Google Branded phone( which is insane, considering Google already exited the market, so their only option would be another NexusOne??)
According to Nielsen, Android market share in 2010 Q1 was 9%.
If 20% of the overall smartphone market wants to buy an Android phone next, then it means that:
20/9 = 222% of Android users will buy another Android phone!
Take that, Apple! Your 77% is nothing!
p.s. no, I don't believe in any way that this is correct way of looking at these numbers.
It is at least as "correct" as their way. But if you read carefully, they include the iPhone users in the "smartphone" category. Two can play this game -- we can do some "math" too.
Assuming iPhone in the study is represented roughly same as the market share (28%), this would really skew the numbers in its favor. Lets un-skew. This means that of 34% Smartphone users that would buy iPhone as their next phone, 22% (28%*0.77) are already iPhone users - meaning that only 12% (34%-22%) of the users would switch to iPhone from another Smartphone while 23% (100%-77%) of existing iPhone users that would switch away from iPhone.
So, the real story - almost twice as many people would switch away from iPhone as would switch to it.;-)
Not only did I not trust Yankee Group's numbers before, but now I realize they asked an ignorant question about "google branded" phones? What the hell sense does that have in a comparison between iPhones and Android phones? I'll be sure to consider immediately discarding any statistics released by "Yankee Group" in the future, because they could have just "accidentally" forgot to mention some important detail. Ridiculous.
At least they are honest. From the Yankee Group's Blog (linked in story above):
So what is the right statistic for Android owners? The honest answer is that we don’t know.
Its not like they are selling statistics.... oh, wait....
Ok, never mind that the original video in the article was a joke making fun of apple - I mean they "tested" the death grip on jelly donut and on a banana, - but also I am guessing most of these videos are not real or serious either. I mean I watched one of them and it compares the iPhone in 3G mode to Nexus One in GPRS mode (strangely 3G is faster than non-3G). Interestingly enough though, if you take this video seriously and look at it as a relative drop, iPhone looses over 63% of the original speed in the test, while N1 looses less than 3%.
I say this an extremely avid Android and Linux user. Putting Android on a mouse/keyboard device makes about as much sense as putting Windows 7 on a tablet. Probably even less as although 99.999 percent of the Windows ecosystem will never work well on a tablet, at least win7 can be made to work well enough. Android and all of its 50000+ apps are designed with a capacitive touch screen and a finger in mind. Google gets this. That's why there are no official Google ports of Android to netbooks. Where is everybody else's malfunction coming from?
The funny thing though is that a basic touchscreen film for a netbook can be had for $20-$40 retail - sure it won't do multitouch, but most apps don't actually need that...
Absolute bull crap. Blackberry was the phone that most people agree was first to be associated with the concept of smart phone, and still is considered a smart phone. It is not way more open than the iPhone, in the way that you argue Android is.
Erm, you can get many apps for blackberry that alter how it functions Not sure what you are trying to say.
Are you arguing that Android is the only smart phone platform out there?
Android... and Blackberry... and PalmOS... and Windows Mobile... and...well, there are plenty more.
Ok, so you've invented your own personal definition of smart phone, and iPhone does not meet that set of criteria. Good for you. Back on Earth, nobody cares about your personal definition, and just about everybody disagrees with you.
I don't think I invented this definition - its been around for a long time, nor do I think you are "everyone".
Do you buy the "SmartWater" brand of bottled water? Why do u want a smart phone? A phone has keys, a computer has a keyboard. The phones now are approaching extra-personal computers. Does the other one have a Linux Command Line console? So why would i want it?
I have no idea what you are struggling to say here.
Yes, a "smartphone" is a marketing term, not a literal word (much like "personal computer"). Yes, smartphones approach (and in some cases surpass) functionality in personal computers. And yes, if that is not what you want, you would be a fool to buy one. These things are
I know why *I* want one, I have no idea why would you.
I used to keep buying into the hype and rail against iPhone and for Android. Now having owned both, I recognize that the comparison itself is silly. Aside the "totalitarian regime" vs "pseudo-capitalism" difference in the platform philosophies, the products are like apples and oranges (pardon the pun). Its like comparing an old school word-processor and a computer(for fairness sake equally old-school) . This is not meant to belittle iPhone, but it is NOT a real smartphone. Its a really advanced feature phone.
