Jeffrey Randow wants me to talk some sense into the Terminal Services team. "We need a common place to host a copy of the Terminal Services Web Client in a trusted spot that people could use to connect to their home or work systems."

My wife and John Porcaro both say I look a bit like Bill Clinton. "Scary," says John. I answered back to my wife Maryam "really, Monica?"

:-)

Susan Bradley asks "is this an idea for a Longhorn commercial?" Well, maybe we should let this cow loose on Jaguar. Take THAT Steve Jobs. Heh. But, no, sadly, this video (Windows Media format, sorry for the lockin) isn't one of our doing, but it is darn hillarious. Where do people get the time to do these things?

The Accordion Guy (Joey deVilla) is trying to get rid of Microsoft stuff. Why? Interoperability. Jeremy Allison was making the same point today in my comments.

Anytime a customer "fires" us, I'm interested. It means we've failed somewhere.

In fact, the idea that someone is gonna give up Microsoft is real interesting because it means they've taken on pain to remove us from their lives. What do I mean by that?

Well, let's take one feature of Windows XP. ClearType. It makes Windows fonts way way easier to read, and far nicer than on any other operating system.

And there are dozens of features that I can enumerate that make Windows nicer to use than other operating systems.

And, if you look at what you get with Office 11, in comparison with competitive products on other operating systems, there are hundreds, if not thousands, of features that are there that aren't in the other products.

Both of these guys say they are tired of being locked in. That's like being a Yankees fan and saying "I'm sick and tired of Barry Bonds playing for San Francisco cause he keeps hitting home runs against us."

Let's be honest here. Yeah, this industry loves locking people in. Think SAP doesn't understand that it's immensely expensive (nearly impossible) to move your company's data to a competitive system?

Think Adobe doesn't love the fact that PDF is hard to port to other products?

Think there wasn't any thought given at Apple to make sure its new videoconferencing system could only be used with other Macs? Not to mention the iPod?

Yes, there is a place for lowest-common denominator computing. My blog, for instance, follows the same rules that Joey is going for. Plain text as possible. Very few images. Very few, if any, things that can't be read by both humans and machines. But, that doesn't map to my idea of what a computer should do very well.

I think I should be able to do more than just plain text on my computer. For instance, I wanna play some Flight Simulator (seen the latest version, it's freaking awesome).

I wanna use my Tablet to write in ink. That ain't plain text.

My friend built a system to run a Pistachio factory. That ain't plain text.

And on and on we could go all night long.

Yeah, if interoperability and lack of lockin is your only concern, then Microsoft probably isn't the best thing out there (although, hey, anyone can open my Notepad documents and we did invent, or implement, many of the world's interoperability standards like SOAP, etc). But, most of us don't really care about these two things, do we?

Everytime I see just how popular Tivos are, or how popular Sony's Play Stations are, or how popular Barry Bonds is, I get the feeling that most consumers really could care less about lockin. But, guys like Joey and Jeremy are telling me I'm wrong.

That scares me, cause it doesn't take too many people to fire Microsoft before I'm outta a job.

In the meantime, I can't understand how anyone uses a computer that doesn't have ClearType. Everytime I turn it off on my computer my eyes start to hurt. Did you know that if you have Windows XP, you need to turn it on to use it? There's even a little Web service to help you configure ClearType and to see its advantages.

Harry Pierson gives an account of trying to learn from a bad presentation. I gave a presentation last week that got a bit of similar feedback (not to customers, but to coworkers). One of my coworkers said "you're not having enough fun." Another said "you need to be better prepared." Their point was, get more passion when you're pitching an idea and have your homework done and your plan polished. I wasn't, and they were right. You know what's different about Microsoft? S&&t doesn't fly here. You try to put lipstick on a pig and people will call you on it. That hasn't always happened elsewhere in my career.

One thing about the culture here is you always are looking at your work with an eye to improve.

What I've learned Harry, is, dust yourself off, and get back out there with customers. Do more presentations. We all will make mistakes. It's OK. As long as we learn from them.

