In his blog “Tales from a Trading Desk,” Matt Davey poses some interesting speculation:

Will any investment bank has the guts to deploy Mono on its servers to run .NET trading software? I’m not sure. If the bank has already deployed Microsoft .NET to all its workstations why wouldn’t it just use Microsoft .NET on the server unless it explicitly wants to use a non-Windows OS which is unusual since the only banks who really deploy .NET servers are the Microsoft shop banks. However, if just one large bank moving into using Mono, the ripple effect could happen very quickly. Investment banks like to follow the leader.

We certainly follow Mono with interest; it’s a neat project, and we’re as curious as Matt about significant commercial adoption.  But the reasons to adopt it for server-side .NET grid projects are dimishing day by day.  With the release of Microsoft’s Windows Compute Cluster Server 2003 (CCS), the OS is becoming more and more capable for heavy-duty grid computing projects.

The combination of CCS, Windows desktops, any other available Windows servers, and the Digipede Network (yes, yes, I’m the president of Digipede) gives an investment bank the ability to put together a .NET grid that will blow away Linux-based grids, enabling .NET developers to create grid-enabled applications in the same familiar tools and programming paradigm they already use today.   Despite Mono’s improving capabilities, the process of creating a heterogeneous grid of Linux and Windows machines is not nearly as smooth.
I agree with Matt’s last point — the first bank that takes THIS step could cause a very significant ripple effect!

Tags: .NET, ccs, cluster, Compute Cluster Server, Compute-Cluster, Digipede, dotnet, finance, grid, investment-bank, Microsoft, Mono

If you’re a Microsoft partner, (specifically, in the Visual Studio Industry Partners, or VSIP program), and you have any sort of free offer, you owe it to yourself to check out something called an MSDN Flash.  (It is, of course, not easy to find this opportunity on the dreaded partner.microsoft.com site.  Searching on “MSDN Flash” finds a single document, completely unrelated to the process of submitting content for an MSDN Flash, but stay with me.  Go to http://www.vsipmembers.com/partner/content/msdnFlash.aspx, and fight through all the conflicting login requirements.  Once you get in, the process is simple — you  give them a title, a 20-word description, and a link, and they’ll get you into an MDSN newsletter if they like your offer.)

We did one at Digipede this week — I submitted a short description of our free Digipede Network Developer Edition, and pointed recipients at our download page.  

The results have been quite good – Monday and Tuesday, we had more than double the average daily number of visitors and pageloads on our Web site, and we’ve fulfilled at least five times the normal volume of requests for our software from architects and developers who fill out our request form.

The VSIP program has other benefits, but this one is quite tangible – a measurable uptick in customer and partner leads.

Many thanks to the VSIP and MSDN teams!

Tags: Digipede, Digipede-Network, ISV, Microsoft, MSDN, MSDN-Flash, Partnering with Microsoft, Visual-Studio, VSIP

Here are a few more observations based in part on Digipede’s experience at the Securities Industry Association (SIA) Technology Management Conference in New York this week. I posted about this earlier today; this post is less fact, more perspective.

For a small company like Digipede, a trade show can be a frightening investment. Travel is expensive, and disruptive – taking three or four people away from other activities for three or four days can throw off schedules for weeks. Booth space is pricey, the booth itself is pricey to buy or rent, shipping the booth and any other equipment and collateral is a pain, and renting a big monitor and power and internet connectivity and chairs and tables and trash cans and whatnot is vastly more expensive than it ought to be. (OK, we’re not crazy — we used other vendors’ trash cans.)

And for what? What will we demonstrate? Will anyone care? Who will attend? Will there by any potential customers, or just “vendors talking to vendors?” Will the press be there? If so, will they notice us? Is it really worth it?

Having represented small to medium growth companies at trade shows for 15+ years, John’s One and Only Rule of Trade Shows is as follows:

Work it, or it’s not worth it.

I see firms put up a nice booth, and then wait for a stream of juicy leads to walk up and present themselves. They staff the booth with folks who sit around and say “there’s no traffic” or “there are no buyers at this show” or “we should get a better location next year” or more likely “what time does the bar open?” Losers. I love it when these folks ask me why so many people are talking about us.

