I received my copy of Windows 7 today and have it installed on an old HP Pavilion ZE4900 laptop. Install was painless, found all devices but sound and modem. Display is less than what is needed so Aero does not work but the machine is very fast. I had Ubuntu desktop loaded and it is as fast as that was. I have an overall score of One, so the hardware definitely leaves a lot to be desired. But XP barely ran on this thing anymore and Vista was out of the question. Chose Win7 Business x32.

I have a newer laptop running Vista x64 that I will upgrade soon. Until I have time to get to it I will keep testing this old thing. So far so good, much faster.

I will keep you posted on the progress.

Since I am blogging more now, I thought I would talk about the benefits of actually reading blogs. If you are like I am and have limited time to read news, especially news from blog feeds, an RSS feed reader can be invaluable.

RSS readers go out to all the various sites that you read blogs on and aggregate them all together into one nice neat place for you. There are free RSS readers all over the place. I will only be reporting on a few of these, but most of them work similarly, so if you apply these principles to any free reader, they will probably still work out for you.

First off, let's start with the obvious. A tool that most everyone has in their arsenal: Internet Explorer browser (Firefox works this way too, but they have nice plugins available as well)

Internet Explorer 7 (aka IE) and above are equipped with an RSS reader, courtesy of Microsoft. Let's take a look.

  Click the star and choose FEEDS 

Here you can look at Microsoft feeds, or add your own. To easily add more feeds, when you go to a blog site that is RSS syndicated (see the orange logo next to Feeds to make identifying them easy), click their RSS icon and click "Subscribe to this feed".

  Click and you are done  

The main problem I find with using IE is that you have to open IE and then open the Feeds, then make them update for you. Not too automatic, huh?

Another common tool we can use that is a little more automatic is Outlook 2007. RSS readers were not included in the older versions of Outlook, so if you are a little behind in technology, you are out of luck here. Outlook has some good help info within itself, so I will not go into how to do it here for the sake of brevity, but I will say that feeds update regularly, like email coming in, so once you read a feed, the folder link is no longer bold and as such, you know there are no new posts for that feed.

  See that some folders are bold and some are not.

If you don't have Outlook 2007, no worries. Just Google for a free RSS reader (I have no preferences here) and follow their instructions for installation.

Mobile devices are all the rage. Smart phones, iPhones, iPods, you name it. If you are an ultra-mobile type of person, look into getting an RSS reader for your device. I have one on my iPod touch, and anytime I am in a WiFi spot I can read my feeds and keep up with the latest news. I am looking into getting one installed on my WinMo phone, but it has not happened yet.

If you like staying current on news and are short on time, RSS readers can return lots of time wasted on surfing back to your day. Enjoy.

No, that's not "Poor Customer Service Skills", it's "Poor Customer Service Kills".

Poor CS will kill any company, especially considering that we are living in the age of service industries. Think about it...20 years ago we, as a Nation, created mostly products. Now, most of our 'product' is service. What happens to companies when their 'product' sucks? You guessed it, they collapse. And if your service element is poor, you die.

I was raised in the service industry, therefore I can spot 'em a mile away. So naturally when I see a person or company that sucks, I call them out...ruthlessly.

Join me, right here, for a periodic look at some of the Good, the Bad and the Ugly in the service industry. I will highlight some of my daily experiences right here so you can check yourself from time to time. If you are stellar, I will blog it. If you suck, well, of course I will blog it. From CEOs to wait staff, all included here. Click the RSS link and be notified in your favorite reader when I post.

Thanks,
and Smile!

Welcome to the new blog. I hope you will find what I offer here to be interesting and of use. Click the RSS button and syndicate us so you can keep up to date with the lastest changes here.

Thanks.