The Buzz

For those of us who have stuck with Microsoft through the initial pains of Vista to find a competent, but mediocre offering, or hung on to XP for dear life waiting for something new, a decision has arrived: whether to upgrade to Windows 7, which will come out later this year.  The reviews have been largely positive, and many reports show that certain interface tweaks give the appearance of a faster operating system.

Today, the upgrade pricing was announced.  In a gift to users, Microsoft has priced the home version of 7, for those who are currently using either XP or Vista, the upgrade price is $49, for a limited time and/or for a limited number of copies.

The traditional logic is that most people shouldn’t buy an upgrade to an operating system for a machine they already have; the upgrade will traditionally be slower, more bloated and potentially less usable due to it being more demanding on hardware.  Indeed, it’s usually smart to wait until buying a new machine to get the latest from the OS maker.

Microsoft returned to the drawing board, doing a top-to-bottom fine tuning of Vista, with some new fit and finish, that brings Windows 7 into a class of its own.  More stable and secure than XP but faster than Vista, with some additional features thrown in, Windows 7 seems as much a “must get” as Office 2007 did when the revolutionary ribbon menu interface was introduced. In both cases some smart enhancements and evolutionary changes, rather than a feature dump, made all the difference.

Windows 7, with all its improvements, is the first time an OS looks good enough to simply purchase the upgrade.  The beta process ran very smoothly, and the software is ready for prime time.  With such a low price (although the deal is only available until July 11),  it may be the best chance of getting the upgrade short of buying a new machine.

Coincidentally, Mac users are facing the same type of decision right now, as Snow Leopard, which is a fit-and-finish overhaul of Leopard, is available for $29 for Leopard owners, Apple announced earlier this month.

My colleague, Jamie, posted the other day about Facebook’s 500,000 username sign-ups in around 15 minutes.  While that’s an impressive number in its own right, that’s like the state of Connecticut saying it’s going to spend $500,000 on education next year.  It’s a big number, until you realize it’s actually a small drop in a big pond.

Estimates of the number of accounts vary, but it’s widely believed that the site has over 200,000,000 user accounts by now.  As such, 500,000 isn’t even one percent of the userbase, and even assuming the momentum built over a couple of days, there wasn’t exactly a land grab.

I propose instead that Facebook users are starting to hit the same type of entropy that MySpace has faced for a few years now.

Since Facebook’s launch in 2003, it’s slowly gone from order to disorder.  When it launched, it was a closed system that initially only allowed students from certain colleges to come in.  That, of course, is where the initial Facebook metaphor came from; that of the books handed out by colleges to help you know who your fellow classmates are.

As the site began running out of colleges, it began to allow in high school students.  Then it opened up registrations worldwide.  Over time they’ve made public who’s in the directory, and so now Googling my name includes a result for my Facebook profile (in the top of the results, no less), including my current profile picture.  I’ve never had a profile picture that would embarrass me if mom found it, but I know some who have, and they had to change it really quickly when they discovered Facebook had flipped them into a public location as well.

While I initially didn’t have any major issues with Facebook’s new look, I have increasingly decided I hate it.  Their efforts to clone twitter by moving status updates front and center only served to annoy me.  I don’t care if my friends are going to bed or going out; I care more to see the pictures, calendar events and other useful information that have been buried into the right rail of the page or are actually something that requires a few clicks to access now.

I’m willing to bet that an increasingly large number of Facebook’s users, left with a service that’s becoming more and more unwieldy as feature creep sets in, are abandoning active use of it and logging on more occasionally.  This happened on MySpace too, and eventually people just forgot to stop checking in.  Unless Facebook streamlines back in some of the features they buried in their most recent redesign, or find other ways to simplify what is now a more sprawling design (even as it looks so deceptively simple when you first log in), the same thing will happen to them what happened to MySpace.  Of course, it won’t officially happen until the next big thing comes along, but I think they’re teetering.

So while the username idea will excite some of the faithful, it does nothing in the grand scheme of things to improve the service.  It just makes it easier to find you.  And given its initial “insiders” format, is that really what we need – what was originally our ability to share things pirvately with friends, now made public to everyone?  It’s a fun privacy question.  It’s one Facebook has been dealing with for years, and one I expect will be heating up again soon.

I have always loathed going to the supermarket.  There are exceptions to this rule; the biggest being the occasional 2 a.m. “out of boredom” trips.  But recently I finally had enough of the hour-long treks to the store, winding through aisle by aisle.

I tested out Peapod, Stop & Shop‘s online food ordering service.  It’s available through a large part of the state by now, and seemed like something to try.  I’ve gotten a lot out of the tests, and it’s morphed my shopping.

First off, ordering online is quite easy.  Once you type in your Stop & Shop card number, you are able to look at a list of items you previously purchased.  This speeds up the process for items you buy on a regular basis. Some items aren’t available in Peapod, and not every item showed up, but it was a great foundation.

You can search the store by category, search the circular for specials, or type in what you want in a search bar.  A running total is always kept on the right side.

You choose a 2-hour delivery window to have your groceries delivered.  Out of six tests I conducted, they were late for two of the deliveries, but both times they called ahead to warn me, and gave me a much more targeted time.  This allowed me to adjust my day’s plans.

Delivery fees are $9.95 for orders under $100, $6.95 for orders over $100.  Coupons waive delivery charges for the first two months; online coupons can eliminate much of these charges in other case.  I’ve already received an online coupon (for when the delivery fees are no longer free) that will take $5 off an upcoming order.  I also save $1 per order by using a direct debit option instead of using a credit card number.  Your comfort level with this feature may vary, depending on whether you’re willing to trust the service with that information.

One thing I found is that I’m spending less on groceries without the impulse purchase.  Since you have to plan your order out a day or more in advance, you start thinking in terms of the meals you’re going to prepare or the snacks you want to consume.  This has eliminated a lot of wasted food and purchases between my roommates and I, and has saved us about $25 a week.

For those of you who also enjoy getting the gas rewards from Stop & Shop, fear not; the orders are linked to your card so you’ll still get your 10 cents off for each $100 spent.

Overall I’ve been impressed.  You don’t get the instant gratification of shopping and having everything you need, but if you’re a planner like me, it’s been quite the savior.  Getting that hour back a week by being able to prepare the orders in advance, wherever I happen to be at the time, simplifies things greatly.