I've done similar things with customers in the past (and have occassionally pissed them off). Trying to look out for their best interests, it's easy to tell them the way the world should be. Especially when you have the arrows in your back that remind you of the right way to do something. But, people often don't wanna hear they are going down the wrong path. Humans hate throwing away work. And, maybe that decision was reached after months of meetings, and lots of homework. Yes, it probably is a bad decision, but getting them to throw away months of work isn't easy.

We've all seen corporate cultures and people that are resisting change. I found it's better not to try to convince them, but to just ask questions? "Have you thought about...?" "Did you really do your homework on...?" "Have you read XYZ whitepaper and considered it?" "Can I introduce you to my former boss at XYZ company cause we tried just what you're considering and I think you'd appreciate his feedback?"

Asking questions disarms them. I used this all the time when selling cameras. Often people would come in asking for a specific model, which really wasn't the best one. I'd ask "have you read Consumer Reports on this camera?"

Or, I'd ask them, "do you want that model, or do you want sharp pictures?" (I had the proof under the counter cause I had actually tried all the cameras).

Or, "do you really want to spend more than you need to?" (Sometimes a cheaper model did everything they wanted, and gave better picture quality).

Occassionally someone would be bullheaded and say "I'm gonna buy that model and that's what I want to do" and I'd let them, but carefully explained the return policies. Invariably they were back within a week saying "hey, you were right." Those customers often turned out to be my best ones, because they knew I was looking out for their own interests and not trying to sell them hooey.

I hope Harry and other employees keep doing the right thing. It's not an easy road to look out for customers' own interests sometimes, but it's really the only way to go long-term. Believe me, those guys will remember you Harry. You might have pissed them off, but they'll remember that you were looking out for them. Five years from now, after their project has failed, they'll be back with their hat in their hand asking your forgiveness.

Jeff Key asks "where's the Tablet users?" Um, dude, they all hang out on TabletPC Buzz or Tablet PC Talk.

I'd like to take on the meme of "they ain't selling well." I talked to a few people over in the Tablet team the other day, and they say that's a bunch of hooey. Sales are exceeding expectations, they say. And new models come out ever day, it seems.

Also, Jeff puts the meme out there of "but I type a lot faster than I write." So do I, wasabi, so do I. But, can you draw a neat little picture to explain something with your keyboard? I didn't think so. Can you keyboard while standing up?

And, can you turn your monitor sideways so you can read an eBook in bed comfortably in portrait mode. I didn't think so.

Finally, don't expect Tablets to kill notebooks. At least not until 2008. But, the form factor has tons of advantages. Don't poo poo it just cause you haven't seen Joe consumer using one yet. They will. You can either decide to follow the herd, or try something new and be the first to have it.

By the way, my Tablet has a keyboard. Oh, can you have Hillary Clinton sign your notebook? I didn't think so wasabi.

I should have given photo credit to the folks who work at the Micronews (Microsoft's newsletter). Thanks for sending me the photo. Joi Ito told me it made him jealous. Heh! Joi makes me jealous!

Don Park has a whole new way to weblog (with a camera phone). Very thought provoking!

Heh, Eric Norlin is into Eminem. Oh, I have a whole lot to say on this topic, but gotta unpack more boxes. Grrr.

By the way, Jeff Raikes, a VP here at Microsoft, was holding his NEC Tablet yesterday. The Toshiba rep for Microsoft was ecstatic that I had Hillary sign a Toshiba. Hey, NEC could have had this great PR, but they didn't give me one when I left.

Jeff was reading off of his NEC, though, as he introduced the speakers.

Heh, Dick Hamilton thought I was smart by getting Hillary to sign the tablet. Smart had nothing to do with it. There's a bunch of Tablet enthusiasts at Microsoft, and we're all competiting to see who can get the coolest "TabletGraph" (autograph by someone famous on the Tablet).

I still am bummed that I didn't get to ask her my question (I stood in line, but Hillary ran out of time). I wanted to know if she was gonna start a weblog.

Here's the picture of Hillary Clinton signing my Tablet PC.

Heh, Sebastien wants us to hold a contest for a free ticket to the PDC. Interesting idea!