January 30, 2007

There were 3 posts published on January 30, 2007 (this is page 1 of 1).

Cheap Thoughts: Phone Booths

Its been a year since Bellsouth (er, SBC. Er, AT&T) and other phone companies got out of the payphone business, ripping their phones off walls and telephone poles. Its been even longer since telephone booths were ubiquitous. I recall the funny scene in Superman when Clark Kent races to the nearest payphone only to find it had no booth!

Nowadays people carry their phones with them. Geeks like me work in cubicles where every conversation is shared amongst coworkers. If you want to make a private call, you often have to take it outside. On days like this when its 25 degrees outside, that’s not very convenient.

I think for these reasons the phone booth might make a comeback. Put a few near your cube farm and not only will you make the caller happy, you’ll make all his or her coworkers happy, too, since they won’t have to be privy to the conversation. I’ve used the booths at bars such as the Carolina Ale House and 42nd Street Oyster Bar. They make it much easier to hear the call and keep the call from disturbing others.

Do any companies currently make phone booths?

Bill Gates Signature Vista? I’ll Pass

I was amused to find that retailers are selling a “Bill Gates Signature” version of Microsoft Vista. For a premium of more than a hundred dollars, one can buy Microsoft’s DRM-crippled operating system with Bill Gates’s scribbling on the box.

So what’s wrong with this picture? For starters, who would want Bill Gates’s signature? Yeah, as a young 14 year old geek I admired the brash, young 30-something geek that Bill Gates once was. Somewhere along the line he turned evil and that was that. In the words of the great Chapel Hill philosopher Mojo Nixon, Bill Gates has no Elvis in him. I don’t think I’m alone in saying the Cult of Bill Gates was short-lived if not stillborn.

Now a copy of OS X autographed by Steve Jobs (or even better, the God of Geekdom Steve Wozniak), now you’re talking. I’d pony up a few extra bucks for that! It’s because Jobs and Woz have something all of Gates’s billions can’t buy him: Hipness. Legions of devoted, fanatical customers. Great products that Just Work. Ingenuity. These guys don’t just spout the word “innovate” like Bill does, they live it.

OS X has its own share of DRM crippleware, though for the most part Apple still provides what its customers want, not what Hollywood thinks its customers want. At any rate, OS X users seem to be smart enough to work around any roadblocks Apple may put in front of them.

If Microsoft Vista is where things are headed, I’ll make The Switch to OS X, or perhaps stick with my trusty Linux.

Linux may be free, but Linus Torvolds’s signature is still worth more than Bill Gates’s.