Any startup that commits to a trade show had better work hard to make the investment pay off. I’ll give you a few examples of what we did before, during, and after this particular event to make it pay off for us.

We decided on a message right up front, before we even made a final commitment to go. Our message was “extend the cluster.” We wanted to take full advantage of the release of Microsoft’s new Windows Compute Cluster Server 2003, which was to be demonstrated to the financial community at this event. We decided to emphasize the compatibility of our own product, the Digipede Network, with CCS, and to show how we add value to this new offering from Microsoft. We knew Microsoft would be spending big bucks to unveil their new product to an important market, and we wanted to leverage our own puny investment with theirs.

As a result of my incessant whining and begging and pleading and favor-cashing, Microsoft provided us with a kiosk in their large booth on the main exhibit floor. (I made the first request for this a full year in advance, and was still begging right up until the last slot was filled.) We got our own little booth, too, where we could do more in-depth demonstrations.

There were 11 Microsoft partners in their booth, none of whom compete with us, so during the introductions before the exhibits opened, I promised the other Microsoft partners that we’d refer relevant leads to them and hoped they’d do the same for us. By the end of the show, that simple step generated several additional visits to our booth, and one qualified sales prospect – someone who would never have found us otherwise.

We wrote special demonstrations that would appeal not only to the potential customers at the event, but to our partners Microsoft and HP. We helped our contact at Microsoft load and test those demos on a new cluster, and debugged interactions among our own product, the just-released Windows Compute Cluster Server, and the not-yet-released Excel 2007. We arranged a pre-event press release with authorized quotes from both Microsoft and HP (try herding cats THAT size some time). We got into the Microsoft show press release. We arranged to be not only present, but featured prominently, in the presentations given by Microsoft’s Financial Services Group in the special Microsoft / HP break room. We chased the press around for a week before the show, and a few ended up at the reception Microsoft threw on Wednesday evening. We ended up with favorable coverage.

We created new collateral, including a new white paper, a new brochure, a new press kit, and a new datasheet describing how you can buy our product bundled with an HP cluster (OK, it’s pretty loosely bundled, but it’s progress!). We burned a zillion mini-CDs with everything an architect or developer needs to get started with our software — a complete installation of the Digipede Network Developer Edition (free!), full documentation, informative videos, white papers, and so on. We brought seven out of a zillion back home with us. (Contact me if you want one!)

Naturally, we gave demonstrations in our own booth — but we also flagged people down in the Microsoft booth, HP booth, and anywhere else we could find them to entice them up to our inconveniently-located booth. We knew we had a crappy location, so before we left Oakland we printed up stickers to put on the literature we handed out from the Microsoft and HP booths — “come see us in Booth 4506 on the third floor.” People did.

We found time to take an important client out to dinner, to meet with a prospective future employee, to pitch to a new prospective investor, to line up a new consulting partner, to identify several likely ISV partners, and to check out our competitors’ offerings. We used the show’s buggy lead retreival system, annotated each lead with specific information on the spot, expanded those annotations on the plane in Excel on the way home, coaxed all of the leads into our CRM system the minute we got back to the office, and started banging away at those leads right away — ninety-nine of them, I believe, excluding the usual recruiters, outsourcers, marketing consultants, foreign-subsidiary-creation facilitators, life coaches, and the like. And it still might not be enough.

So a trade show is like anything else — it’s an opportunity, and you get out of it only what you put in. Many thanks to our friends at Microsoft and HP, who provided generous support and exposure, and gave us every chance to succeed.

Was it worth it? Ask me in six months.

Tags: ccs, Compute Cluster Server, conference, Digipede, finance, HP, Microsoft, SIA, trade-show

Well, it looks as though the Linux community has noticed Microsoft’s entry into the HPC market. 

In reviewing Tom Groenfeldt’s financial services blog on MSDN, I ran across a comment that led back to a longer post by Brad Chamberlin, expressing his incredulity that anyone could take an HPC offering from Microsoft seriously.  Brad’s comments are typical of the Linux community’s response to Microsoft’s Windows Compute Cluster Server 2003 (CCS), and they are as predictable as they are one-sided. 