The difference is that the "smart-phone" is like a computer, you can add/remove programs and alter how it functions so that it can be "smart" for your specific purposes - while the "feature-phone" is more like an appliance that offers certain features in a specific way. iPhone does have PIM capabilities that used to be primarely the domain of the smart-phones and even apps that make it seem like a smart-phone - but the capability of those apps is strictly as add-ons to the main appliance - not an extension/replacement of the OS. I mean, even 10 year old Motorola flip-phones - not smart-phones by any stretch of the imagination - had both PIM and apps capabilities.
Now, as far as features are concerned, iPhone is the best feature-phone by miles. Its amazing how much it can do and it keeps on stepping on the smart-phone territory more and more with new features in each release. Being a locked down feature-phone also enables it to have the best polished UI over the smart-phones - much easier to QA when. (Now, as an aside, I am not talking about jailbreaking, which does make iPhone more like a real smart-phone, albeit somewhat buggy as the developers have to constantly find hacks to insert functionality into existing code)
Android, on the other hand, is a whole other beast. It IS a smart-phone with all that it entails. You do not like how the on-screen keyboard works? You download one of the many other input methods (Swype rocks, BTW!!!). You do not like how SMS works? Go get a different SMS client. You do not like how mail works, there are many email clients to choose from. You want to have more than two sound profiles? Sure. You want to change the phone's configuration based on time, location, calendar, etc - no problem. You want to run something that will bring the phone to its knees and drain the battery in under 2 hours - of course you can get that too.
Does this make Android better than iPhone? Maybe - maybe not. It all depends on what YOU want. For me, I could not stand using the iPhone for all the restrictions on how to do things. But I thats why *I* want a smart-phone.
Still, I will admit that while there are many choices for certain functionality on Android, the iPhone's default, unchangable, functionality is very good, in some cases better than Android. Plus there is the "Windows" factor with iPhone being the defacto "Windows" standard of the apps market, there are more mature apps on iPhone platform than on Android (Hey, Amazon -- Summer is here, where is my Kindle App ????)
In short, if you are satisfied with what that iPhone offers - it may be the best thing out there for you. I highly recommend iPhone for older and less technical folk that don't demand much and just want something that works. If, on the other hand, you are more demanding and want something more than iPhone offers or more custom - iPhone is simply not good enough, and Android is your best bet by far.
As I mentioned there is also a philosophical issue of the tyrannical approach of "Big Brother Steve" vs free-for-all nature of Android development. This is not as clear cut as it appears, but more of an issue of personal philosophies thus the big debates on issues like government run health-care in the US. But it all boils down to - do you trust your dictator or does possibility(not existence) and freedom to create a better option outweigh a known entity you have no choice over. Like I said, its a personal decision and not as clear cut as it appears.
You are indeed an F'd up sadistic moron. Really. Do you carry four pair of pants with you at all times? One for general use and the other three for your major customers. Holy fuckin' shit.
That would be silly, there is no need for separate pants for each major customer.
But you do need a separate belt for each belt-clip on each phone... so each belt would need a separate pants.... oh, crap, I guess he does need separate pants;-)
.... Call me a "F'd up sadistic moron" all you want. That doesn't change the fact that you're short-sighted and ignorant about how your users use their email and other communication methods.
Actually I believe he called your IT stuff "F'd up sadistic morons" - they are the ones inflicting this onto you. You are a salesman, nobody here expects you to understand these things...
Please give me the name of the company you work for, as well as the address of the location you're at. I want to make sure I never deal with them.
I get a sense the feeling would be mutual and appreciated.
He probably has four separate phones because he has four separate phone numbers, and needs to be able to at least accept voicemail messages if more than one of his major clients call at the same time.
I assume he does not have four separate computers to deal with four clients - so why does he have four phones? There is no reason one phone cannot get calls for four numbers, each with separate voice-mail or even with one voicemail box with separate greetings. I get a feeling the guy is such an ass to his IT guys, they are probably betting on how much torture they can put the poor idiot through ("I bet we can get him to carry three phone...." "NO, how about four Phones!!!")
As a mere IT peon, you probably don't understand how sales work, or how salespeople perform their jobs. It's not unusual to see talented salespeople talking to two or three separate people at once, while organizing particularly large or complex sales. They actually do need to use several separate phones while they work. Your idiotic "4 accounts 1 phone" idea fails completely.
Again, nothing that can't be handled easily with a single phone - ever hear of hold or conferencing? I think they had those back in the seventies... Perhaps you should make nice with your IT folks so that you can move into the current century.
