I remember now why I wrote the previous entry. I was reading this article about how people were disappointed with their HDTV purchases. I saw this one coming a couple of years ago when I bought an HDTV.
See, the setup was just too complicated for it to work on a product sold at WalMart. Aside from plugging the TV in and the now typical RCA audio cables (white and red) instead of the single yellow video cable to a likely socket on the back of the TV, now there are three colored component video cables. And the more modern TVs have usually 3-5 input sets on their back panels. My HDTV has two sets of component inputs. One won't provide the appropriate high resolution, it's simply a component video input line for marginally better quality. The other is the HD input. I imagine someone futzing around in the dark behind their TV set trying to figure out where to plug in 5 cables and finding the whole thing very confusing and plugging in the cables into the wrong place.
I think HDMI is meant to solve this (single A/V connector... a nice Apple-like move) but not sure if all new TVs especially the cheap ones have this?
Anyway what spawned the printer rant previously was a comment on the blog linked above by someone who works at a store where they sell these things basically saying consumers are idiots. Well that's not true. They just have better things to do than worry about how to set up over complicated technology or deal with useless sales staff. They would rather be watching the TV. When you build products, you need to keep in mind the intended function of the device, and focus on that, making sure all of the setup is as simple as possible since that detracts from the experience. People who work at stores like Best Buy etc need to make sure their customers know what's coming, and adequately prepare them for it, not bitch them out because they don't know what to make of all the cables. The answer is not white glove delivery and setup. TVs never used to be hard to set up, and the switch to higher res should not mean that they need to be now.
I just bought a small monochrome laser printer for our office. The experience (probably predictably) more painful than it should have been. Here are my notes:
- There are just far too many printers on the market. This is probably true of any consumer electronic device. Anyway it meant that searching through the product reviews and listings on CNet was difficult, so I anchored on products receiving high scores or their "Editor's Choice" ranking. This led me quickly to the HP LaserJet 1320. Unfortunately the review was done in 2004, and the site did not say the product had been discontinued, and the entry still was far too easy to stumble upon in their listings.
- I went to HP's site and found very many printers listed of all kinds, without a real attempt to break down into categories of use - for instance I don't really need the high duty cycle office printers, but I do want high performance and duplexing. The site listed the 1320 amongst other printers, making no mention that it had been discontinued other than not listing a price and offering the suggestion to "see retail stores for pricing."
- Since we wanted the printer soon, rather than wait and do an online order I thought I'd try and find a local store nearby. I've come to hate big box electronics stores and feared it wouldn't go well. I talked to Best Buy in Mountain View and Fry's in Palo Alto. Best Buy said their Santana Row store had one unit. A heavily accented man at Fry's said they had one. I drove to Fry's since it was closer. When I got there they didn't have any. It's one of those moments where you know you should have expected it, but at the same time you are just utterly disgusted at the fact that these disinterested twits can't even do simple tasks correctly. I went down to Santana Row but the unit they had had been returned, was in a battered box and made no claim of the duplexing functionality I sought. I drove to Fry's in Sunnyvale and once again had the most unpleasant experience with a salesperson who when I asked if they had any of a certain model on display just said "I don't know" and then ignored me. No walking 20 feet to check, no, that would be too difficult.
In my view, the reason to shop for electronics at a store rather than online is for that "instant gratification" sense and ideally for the sales staff to know something about their product lines, the pros and cons of each model, etc. You know, back in the old days people didn't used to have to do lots of research to buy things. They could go into a store and talk to a salesperson who would explain (aside from the standard bias towards the more expensive and more profit-making products!) These days though it seems the consumer electronics industry is devoid of this pride of salesmanship. I get the sense that I could go in there and figure out more about the different products by poking at them and reading the documentation in 5 minutes than the staff there already know. What's even worse is that they lack the ability to learn or problem solve and figure out the answers to customer's questions.
I feel like I put a reasonable amount of effort into this transaction - I did some cursory research online. You have to understand, I don't care that much about printers and purchasing them to want to expend a lot of bother. I would happily spend more money at a physical store if the experience would remove the need for tiring online research.
In summary, my thoughts are basically that CNet and HP should improve their websites so that it's easier to find the relevant products. If I were an engineer at HP working on the 2955dtx I'd be ticked off that the product was being advertised with little distinction alongside the completely different and wholly inappropriate 4933pld. And the retailers, they need to improve their displays and include product rankings, and find a way to give their staff the incentive to do actual work, since right now they just seem to stand around.
By the way we ended up with a HP LaserJet 2015dn. I have no idea how well it rates. It has worked so far and is exceptionally fast especially for the first page which I like. The Mac driver is buggy though and duplexing doesn't seem to work nor do printing page ranges, so I need to figure those out.
