Customer Service

It looks like my friend in the UK, Tricky, is suffering from the type of customer service that gives the computer industry a bad name. His M200 Tablet had a fault in the screen and the company he bought it from (PC World) has now had the device for longer than he has!

I was talking to Hugo Ortega about customer service yesterday. Hugo works for Tegatech Australia and one of the things they pride themselves on is a high level of customer service.
It is amazing how much difference it can make to have a faulty product replaced on the same day.

The big companies (like PC World in the UK) don't seem to understand this. They behave as if they are the only company that could ever service your needs. The small niche specialist players like Tegatech are the ones that get the job done and have a passion for their business and the technology they are selling.

Something I have always tried to do is support local small business where the people that work there really care.
It would be good if there was a resource online where we could comment on hardware suppliers. A wiki might suit but there would need to be some policing to prevent the vendors from grading themselves ;)

Dr. Neil's Notes 17

Welcome to Show 17

Greetings from Seattle, WA

Flew out here 2 weeks ago and I have been spending time with friends, reviewing some new technologies and getting demos ready for TechEd Australia.

Presentation by Tandy Trower on Robotics Studio

Jim and Michele McCarthy have a new edition of Dynamics of Software Development coming soon

New content on ViaVirtualEarth - articles and forums changed

Podcast with Ron Jacobs - who is visiting Sydney for TechEd

Monte Christo - abandoned mining town

Happy coding

dev.minigolf.live.com

On Monday evening I caught up with my friend Ken Levy who works with the dev.live.com team. Ken suggested a round of mini-golf and dinner at the Newcastle golf club.
The views from the golf course down over the Puget Sound area are fantastic.
We had dinner outside overlooking the golf course, and Ken commented that if this was a date he would be doing pretty well :) Unfortuntely he was dining with me.
He is right though it would be a great place to take a date.
The conversation was, as ever, very geek oriented. We talked a lot about the community aspect of software development and how the strength of a development platform is often in the support from the users to other users.