Now, I totally appreciate a good sales person, I know a couple, but unfortunately they are such a tiny fraction of the sales force. Most of the sales are ignorant idiots with a god complex who think that four phones would make up for the fact that they are not actually paying attention to anyone around them including their clients (hint, it does not matter if you have a dedicated line for your client if you actually LISTEN to your client). And so what we deal with are sales people only think they are great, and have the need to actively put down everyone else so that they do not ruin their self-delusion. I mean, just because you close sales does not make you a good sales person - most companies who got my business, got it in spite of their sales staff -- not because of them. And thus the IT stuff makes them wear four phones and be happy with it and rest of the world makes fun of them.
In all fairness, there are plenty of idiots in IT too, so it could be that they don't know any better.
"I saw a billboard for the lottery. It said, "Estimated lottery jackpot 55 million dollars." I did not know that was estimated. That would suck if you won and they said, "Oh, we were off by two zeroes. We estimate that you are angry!""
FYI, Most Lotto jackpots are dependent on the number of tickets sold, so "Estimated" numbers are used until ticket sales are stopped as they cannot know in advance number of tickets sold.
This may not work in every case - but if you have SOME reception in the house (as in the basement lack of coverage example) I saw something in the store the other day that I thought was a cool idea. Some of the current landline cordless phone systems now support being bluetooth clients. Basically you leave your cell phone next to the base (where you presumably have reception), and use any of the system's phones to answer or place calls.
If you do not want to do business with someone there are better ways of handling this than locking someone's account without telling them.
The conspiracy theory nut in me wonders if there was the company CEO's buddy in CitiBank who was willing to part with their job in exchange for doing this. I mean, this is a godsend to a yet another social network site doomed to failure - to create news outrage among its target audience weeks before launch - you bet every gay rights group will be talking about this. You can't pay enough for this sort of a publicity.
If you are looking for strictly media solution, you may want to consider a different aproach. it may be wise to keep the coax and invest in a media distribution system. So you do not NEED to bother with running media clients and media servers all over the place, but instead put all your equipment in a single location (living room or attic) and simply use TV with coax and a remote as a controller for it. The SD versions of this are dirt cheap now (and if you are using 100Mbit, you are unlikely to do HD), but HD distribution systems are coming out now (though they are still pricey). But it makes live SO much nicer and is so much more reliable (and much more wife-friendly). Plus you can watch/listen to same thing on 3 TVs at same time if you want to.
Of course this is for media only, and you may still want to run cat* for computers.
Slashdot Mirror
Google translate says:
And unprecedented case. Seemingly abandoned spaceship on the streets of Moscow - it is something from the realm of fantasy. But alas, this is the true reality. Correspondent "MK" discovered orbiting Soviet "Buran" play like garbage on the outskirts of the capital. Nobody cares what was once a symbol of cosmic power of our country.
Surprisingly close to accurate.
Actual translation:
"Sometimes impossible is possible. You would think that an abandoned spaceship lying on the streets of Moscow is something out of science fiction, but unfortunately this is reality. A Correspondent of "MK" discovered a soviet orbiter "Buran" lying like trash in the capital's suburbs. Nobody cares about what once was a symbol of the space might of our country"
(And yes, "Buran" is not a name of a ship, its a type of ship.)
The manufacturer is HTC!
Not exactly. It is manufactured by HTC for Google. You think Apple manufactures iPhones??
The Yankee Group shouldn't be taking surveys and publishing results if they don't understand the nomenclature.
I think that is by far not the only problem these bozos have.
Google Branded DOES mean it has the word Google on it.
Not as far as Yankee Group is concerned. From their response:
So what is the right statistic for Android owners? The honest answer is that we don’t know. You’ll note in the excerpt above, we were careful to say “Google-branded Android phone owners”. That’s because our data keys on the manufacturer of the phone as the way to determine what type of phone a consumer owns.
So its pretty much just Nexus One.
Well, I'm not sure how you got that out of TFS, but from TFA, it's a lot simpler:
20% of "google-branded phone" users plan to buy an Android phone.
77% of iPhone users plan to buy an iPhone.
IIRC, 34% of "google-branded phone" users plan to buy an iPhone, FWIW.
Note that these stats are pre-iPhone4, but it's not clear (and I didn't do any digging to find out) whether this was before or after the barphone prototype was publicized. The presence of a new generation of iPhone with (this is important) the highest resolution display available could well be responsible for the spike in iPhone interest among all users.
Guess its not as simple as you thought. Actual stats they are claiming them now are:
20% of ALL smartphone users would buy Android,
34% of ALL smartphone users would buy iPhone,
77% of iPhone users would buy another iPhone , and
32% of users of phones manufactured by "Google" (NexusOne) users would buy another phone manufactured by "Google" (not same thing as Android or "with Google" labeled phone !!!)
