Friday, September 19, 2008

Best Buy In Store Pickup 2, Would the Sequel Be Better than the Original (for Once)

insights about the importance of customer experience -- it's part of the product or service and it can lead to word of mouth -- both extremely negative (as for version 1) or extremely positive (as for version 2) of Best Buy's pick up in store program. 
By: Glenn Gabe, Director of Search Strategy, MRM Worldwide
  Best Buy In Store Pickup, The Second ChanceI'm a nice guy. Really, I'm not kidding… I don't want to complain about companies, products or services. Actually, I love coming across a product or service that I like and that I believe in. And, I'm the type of person to tell everyone I know. I'm definitely a word of mouth marketing machine for the products and companies I like. It's just in my blood. So, when I tried Best Buy In Store Pickup in 2006 (on a tight deadline), and the service bombed on me, you could imagine my frustration. It wasn't a pleasant experience, it wasted my time, and as a result, I let the world know about it on my blog. As I stated in 2006, great concept, poor execution. But again, I'm a nice guy. I believe in second chances, and this is a post about the second chance I gave Best Buy this past weekend. My hope was that Best Buy fixed the flawed In Store Pickup system that wasted my time in 2006 and pushed me to write about my negative experience. Let's start at the beginning with a brief description of what frustrated me in 2006.

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Antec's open air Skeleton PC case is so breezy

Source: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/weblogsinc/engadget/~3/396230272/

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While the Acrylic Cowboy family of cases still has our hearts (okay, so maybe it's just the mascot that does it for us), Antec's latest offering is certainly worthy of praise. The aptly-dubbed Skeleton is wrongfully hailed as the "world's first open air case," but in reality, it is one of only a handful. Even with all that openness, there's still a 250mm fan up top along with a 92mm one up front, but we suppose there's no harm in being too careful. It also provides four drive bays, a layered tray design, seven expansion slots and a meager assortment of ports. You will have to provide your own power supply when the time comes, however, and you'll also have to wait a tick to find out a price and release date.

[Via BoingBoing, thanks Matt]
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HTC's Touch HD makes its video debut

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We've already heard the good word about the HTC Touch HD's performance and general excellence, but if you're like us you want something more. Specifically, something on YouTube narrated in French. That's just how we roll. Nothing in this video (embedded after the break) we haven't heard before, but make sure to tap that "high quality" button to really taste the magic.

[Thanks, Ghengis]

Continue reading HTC's Touch HD makes its video debut

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MSI teases with details on new U91 and U120

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MSI breaks silence on new Wind models
While some manufacturers are just now getting in on the netbook craze, others are rolling in the cash from their first generation and are already prepping for the launches of their second and third. Such is the case for MSI, and in an interview with Impress, Notebook Product Manager Neo Lin dropped a few interesting nuggets about the U91, an 8.9-inch successor to the U90; and the U120, a wholly new 10-inch model. Both will offer HSDPA and could receive new keyboard warmers: VIA's Nano was considered but discarded, while Intel's dual-core Atom 330 might just make the cut -- if engineers can figure out how to feed it twice the power of its predecessor without killing battery life. 2GB of memory seems to be the plan on the U120 at least, which might break it out of Microsoft's "ULPC" category, meaning Vista instead of XP Home. Yeah, Lin didn't sound too happy about that prospect either.
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Toshiba's NB100 netbook coming to the UK

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That Toshiba netbook we've seen in grainy video and semi-official fashion has gone and gotten all really-official today -- at least in the UK. The minuscule laptop -- dubbed the NB100 -- will feature an 8.9-inch, 1024 x 600 display, a 1.6GHz Atom CPU, 1GB of RAM, a 120GB hard drive, WiFi, and will be available in either Ubuntu or Windows XP flavors (you're surprised, right?). The NB100 will be offered in three colors, Cosmic Black, Champagne Gold, and Bright Silver, thus making its casing the only difference between this and every other middling, mediocre netbook on the market. Prices are set to start at £260 (or about $472), and the laptops will be on shelves this October.

[Via Engadget Spanish; Thanks, Joe]
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