What a joke, how can you “take back” market share you never had in the first place.  

Besides that, $469/node vs. FREE????

Certainly, Brad is right in pointing out (pedantically) that Microsoft can’t “take back” market share that it never had.  As this is the first dedicated HPC product Microsoft has launched, Brad knows this is a bit of sloppy reporting by the original source he cites.  Brad provides an analysis of the respected Top500 list, and concludes:

So as you can see with this little jog through the top500 list Microsoft Windows market share in HPC is NILL, NOTHING, NONE, NON-EXISTANT, NADA. You can’t take back something you never had!

I am sure with it’s $469/node price tag Linux has a lot to be worried about. I wouldn’t be surprised if by 2007 Windows holds 2, maybe 3, whole spots on the top500 list.

But if Brad is so convinced of the future market share to be held by the Windows OS in HPC, then why choose the Top500 at all?  As a measure of market share, this is specious; the Top500 list, by definition, rounds to approximately zero percent of the market for high performance computing.  Also, it represents the zero percent that Microsoft specifically identified as outside its target market. 

With Windows Compute Cluster Server 2003, Microsoft is going after not the Top500, but the next 500,000.  Microsoft has been very open about this, saying they would bring HPC into the mainstream.  And if the HPC market in 2007 is still mostly Linux, well, they’ll be around in 2008 and 2009 and 2010 to keep bashing away. 

Brad’s point about Linux being “FREE” is also the same simplistic argument that’s been beaten to death — in most enterprises, a supported version of Linux is not free, and the OS cost is a tiny fraction of the total cost of ownership, so it’s really about value delivered, blah blah blah.  So the comment “$469/node vs. FREE????” adds nothing new — yes, Brad, at $469/node, there are definitely businesses that will want the Active Directory integration, ease of deployment, compatibility with a wide range of Windows software, and other nice features that Microsoft has put into CCS. 

The battlefield is littered with folks as complacent as Brad who underestimated Microsoft’s persistence, resources, and market savvy.  While CCS has some rough edges, it’s better than most “1.0″ products, and it’s only going to get better.  When Microsoft enters a market, they don’t always dominate, but it certainly does not pay to be complacent.   Rather than dismiss CCS, let’s watch and see what Microsoft and its partners can do in this market.  Brad may be surprised.

Tags: ccs, Compute Cluster Server, finance, HPC, Linux, Microsoft, Top500

Digipede’s trip to the Securities Industry Association (SIA) Technology Management Conference went better than planned. With a presence in four locations (the Digipede booth, Microsoft booth, HP booth, and the Microsoft / HP “break room”), we were rocking pretty hard for three days straight.

If you have not been to this event, it is unlike any other trade show I’ve ever attended. Located entirely within the New York Hilton at 1335 Avenue of the Americas (between 53rd and 54th Streets), there are 7000+ attendees, and apparently an equal number of booths. There are booths in the ballrooms, booths in the exhibit halls, booths in the hallways, booths in the pretty much every location but the restrooms (and they crowd right up against those, too). In the exhibit halls, the feel is pretty much “big trade show;” in the hallways, the feel is more “Middle-eastern street market,” or, during peak hours, “mosh pit.”

Many of the major vendors have realized that the “mosh pit” environment is not optimal for a meaningful exchange of information, and have reserved meeting rooms on a separate floor of the hotel for more in-depth demonstrations and discussions. Microsoft and HP used such a room to good effect, with demonstrations of the Digipede Network running on top of the new Windows Compute Cluster Server 2003 and HP Proliant hardware. Those demos generated lots of attention, such as Darrell Taft’s excellent eWeek article yesterday.

In addition to running demonstrations featuring the Digipede Network, Microsoft also lured visitors to their demo room with free copies of Samir Jayaswal and Yogesh Shetty’s excellent book, Practical .NET for Financial Markets. Yogesh, who was on hand to sign the book and discuss any .NET issue under the sun, is a great resource. I’ve plugged this book before, but if you’re in finance, or a .NET developer in any other field, let me repeat — check it out!