Hope this helps people to understand this mess of misinformation.
-Em
Some non-nexus phones are google branded. For example, I have a samsung moment, and it says "Google" on the outside in permanent lettering. So some android phones are additionally google branded
Still, it's pretty stupid to equate android with google branding.
If you read the links, "Google Branded" only includes phones manufactured under Google name (i.e. Nexus One) - does not include the "Google Inside" stickers on some Android phones. They only collected data on manufacturer name of the phone, not os - so they have no idea on Android stats as same manufacturers would manufacture non-Android phones.
-Em
That's 77% of apple users, not 77% of the market. That was 20% of the market buying androids (or 'google brand phone') so these numbers do indicate an increase in android market share.
Its 20% of ALL users with smartphones (including iPhones) say they would buy an Android phone next. The comparable number for that from same study is 34% of all users with smarphones (including iPhones) would buy iPhone (if you do math, that means 12% of non-Apple smartphone users). From same study 77% of iPhone users would buy another iPhone, while 32% of Google Brand phone users (meaning pretty much G1 or NexusOne only, not Android in general) would buy another Google Branded phone( which is insane, considering Google already exited the market, so their only option would be another NexusOne??)
-Em
So let's play some numbers game.
According to Nielsen, Android market share in 2010 Q1 was 9%.
If 20% of the overall smartphone market wants to buy an Android phone next, then it means that:
20/9 = 222% of Android users will buy another Android phone!
Take that, Apple! Your 77% is nothing!
p.s. no, I don't believe in any way that this is correct way of looking at these numbers.
It is at least as "correct" as their way. But if you read carefully, they include the iPhone users in the "smartphone" category. Two can play this game -- we can do some "math" too.
Assuming iPhone in the study is represented roughly same as the market share (28%), this would really skew the numbers in its favor. Lets un-skew. This means that of 34% Smartphone users that would buy iPhone as their next phone, 22% (28%*0.77) are already iPhone users - meaning that only 12% (34%-22%) of the users would switch to iPhone from another Smartphone while 23% (100%-77%) of existing iPhone users that would switch away from iPhone.
So, the real story - almost twice as many people would switch away from iPhone as would switch to it. ;-)
-Em
Not only did I not trust Yankee Group's numbers before, but now I realize they asked an ignorant question about "google branded" phones? What the hell sense does that have in a comparison between iPhones and Android phones? I'll be sure to consider immediately discarding any statistics released by "Yankee Group" in the future, because they could have just "accidentally" forgot to mention some important detail. Ridiculous.
At least they are honest. From the Yankee Group's Blog (linked in story above):
So what is the right statistic for Android owners? The honest answer is that we don’t know.
Its not like they are selling statistics.... oh, wait....
Reading omprehension fail! Did I say no other phone drops bars AT ALL?
Only iphone loses signal so much as to drop calls.
Go on - try spinning it again.
This is absolute crap argument, death grip does not cause iPhone to drop calls, it is fully capable of dropping calls without it.
You mean like these videos?
Ok, never mind that the original video in the article was a joke making fun of apple - I mean they "tested" the death grip on jelly donut and on a banana, - but also I am guessing most of these videos are not real or serious either. I mean I watched one of them and it compares the iPhone in 3G mode to Nexus One in GPRS mode (strangely 3G is faster than non-3G). Interestingly enough though, if you take this video seriously and look at it as a relative drop, iPhone looses over 63% of the original speed in the test, while N1 looses less than 3%.
-Em
Google "touch screen film usb"
But even at $60 or $80, converting x86 netbook to touchscreen its far from impossible or even impractical
I say this an extremely avid Android and Linux user. Putting
Android on a mouse/keyboard device makes about as much sense
as putting Windows 7 on a tablet. Probably even less as although
99.999 percent of the Windows ecosystem will never work well on
a tablet, at least win7 can be made to work well enough. Android
and all of its 50000+ apps are designed with a capacitive touch screen and a finger in mind. Google gets this. That's why there are no official
Google ports of Android to netbooks. Where is everybody else's
malfunction coming from?
The funny thing though is that a basic touchscreen film for a netbook can be had for $20-$40 retail - sure it won't do multitouch, but most apps don't actually need that...
Absolute bull crap. Blackberry was the phone that most people agree was first to be associated with the concept of smart phone, and still is considered a smart phone. It is not way more open than the iPhone, in the way that you argue Android is.
