You may recall my older article about having problems with my first HP Pavilion ze5470us desktop from Best Buy, that was DOA and had to be replaced.  So when I upgraded to yet to another HP Pavilion m9450f, you may have wondered if there was something wrong with my brain.

At first, everything was going good. Except for compatibility problems with Vista, the computer hardware was working fast and smoothly…

Until 3 weeks later…

Just about the time I finally had everything installed and moved over from my old hard drive, I turn on my computer and I get a blank screen.  Oh crap.  Not good.

HP has a built in self test program by pressing F9 upon power-up.  This is actually a nice touch.  The screen below shows the result of the testing.  You can click on the picture to see a larger version.

Notice that the hard drive is dead. Also, notice where the diagnostic says, “Suggestion: Backup your important data” WTF? How am I supposed to backup my dead hard drive? It also says to call HP support.  Which I did.

HP support is one of the worst support call centers in the industry.  It took them 55 minutes to tell me that my hard drive was dead and that they would send out a new one to me.  Most of that time, I was on hold waiting for the 2 people on the line to read their script so they can tell me what I already told them.

Of course, I didn’t wait 6 days to get the replacement hard drive.  I went straight to Fry’s to get a 1TB SATA drive so that could start restoring my new computer. What’s really frustrating is that it took me about 3 weeks to finally get everything restored from my old computer and all the programs re-installed.  Now, I have to go through the entire procedure again.  What a pain.

The picture below shows the HP’s guts out.  The cage for the hard drive comes out so that you can install the drive.  It’s not as clean as DELL’s case but it’s not the worst one I’ve seen in my life.  I give it a 6 out of 10.

So I finally did get my replacement hard drive after about 6 days. However, it took about 2 weeks to get the “system restore” DVDs that HP sent out. Luckily, I did create these DVDs myself while the computer was still working so I didn’t have to wait.

After I got the replacement drive, I added that to the system to use as a backup internal drive. I had to go into the BIOS to tell it which drive to boot from, but otherwise, it all works fine.

In conclusion, it’s obvious that I’m as stupid as stupid does.  Even after having problems with my first HP, I still went out and bought yet another HP and paid the price.  To be fair, the hard drive dying is a Seagate problem, but HP gets the blame for putting it in their system.  It would have been a lot less work for me if the new HP was DOA instead of dying after 3 weeks.

So I’ll continue to use my HP and see how many weeks it lasts this time.

Technology and gadgets. I love them. Recently, there was talk of software giant Microsoft buying poor Yahoo.com. Yahoo used to be the number one search engine back in the day. People used to think nobody could out-search Yahoo. How the mighty has fallen. Google has taken over as #1 and it’s not even close these days.

How did Yahoo lose such a large market share? They were #1. They started expanding to mail, games, groups, and chat.  Everything except web search.  They lost their way.  Or another way to put it is, they got lazy.  Lazy, as in slow to react.

This got me to thinking about other similar large market share losses. Speaking of Microsoft, they did the same thing to Digital Research. Digital Research had practically the entire market share of microcomputer operating systems with their CP/M.  But Bill Gates came along and bought an OS from Seattle Computing and with some modifications, sold it to IBM for their brand new microcomputer.

Today, people don’t even know what CP/M is, or was. They’ve never even heard of Digital Research and Gary Kildall. What happened there?  Missed opportunities.  Yes.  But they could have fixed that.  Did they not realize how big IBM’s computer would be in the market place?  Perhaps.  It’s pretty complicated, but I can sum it up this way. They got lazy.

Speaking of Yahoo and Google, what did people do before the Internet?  Today, if I want to buy something, a couple of clicks of my mouse and I can buy anything under the sun online. Before the Internet, people used the Yellow Pages.  Many people are too young to have even used the Yellow Pages.  It’s a big book that has the phone numbers of every business near you. It also had some ads in it too. Sort of like what Google does now, but slower, builkier, and only locally.

How did AT&T/Yellow Pages lose their entire market share?  By the time AT&T realized what the Internet could do, it was too late.  They didn’t even see it coming.  They got lazy.

While we’re on the topic of printed media, does anybody read the classified section in a newspaper anymore? Ahm. Does anybody read a printed newspaper anymore? I don’t. I get all my news online. The classified section used to be the profit center for newspapers. But these days, EBay.com and craigslist.org pretty much destroyed that market.

Why didn’t the newspapers create those websites? Same reason Yellow Pages didn’t create Google.com. They were too busy printing the next day’s newspaper and finding new advertisers.  The daily grind.  Oh, and they got lazy.

During the early days of micro computers, people used Dot matrix printers. These were printers that used print heads that moved across the paper to print by using ink ribbons. Epson, a Japanese company, ruled this market. If you wanted a printer, you bought an Epson.