Other grid vendors seemed to have active presence here as well. In addition to the usual suspects like Platform Computing and DataSynapse, GigaSpaces looked like they had some interesting offerings, as did Scientific Computing Associates. I didn’t have time to check out some others, but there were also hardware vendors, integrators, and consultants all talking about grid projects. I’m told that there was a conference session in which somebody high up at Merrill Lynch identified grid computing as the Number One IT priority. That may be an exaggeration, but it’s clearly an indication of increased emphasis.

The message from this show, loud and clear, was that the securities industry’s appetite for grid computing is increasing, that the number of applications for which grid is applicable is increasing steadily, and that Microsoft is making good headway in this market. It’s going to be an exciting summer.

Tags: cluster, Compute Cluster Server, DataSynapse, Digipede, finance, Gigaspaces, grid-computing, HP, Microsoft, platform-computing, Scientific-Computing-Associates, SIA

I’m at the Securities Industry Association (SIA) Technology Management Conference at the Hilton in midtown Manhattan this week.  I took the redeye on JetBlue last night to make it to a meeting that’s been canceled, I’ve been ineptly “helping” Dan and Nathan set up the Digipede booth (#4506), and have not slept in exactly 24 hours, but I’m STILL in a great mood because I LOVE NEW YORK! 

Born and raised in White Plains, NY (about 30 miles north of my current location), I came into the City many times as a kid.  It still excites me today.  I’m a fully naturalized Californian by now (marrying a California girl can have that effect), but there’s an energy here that does not compare to anywhere else I’ve been. 

We’re looking to make a bit of a splash here this week.  You can see our press release for some of what we’ll be showing, but if you’re in town, come see us in Booth 4506, or in the Microsoft booth (2211), or the HP booth (3106), or in the Microsoft / HP “break room” where we’ll be demonstrating the first .NET-based grid-enabled financial applications running on the new Microsoft Windows Compute Cluster Server 2003 (CCS). 

As Dan pointed out in a recent post, CCS had it’s RTM announcement and official unveiling at TechEd last week.  Kyril Faenov and his HPC team emphasized many important features and benefits of this exciting new product before the Microsoft faithful.  This week, we’ll take CCS into a less friendly environment, where Linux and UNIX still occupy much of the market.  We’ll emphasize many of the same points the HPC team did — plus a few more of our own.  We’ll show how to make CCS a key part of a larger grid, incorporating the rest of your Windows desktop and server resources into an unbeatable high-performance, high-throughput computing system — as financial services companies need.

But more on that later; I’ll also comment on the other developments I see here over the next few days.

Tags: .NET, ccs, cluster, Compute Cluster Server, Digipede, dotnet, finance, grid, HP, Microsoft, SIA

George Laszlo has responded to my comments about about his earlier post, regarding the Microsoft BioIT Alliance.  It’s easier to just reproduce most of his response here:

First, please note that my primary concern is the welfare of the client who buys hardware, software or services from any vendor. My experience tells me that while vendors always have good intentions, they are primarily concerned with selling whatever they have and that may or may not be in the best interest of the buyer.

Don’t get me wrong, the tools that the BioIT Alliance is building and selling may be great but that does not mean that either the Alliance or the individual vendors will stand behind them. If critical mass is not achieved, it is likely that the larger vendors will simply pull out. You know as well as I do that what a small company may think of as financially viable and even enviable, a larger company may consider an unsupportable rounding error. I can cite you many examples of this and would be happy to do so in a conversation with you. I am not, however, going to put it in a blog since it’s not my intention to hurt any given vendor.

Related to the latter point, my intention is to make the buyer aware of the pros and the cons of making a buy decision. I have seen them go down the wrong track countless times and see more failures than successes when it comes to application software. This is why it’s important that anyone evaluating any offering from the BioIT Alliance proceed with caution and ask themselves not only what benefits will be delivered by the solution but also what the short and long-term risks are to the organization. A Microsoft-centric focus, in my mind, is one of those risks.