Erm, you can get many apps for blackberry that alter how it functions Not sure what you are trying to say.
Are you arguing that Android is the only smart phone platform out there?
Android... and Blackberry... and PalmOS... and Windows Mobile... and...well, there are plenty more.
Ok, so you've invented your own personal definition of smart phone, and iPhone does not meet that set of criteria. Good for you. Back on Earth, nobody cares about your personal definition, and just about everybody disagrees with you.
I don't think I invented this definition - its been around for a long time, nor do I think you are "everyone".
-Em
Do you buy the "SmartWater" brand of bottled water?
Why do u want a smart phone?
A phone has keys, a computer has a keyboard.
The phones now are approaching extra-personal computers.
Does the other one have a Linux Command Line console?
So why would i want it?
I have no idea what you are struggling to say here.
Yes, a "smartphone" is a marketing term, not a literal word (much like "personal computer"). Yes, smartphones approach (and in some cases surpass) functionality in personal computers. And yes, if that is not what you want, you would be a fool to buy one. These things are
I know why *I* want one, I have no idea why would you.
-Em
I used to keep buying into the hype and rail against iPhone and for Android. Now having owned both, I recognize that the comparison itself is silly. Aside the "totalitarian regime" vs "pseudo-capitalism" difference in the platform philosophies, the products are like apples and oranges (pardon the pun). Its like comparing an old school word-processor and a computer(for fairness sake equally old-school) . This is not meant to belittle iPhone, but it is NOT a real smartphone. Its a really advanced feature phone.
The difference is that the "smart-phone" is like a computer, you can add/remove programs and alter how it functions so that it can be "smart" for your specific purposes - while the "feature-phone" is more like an appliance that offers certain features in a specific way. iPhone does have PIM capabilities that used to be primarely the domain of the smart-phones and even apps that make it seem like a smart-phone - but the capability of those apps is strictly as add-ons to the main appliance - not an extension/replacement of the OS. I mean, even 10 year old Motorola flip-phones - not smart-phones by any stretch of the imagination - had both PIM and apps capabilities.
Now, as far as features are concerned, iPhone is the best feature-phone by miles. Its amazing how much it can do and it keeps on stepping on the smart-phone territory more and more with new features in each release. Being a locked down feature-phone also enables it to have the best polished UI over the smart-phones - much easier to QA when. (Now, as an aside, I am not talking about jailbreaking, which does make iPhone more like a real smart-phone, albeit somewhat buggy as the developers have to constantly find hacks to insert functionality into existing code)
Android, on the other hand, is a whole other beast. It IS a smart-phone with all that it entails. You do not like how the on-screen keyboard works? You download one of the many other input methods (Swype rocks, BTW!!!). You do not like how SMS works? Go get a different SMS client. You do not like how mail works, there are many email clients to choose from. You want to have more than two sound profiles? Sure. You want to change the phone's configuration based on time, location, calendar, etc - no problem. You want to run something that will bring the phone to its knees and drain the battery in under 2 hours - of course you can get that too.
Does this make Android better than iPhone? Maybe - maybe not. It all depends on what YOU want. For me, I could not stand using the iPhone for all the restrictions on how to do things. But I thats why *I* want a smart-phone.
Still, I will admit that while there are many choices for certain functionality on Android, the iPhone's default, unchangable, functionality is very good, in some cases better than Android. Plus there is the "Windows" factor with iPhone being the defacto "Windows" standard of the apps market, there are more mature apps on iPhone platform than on Android (Hey, Amazon -- Summer is here, where is my Kindle App ????)
In short, if you are satisfied with what that iPhone offers - it may be the best thing out there for you. I highly recommend iPhone for older and less technical folk that don't demand much and just want something that works. If, on the other hand, you are more demanding and want something more than iPhone offers or more custom - iPhone is simply not good enough, and Android is your best bet by far.
As I mentioned there is also a philosophical issue of the tyrannical approach of "Big Brother Steve" vs free-for-all nature of Android development. This is not as clear cut as it appears, but more of an issue of personal philosophies thus the big debates on issues like government run health-care in the US. But it all boils down to - do you trust your dictator or does possibility(not existence) and freedom to create a better option outweigh a known entity you have no choice over. Like I said, its a personal decision and not as clear cut as it appears.
-Em
Please don't try to make sensible posts on Slashdot, it might explode the fanboys heads in the basement.