Then, a instrumentation company called Hewlett-Packard or HP started selling laser printers. These printers were more expensive but made documents that looked like they came from a print shop. It was also fast. Much faster than the dot matrix.  By the time Epson realized what happened, they had lost their entire market share.

What happened to Epson? They were so busy making new dot matrix printers and improving their old models, they didn’t look at new technologies. Basically, they go lazy.

Well, I saved the best for last. During the 80’s, Sony had a product called the Walkman. It was a portable cassette player that would allow the user to play music on the go. You could listen to music while commuting, or jogging, or just hanging out. They sold tons of these things.  It was a great idea.  They owned the market that they had basically created from scratch.

Then a computer company called Apple decided to make a digital music player.  That’s right.  A computer company.  They also created a music store online on the Internet.  Even though Sony owned a record company, they didn’t figure out that Apple stole their entire market share until it was too late.

Now, Sony is scrambling to try to regain their market share.  But they’re busy with Blu-ray players, HDTVs, Playstation 3, Playstation Portable, and tons of other products.  They have so many products, they forgot about their Walkman market.  As a matter of fact, according to PC Magazine, in a list of customer satisfaction, Sony MP3 players rate #7 after Apple, Microsoft, Archos, Samsung, SanDisk, and Iriver. What a joke.

Big Sony. Are they lazy too?  You bet.

The word “lazy” doesn’t mean they weren’t working hard at all these companies.  In fact, these companies were all leaders in their markets.  I’m using the word to mean that they were sleeping on the job. They were so busy with their day to day business of making money, and cranking out new versions of their old products, they failed to see the future.  In some cases, they weren’t even looking.  Slow to react.  Lazy.

Sometimes, you have to stop what you’re doing, look up, come outside the box, and take a fresh look at things. Some people are good at this, and others are not.  Some companies are good at it.  Others, not so much.

This sort of “laziness” can happen to anyone.  Even regarding your daily life.  Personal or professional.  Are you sleep walking in your life?  Are you too busy working and paying your bills to realize you could be rich?  Are you too busy with the rat race to talk to your kids?  Or your wife?  Do you just look at today or do you look into the future?

Are you lazy?

Back when I bought the Vizio LCD HDTV, I also purchased the Bush TV stand at Best Buy (SKU 8318144) for about $180 (shown above).  It was fairly easy to put together myself, attractive, and most importantly, the price was right for my budget.

That was in February.  Everything has been great up until recently.  But now, if you look at the close-up view of the front left of the stand, you’ll see that the fake wood covering whatever material is inside has started to peel off.

Bush TV stand close-up

If it peeled off from the left edge, it wouldn’t be very hard to glue it back together.  But unfortunately, it’s peeling from the middle out.  Either the entire table top is flexing, or stretching, causing this strange problem.  Of course, I could probably send it back to the manufacturer, but what a pain in the butt that would be.  For one thing, I don’t have the original box.  But even if I did, I’d have to take the entire thing apart.  It would be easier to just buy a different one.  I guess that’s how these companies make money.

My friend told me about mochi toppings at Pinkberry so I decided to try it out.  If you’re not familiar with mochi, it’s Japanese food often associated with New Years, made from glutinous rice, pounded and molded into round shaped pieces.  Since I love mochi, especially in my Udon noodle soup, I was looking forward to trying it out with my Pinkberry.

Well, the excitement was the end of the good news because the bad news is, mochi and Pinkberry do not mix. My friend just loves it but I hated it. It tastes like Gummy bears with no taste.  It just doesn’t match well with Pinkberry.  I think I’ll go back to having it plain with no toppings.

It was time for my regular dental checkup the other day.  As I waited in the dental waiting room, I noticed the May issue of Vanity Fair on the wall.

Why, it was the “green” issue.  In fact, their 3rd annual green issue.  I’ve been noticing how every body and his mother’s media outlet has gone “green.”  Even tech magazines have “green” issues where they talk about recycling cell phones and CRT monitors properly.

What’s ridiculous to me is how all it takes for a magazine to go “green” is to publish a few articles and make the cover green colored.

If they really wanted to go green, they should stop publishing their magazines on paper.  Some of these magazines with a large subscription base could probably save a small forest in the Amazons by publishing online only.  But of course, that’s not going to happen anytime soon.  Going green is cool as long as it doesn’t cost them money.  And since people still buy paper versions of the magazines, it makes these companies money.  If and when Amazon.com’s Kindle could provide e-magazines, it might actually save the Amazon forest.  Nice.

While I was getting my teeth cleaned, my hygienist told me that she had found vacation packages for her family on expedia.com and that it was cheaper than other online services.  The days of using travel agents are apparently over.  Good riddance.