So, my post is not about the quality of the relationship between Microsoft and its partners (a topic that you also discuss in other posts on your blog) but the potential effects of the BioIT Alliance on its customers.

P.S. - On my comment about disappointing the Alliance members, no amount of interviewing on my part would have been of use in this case. The Alliance is simply too new to see what the relationships will be like in two, four or six years. And that is the time horizon that is relevant for the members and their clients.

If Mr. Laszlo’s point is that he can’t tell if anything will succeed for two, four, or six years, then fine. I think every member of the BioIT Alliance would agree that this is a long road, and the success of this effort will be measured years from now. If Mr. Laszlo wants to advise his clients to “proceed with caution,” that’s certainly fine advice. No one (Microsoft included, I suspect) expects customers to jump up and buy products based on the announcement of a new alliance alone.

But if a Microsoft-centric focus is a risk, so is an IBM-centric focus, and so is a “roll-your-own” focus, and so is a “best-of-breed” focus, and so on. The risks of a Microsoft-centric focus have proven time and again in other industries to be lower than other risks, and to be outweighed by the benefits delivered. I agree that life sciences customers have made many wrong turns in buying application software, and in fact see improvements in this area as a real market opportunity. In my view, the BioIT Alliance announcement provided the market with a statement of intent from Microsoft and its partners. The statement says to the market — here we come. This is good news for the clients Mr. Laszlo seems intent on protecting — more choice, from an industry leader with lots of staying power and lots of partners.

Mr. Laszlo’s implication that BioIT Alliance vendors may not stand behind products is just old-school FUD. Because the alliance is new? By that logic, nothing new should ever happen, because we can’t trust new things. Because Microsoft is too big, and will get bored with this tiny little market? By that logic, no one should buy from big companies because we can’t trust big things.

I think Mr. Laszlo may need to look more closely at the capabilities of the Microsoft partner community, not just Microsoft itself. Microsoft is a platform company, and it builds fine platform products. Microsoft partners shape and adapt those products for different markets, and provide feedback to Microsoft about how best to address specific market needs. This model serves customers well in numerous markets, and I have confidence it will serve customers well in the life sciences market as well.

Tags: BioIT-Alliance, Life-Sciences, Microsoft, partner, Partnering, Partnering with Microsoft

I just posted some advice about the benefits of partnering with Microsoft.  Those benefits are real.  Now, for an equally real rant.

It’s not until you’re fully engaged with Microsoft, and you are in fact working like hell to make the most of that relationship, that you realize just how fully maddening their Partner Web site really is.  The company that brought us Passport clearly has no idea how to use it.  You’re logged in, but oops, now you’re not, better log in again.  You’re logged in, but THIS part of the site wants you to create a new (non-Passport) login and password.  I have created and forgotten more IDs and passwords on the Microsoft Partner site than on all other Web sites on Planet Earth combined.  I have lost more data entered by myself and others on our staff on the Microsoft Partner site than I can even begin to list. 

Navigation changes are implemented capriciously, so what I finally found three months ago can never be found again.  Links do not connect.  Search tools do not find.  Hands down, the best way to find anything on the site is to go to Advanced Search in Google, put in your search terms, and enter the domain partner.microsoft.com. 

You enter information about your products and services, and it is never seen again.  Oh, you wanted that information in Windows Marketplace?  That’s different.  Enter it again.  Oh, you wanted it in Channel Builder?  No, no, you don’t understand, that’s different.  Enter it again.  Oh, you didn’t say you wanted to enter a Solution so the field can see it.  Enter it again.  Oh, now you’re in the VSIP area — enter it again.  Oh, a specific vertical market?  Better enter it again.  Any way to tell if anyone has ever seen what you entered?  Nope.  It’s an act of faith.  Ever made a sale to anyone who found us there?  Nope.  Found a channel partner?  Nope.  Had a serious inquiry?  Nope.  A casual inquiry?  Nope.