"haha, Its funny cuz its true"
You are indeed an F'd up sadistic moron. Really. Do you carry four pair of pants with you at all times? One for general use and the other three for your major customers. Holy fuckin' shit.
That would be silly, there is no need for separate pants for each major customer.
But you do need a separate belt for each belt-clip on each phone... so each belt would need a separate pants.... oh, crap, I guess he does need separate pants ;-)
-Em
I'm a hardware salesman.....
I have four smartphones........
.... Call me a "F'd up sadistic moron" all you want. That doesn't change the fact that you're short-sighted and ignorant about how your users use their email and other communication methods.
Actually I believe he called your IT stuff "F'd up sadistic morons" - they are the ones inflicting this onto you. You are a salesman, nobody here expects you to understand these things...
-Em
Please give me the name of the company you work for, as well as the address of the location you're at. I want to make sure I never deal with them.
I get a sense the feeling would be mutual and appreciated.
He probably has four separate phones because he has four separate phone numbers, and needs to be able to at least accept voicemail messages if more than one of his major clients call at the same time.
I assume he does not have four separate computers to deal with four clients - so why does he have four phones? There is no reason one phone cannot get calls for four numbers, each with separate voice-mail or even with one voicemail box with separate greetings. I get a feeling the guy is such an ass to his IT guys, they are probably betting on how much torture they can put the poor idiot through ("I bet we can get him to carry three phone...." "NO, how about four Phones!!!")
As a mere IT peon, you probably don't understand how sales work, or how salespeople perform their jobs. It's not unusual to see talented salespeople talking to two or three separate people at once, while organizing particularly large or complex sales. They actually do need to use several separate phones while they work. Your idiotic "4 accounts 1 phone" idea fails completely.
Again, nothing that can't be handled easily with a single phone - ever hear of hold or conferencing? I think they had those back in the seventies... Perhaps you should make nice with your IT folks so that you can move into the current century.
Now, I totally appreciate a good sales person, I know a couple, but unfortunately they are such a tiny fraction of the sales force. Most of the sales are ignorant idiots with a god complex who think that four phones would make up for the fact that they are not actually paying attention to anyone around them including their clients (hint, it does not matter if you have a dedicated line for your client if you actually LISTEN to your client). And so what we deal with are sales people only think they are great, and have the need to actively put down everyone else so that they do not ruin their self-delusion. I mean, just because you close sales does not make you a good sales person - most companies who got my business, got it in spite of their sales staff -- not because of them. And thus the IT stuff makes them wear four phones and be happy with it and rest of the world makes fun of them.
In all fairness, there are plenty of idiots in IT too, so it could be that they don't know any better.
-Em
"I saw a billboard for the lottery. It said, "Estimated lottery jackpot 55 million dollars." I did not know that was estimated. That would suck if you won and they said, "Oh, we were off by two zeroes. We estimate that you are angry!""
FYI, Most Lotto jackpots are dependent on the number of tickets sold, so "Estimated" numbers are used until ticket sales are stopped as they cannot know in advance number of tickets sold.
-Em
Erm, I was not paying attention in the store to brands, but quick Google search reveals some AT&T, GE, and Panasonic models.
-Em
This may not work in every case - but if you have SOME reception in the house (as in the basement lack of coverage example) I saw something in the store the other day that I thought was a cool idea. Some of the current landline cordless phone systems now support being bluetooth clients. Basically you leave your cell phone next to the base (where you presumably have reception), and use any of the system's phones to answer or place calls.
-Em
If you do not want to do business with someone there are better ways of handling this than locking someone's account without telling them.
The conspiracy theory nut in me wonders if there was the company CEO's buddy in CitiBank who was willing to part with their job in exchange for doing this. I mean, this is a godsend to a yet another social network site doomed to failure - to create news outrage among its target audience weeks before launch - you bet every gay rights group will be talking about this. You can't pay enough for this sort of a publicity.
-Em
If you are looking for strictly media solution, you may want to consider a different aproach. it may be wise to keep the coax and invest in a media distribution system. So you do not NEED to bother with running media clients and media servers all over the place, but instead put all your equipment in a single location (living room or attic) and simply use TV with coax and a remote as a controller for it. The SD versions of this are dirt cheap now (and if you are using 100Mbit, you are unlikely to do HD), but HD distribution systems are coming out now (though they are still pricey). But it makes live SO much nicer and is so much more reliable (and much more wife-friendly). Plus you can watch/listen to same thing on 3 TVs at same time if you want to.
Of course this is for media only, and you may still want to run cat* for computers.