While we all like to laugh at stupid user tricks, the real problem is a lack of communication.

no. the real problem is that the user is stupid or ignorant or both.

communication is the workaround solution, not the problem....the support person has to continually rephrase the same question in several different ways so that the user understands the question and answers honestly (while interpretation and understanding are often part of the problem, in many cases users understand exactly what you are asking and will flat out LIE - "no, i didn't do X", "yes, of course i did Y", "no, there's nothing on the screen", "no, i haven't installed or changed anything").

ditto for explanations and instructions. keep rephrasing until the user understands and is able to follow the instructions.

One thing I have learned is don't think the other person understood what you said - their frame of reference may be different and you need to consider that when communicating.

yes. i agree with your conclusion if not with your premise (and remember: quite often their frame of reference is that of a stupid or ignorant person)

a good tech support person will try to teach the user - even if you know it's futile, even if you know they'll forget it 5 seconds after the problem is solved because you've already taught the same person the exact same thing many times before.

Watch out for the tall poppy syndrome.

If you put me in a secluded environment for six months with no video games, I'm pretty #&%$ing likely to become violent.

No, he's *buying* an apartment. "Apartment" is used for ownership, apparently more often on the East Coast. (Most of us use condo for that, like you did.)

That was the point I was going for. No idea why the mods have moderated my initial post as flamebait - makes no sense. As you say, was highlighting that the specs are the same as many phones out there - im genuinely interested in how win 7 mobile plays out - but this article offers nothing at all on that. Meh, meta-moderation is a great thing ;)

The SMB market is tough, but you can definitely make a living at it (Full Disclosure: I'm a partner in a very small corporation that provides SMB outsourced IT in the US).

It requires excellent people skills (politics and feelings, arg!), technical skills, sales skills, discipline with your time, and... Well, you end up getting to wear about every hat you can imagine. So if you're talented in multiple areas and intelligent, you'll do fine!

The really tough part is laying out money for Managed Services tools, since you can't really make much of a steady living doing break/fix work anymore. If you can't afford something like Kaseya (or a less expensive Manged Services system), you're pretty much boned. Smaller-Medium organizations stick with you because you provide enterprise-class IT support at a monthly rate that is lower than a salaried in-house IT guy. Between our group of guys we have a ton of expertise that most organizations couldn't get for under six figures.

For all you guys that have worked in enterprise IT forever, just imagine your team, but pretend that everyone is competent, friendly, and working towards the same goal as you. That's a good SMB IT provider.

All digression aside, the market is there, but you have to bust your ass every single day to keep your customers and make new ones. Good luck ;).

I keep reading about those daily reboots, but I have owned 6 different windows mobile phones since 2002 and I never had such problems.

The whole point of interest in this story should be the phone's OS - win 7 mobile - as that's the novelty. Instead we get a friggin hardware rundown. So what? The text from TFA is the same as the blurb, save yourself a page click till there is some actual interesting useful information there. The video is also next to useless, half of it is looking at the phone turned off. Reminds me why I don't read engadget.

It's not the fact that it has already been possible that makes this news. Nor is it the fact that it has already been comercialized. It's the fact that not everybody knows about it and, so, it should be publicized.
That's the purpose of all news.

The main value of Microsoft Office is that it is most compatible with Microsoft Office.

"Sell out"? I'm no Microsoft enthusiast; but last I checked, it was pretty standard for chipmakers(or, in this case, ISA designers who licence to chipmakers) to cheer on pretty much any attempt, by any party, to run more software on their hardware. In this case, though, I think that Mr. ARM executive can just keep dreaming.

Microsoft's overwhelming strength, and considerable burden, is backwards compatibility. The market, especially the business market, is rotten with gross little bespoke applications(as well as big serious expensive applications, shrinkwrap and bespoke) that are win32 only and likely to remain so for years to decades. Microsoft's customers scream at them every time some change breaks something(and not just the little home users, whose whining is of limited consequence, the big thousands-of-seats guys). Even their move to 64 bit X86, once both AMD and intel had given it their stamp of approval and its future was basically assured, but with full 32bit compatibility, was slow and arduous. It isn't even past tense, really, the move is still happening.

If it were just a matter of porting the NT kernel and Windows components to ARM, I suspect that that would be in the realm of doable. It'd have to be worth their while; but doable. Dragging the third party ecosystem, which is a huge percentage of the value of Windows as a package, though would be an epic nightmare. Especially since, unlike 64 bit X86, this wouldn't be a one-way move. They'd have to be pushing for parallel offerings, ARM and X86 from all relevant vendors, for the indefinite future. Welcome to hell.

http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1115638

Steam has no SecuROM activation limits. GFWL has a 15-activation limit, but you don't need GFWL to play (you can play offline).