Earlier this year I got so stuck in a loop in the Parnter site that I actually had to pay twice to re-join the Microsoft Gold Certified Partner program — that’s $1,576.88 (with tax) on my personal American Express card, twice, and the only way to get it back was to contest the charge through American Express (and yes, that was the Microsoft-recommended solution after a phone call to my Partner Account Manager (who is awesome), and the Partner Web Site Team, and Accounting and on and on).  Yes, I got my money back, as I knew I eventually would, but come on.

So I need to amend my earlier comment — the more work you  put into a relationship with Microsoft PEOPLE, the more you gain.  The more work you put into the Microsoft Partner Web Site, the more time you waste.  You need to accept the fact that it’s a one-way channel for information FROM Microsoft TO you, the partner; for that, it can be useful.  For anything you want Microsoft to know about you as an ISV partner — forget it.  Pick up the phone.

Oh — And WHILE I WAS WRITING THIS, my partner Robert W. Anderson, Digipede CTO and 18-year veteren of Microsoft partnering adventures, came over to me and explained that for each of the three “Ascend” programs in which we participate (Ascend for Longorn Server, Ascend for Vista, and Ascend for Office 2007, don’t ask), we’ve received an invitation to a corresponding replacement “Airframe” program, the benefits of which appear to be that we get to re-enter all our information for products, release dates, etc. AGAIN.  And they promised him a “cool gift” in exchange for signing up.  New login and password?  You betcha.

This is madness. 

Microsoft MAKES the database products and Web servers that should make such practices obsolete.  I’m not even talking about “Microsoft,” I’m talking about a single part of Microsoft that is dedicated to working directly with partners.  Fixing this would not require Microsoft Legal to talk to Microsoft Product Development or Microsoft HR to talk to Microsoft Research.  Fixing this would require the Microsoft Partner Program to talk to itself. 

The Microsoft Partner Programs are really, good — well conceived, well designed, well implemented (excluding the Web site).  The PEOPLE I have met in the Microsoft Partner Programs are really, really good.  How they can possibly go back to their offices and specify the electronic systems they do is absolutely beyond me.

I’ve accepted an invitation at the Microsoft Worldwide Partner conference in Boston next month.  Guess what I hope the topic is?

Tags: gold-certified, ISV, Microsoft, partner

Don Dodge and Cliff Reeves of the Microsoft Emerging Business Team (EBT) continue to crank out good advice about partnering with Microsoft, especially for ISV startups – but I think it’s time for some of us ISV startup partners to weigh in, too. 

“Partnering with Microsoft” is an easy thing to say, and, superficially, an easy thing to do.  The basic decision process for an entrepreneur should be:  Am I developing at least in part for the Microsoft platform?  If no, go away.  If yes, become a Microsoft Registered Partner.  There’s a mildly maddening Web enrollment process, then you’re done.   Then join Empower; it’s the “starter” program for ISVs, and you can get a little bit of software and some other excellent resources for $375.  If you’re on the Microsoft platform, it’s the best bargain in town. 

Then if you’re serious, if you’re using Microsoft’s development tools, if your main target is Windows, you should become a Certified Partner.  This requires a few more bucks and a bit of work on certifications, plus some additional maddening Microsoft Partner Web Site experiences, but you’ll get through it.  Then you get all kinds of goodies.  Microsoft showers you with software, and newsletters, and meeting notices, and training offers, and so on.  The software alone is worth vastly more than the price of the program.  So sign up.

But do more than sign up.  One of the benefits you gain is access to early releases of upcoming Microsoft products — pay attention to these!  Cliff tells a chilling tale:

Just this week, a VC contacted us to get an opinion on a company (let’s call them X) looking for funding. The company had a great product and had made a big sale at Global 50 company. Unfortunately, some of the features overlapped what we have announced for the next release of Office — Office 2007. Our partners have been getting code drops and detailed product plans on Office 2007 for a year or more, but X hadn’t joined our partner programs and hadn’t realised the overlap.

So sign up — AND pay attention, or you’re quite likely to get hit by a train.  (Seriously — Cliff is right.  Some team, somewhere at Microsoft — right now – is working on something much too close to your idea for your own good.  It is YOUR job to find out who it is, and be nice to them, and study their roadmap.  And duck.  Find a way to add value to what they’re doing, or prepare for trouble.)

