Business

Toys “R” Us has been selling netbooks for a little while, which makes sense as small computers are great for small people. We’re all curious kids inside—and we’ll take any excuse to visit a toy store—so we headed off to the Times Square Toys “R” Us last Friday to check out what they had in stock.

Since we’ve recently been testing out the service and techie know-how of various stores’ staff (see our “Retail Salespeople Completely Ignorant About Netbooks” article for a few quotations from your favorite big box store), we had a few questions for the staff in charge of the netbook booth.

Given our past experiences with Costco, Staples, WalMart, and Best Buy, we fully expected the Toys “R” Us staff to stare at us blankly and then possibly spout off some complete nonsense about their netbooks. To our surprise, they didn’t.

SquareTrade, an independent warranty provider for electronics, released a study today on the reliability of laptops broken down by price and by manufacturer. The first part of the survey doesn’t contain any groundbreaking news: netbooks and budget laptops malfunction at a greater rate than their higher-priced counterparts. The second part is a bit more intriguing and reveals that the manufacturers on top of the market don’t necessarily make computers that last.

SquareTrade divides notebooks into three categories based on price: netbooks (under $400), entry-level ($400 – $1000) and premium (over $1000) and, using data from the laptops they cover, show that over a year netbooks have a 20% higher malfunction rate than entry level and a 40% higher rate than premium laptops. They project that over three years, 25.1% of netbooks will malfunction while only 20.6% and 18.1% of entry-level and premium notebooks will. So far netbooks fail at a greater rate, but why is that?

Yesterday the New York Times’ David Pogue called Verizon Wireless to the carpet for what he sees as another example of the company’s price gouging, this time centered around millions of users’ accidental data usage. Both Verizon customers and an employee reported that 1MB data charges (which cost $1.99) appear on bills even if the phone user hadn’t intended to download data.

“They configure the phones to have multiple easily hit keystrokes to launch ‘Get it now’ or ‘Mobile Web’—usually a single key like an arrow key. [...] We cancel these unintended requests as fast as we can hit the End key, but it doesn’t matter; they’ve told me that ANY data–even one kilobyte–is billed as 1MB. The damage is done.”

The Verizon employee says that everyone at the company is aware of this problem but won’t do anything about it because it generates hundreds of millions in revenue. Even customers who have data blocked are still hit with the fee when they accidentally hit these phone keys. They’re charged for receiving the message that data has been blocked.

We asked a Verizon Wireless representative for their side of the story. Click here for their response:

It was bound to happen. Now that netbooks have hit the mainstream, taking more than 25 percent of the laptop market, vendors have begun churning out models aimed at business users.

In an economy so unforgiving, these ultra-affordable systems (most cost under $500) could provide some relief to IT managers, who might otherwise spring for pricier systems, or postpone purchases altogether. But do netbooks translate perfectly from consumers’ living rooms to road warriors’ lives on the road? While some companies are aggressively marketing to the business crowd, others (and presumably, their customers) are cautiously awaiting a more evolved second wave.

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A few weeks ago when Apple, AT&T and Google all released the text of the information submitted to the FCC regarding the Google Voice app, Google’s letter had some redacted parts. There was some speculation about what was under those black bars, and apparently some entities filed a Freedom of Information Act request to find out. Curious onlookers no longer have to wait, as Google released the full version of the letter yesterday morning.

Why now? Michael Arrington of TechCrunch speculates that the negotiations between Apple and Google over the app broke down and Google has decided to use one of it’s “nukes” to embarrass Apple for telling a fib. Apple claimed that they had not rejected the Google Voice app and “continue to study it.” Google told the FCC that Apple did reject the app, flat out.

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Hundreds of students at 10 colleges who use Google Apps for email were affected by a bug in the system which allowed them to see emails and sometimes entire inboxes that were not their own. Google fixed the problem in a few days, but Donald Tom, director of IT services at Brown University, isn’t happy with the way Google handled the situation.

The lack of communication between Google and Brown’s CIS department caused some bad blood. Tom told the Brown Daily Herald that he’d “spoken very forcefully with the account (executive), my boss, senior administrators at Brown — including the president. (Google needs) to find a better way to communicate with us.”

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Many months after announcing its development, Microsoft has finally beta launched MS Office Live, which is officially called Office Web Apps. It’s only available to a limited number of Windows Live users right now with open availability in early 2010.

Users will have online access to a Web App version of Word, Excel, Powerpoint, and OneNote that should integrate seamlessly with their offline counterparts. This is great news for consumers and businesses — users can securely share and collaborate on documents internally or access them while traveling on a laptop or smartphone.

Obviously Microsoft already has competition from existing online office suites like Zoho and Google Docs. It’s true that many users will turn to Office Web Apps because of the familiar brand name and look. But existing users of GoogleDocs can be lured away if Microsoft’s offering proves faster than molasses-like speeds we’re used to. If Web Apps isn’t an improvement, then both companies and consumers are likely to stick with what they currently use.

The Free Software Foundation has been very vocal in their criticisms of Windows 7 ($77.49) as the official launch date approaches. Charging that Microsoft threatens user security and privacy, blocks the adoption of free standards, and acts as a monopoly, the FSF is urging businesses to forgo Win 7 in favor of free operating systems.

However, the business sector has the same objections and faces the same challenges as individuals when faced with this argument. Which Linux distribution is the best for me or my business? Will my documents and data still be easily accessible? Are the applications I need included or available? Will it work with our existing hardware? There’s also the expense of training employees and finding people who can troubleshoot problems.

These issues aren’t unique to Linux, of course. If a small business owner wanted to switch from PC to Mac, she would have the same concerns. In that scenario she’d also have to consider the cost of new hardware, whereas switching to Linux will save money and likely extend the life of existing systems. Whether it’s worth the time and energy to make it work is another story.

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When Facebook, Twitter or LiveJournal go down it’s annoying, especially when it happens all at once. The loss of status updates, quizzes, pokes and scathing critiques of the latest Gossip Girl episode leads to boredom and possibly increased workplace productivity. But when Gmail goes down the world ends in flames.

All hyperbole aside, today’s extended Gmail outage probably caused a fair amount of problems for heavy users and once again illustrates the trade-offs that come with relying too heavily on the Cloud. This incident most likely wasn’t serious enough to spark a mass migration from the service, but may increase usage of the Offline feature.

What did you do while your Gmail was out?

A disturbing bit of news for Firefox users. TrendMicro’s Malware Blog is alerting people to a piece of spyware that pretends to be an Adobe Flash Player update but is instead a plug-in that puts its own ads onto to Google’s search results page (I suppose they blend in with the legitimate ads). This malcious plug-in also records your browsing history and search queries and sends the info it gathers to a particular website.

TrendMicro reports that it seems to be spreading through forum posts at the moment. Just remember to always go to the software, plugin, or browser’s official website to download updates. Also remember that even though Firefox isn’t as big a target as Internet Explorer, it’s not completely bulletproof. You should always be on your guard when downloading.

If you have something listed as “Adobe Flash Player 0.2” in your extensions, you’ve been infected. If your current malware/spyware protection didn’t detect it, try TrojanHunter or Trend Micro Internet Security. Both companies have blogged about this problem and can erase the malware from your system.