But that’s the easy part.  The big decision for a startup ISV is this.  Are you joining the Microsoft partner community to get some free / discounted stuff (and to watch out for the occassional oncoming train), or are you partnering with Microsoft?  If you’re really going to partner with Microsoft, then you have to work like hell to get attention (guess what I’m doing right now?), work like hell to bring value to Microsoft, and work like hell to extract value in return. 

Partnering with Microsoft is like any other business relationship — what you get out of it is proportional to what you put in.  The people at Microsoft are like people everywhere — eager to help those who are engaged, and mostly too busy to bother with those who are not.  When I ask for help from someone at Microsoft, I might get it, and I might not.  But when I take the time to understand who that person is, what he or she can gain from working with us, and how I can help them — we’re off to the races. 

If you want to really engage with Microsoft, and really reap the benefits that they can provide — in terms of access to customers, access to product roadmaps, access to other partners at the right levels, and more — then it’s worth becoming a Gold Certified Partner.  The benefits of being a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner are nominally not all that different from being a Certified Partner — but the signal it sends internally at Microsoft is powerful.  You get preferential treatment, which is better than free software any day.

If you “go for the Gold” AND work like hell, there’s no better partner in the tech world than Microsoft.  While partnering with Microsoft sounds easy, it is actually only easy at a superficial level.  Do the easy stuff, because it’s useful.  But do the hard stuff, and then you’ve really got something.

And lest you think I’m just a pawn of the Microsoft machine, please read the NEXT post, too!

Tags: Emerging-Business-Team, entrepreneur, gold-certified, ISV, Microsoft, partner, startup

I have a better-than-usual relationship with my current laptop — a Dell Lattitude D610.  It’s my one work machine — at the office, at home, on planes, at conferences, etc.  It’s a year-old, right-down-the-middle combination of fast-enough and light-enough and nice-enough-screen to be a good place to put my work life.  It’s been very reliable (ok, I guess that proves I’m not superstitious), and on top of all that it has had very, very good battery life.

But one way it likes to achieve that very, very good battery life is to dim the screen instantly whenever it is unplugged from AC power.  This is fine in the office – if I care, I can just move my power cord — but sometimes annoying on planes, and often annoying at home.  Today, for example, I took it outside while I was half-watching my kids play in the pool — and of course, it’s too dim to see very well, even in the shade, on a bright sunny day. 

On at least four or five occassions in the past, I have looked in the control panel for power management, and the control panel for display, and deep inside device manager, and all over the place without finding a way to control screen brightness.  So today I finally asked for help.  I Googled a few combinations of D610, power, dim, brightness, battery, etc., and in a minute or two found an answer on a Dell forum:  power all the way down, restart, go to the bios, jump through a bunch of hoops, and voila.  “Stupid that you have to do all that,” thought I, “but I suppose . . .” 

As I was contemplating the number of programs I had open, weighing all the work I’d have to save before shutting down, and the stupidity of having to go through this nonsense just to control screen brightness, I chanced to see the NEXT entry in the same forum:

Alternatively, you can also change the brightness while the system is up and running by pressing the Fn and up or down arrow.  This will change the brightness on both AC and battery power, depending on what the system is running on at the time you adjust it.

And sure enough, there on my up and down arrow keys are little blue icons that look for all the world like “brightness up” and “brightness down” symbols, right where they’ve been for a year.  So not only does it pay to ask for help, it pays to listen to more than one answer. 

I have been thinking about what this means about how we as designers of products hit the right balance of usability, documentation, feature set, and so on — not to mention how we as users of products decide where to spend our efforts on improving our own experiences with a product (or not). 

But mostly, I’m glad it’s easy to ask for help, I’m glad there are folks out there willing to provide help, and I should quit being so bullheaded and take advantage of the resources available. 

And — look for more outdoor posting ahead.

Tags: battery, brightness, D610, Dell, dim, laptop, Lattitude, screen, Usability