Precious little things

This morning we rode our bikes to the best bagel shop in the world.  It is a hidden little shop that you would not find unless someone told you (psst, it’s Berkeley Bagel at 1281 Gilman).

There are more than a few semi-dangerous spots on the road to the bagel shop but we brave it because the bagels are so indescribably good. For some reason, during this morning’s bike ride it occurred to me just how much I trust the cars around me to not run us over. They could so easily destroy us. I got a deep, quick sense of the precious-ness of life and the lives of others with me.

The next thought was that our customers trust us to give them their next laptop or desktop. That’s a similarly powerful trust.

Here’s the reasoning, whether it makes sense or not: Most of what we have and do in life is nearly irrelevent, but there are a few things, a few deeply, dearly precious things in each person’s own little sphere.

The precious parts of my life are health, family, friends, laptop…

Yes, my laptop. Personally, I bond with my laptops. The Toshiba I had when my kids were little was just as much a family member as the kids were. It traveled with me like the kids did. It was at the lunch table, in the car, out at parties, and even in bed with me when I was sick, at the hospital with me when I had my babies, each one. My laptop was an extension of myself, a useful type of appendage with a far more reliable memory than my own. My laptop was an intricate part of my life. I started carrying my laptop with me long before most people were carrying laptops.

When I see computers go out our doors to people in various parts of the world, I realize that those laptops are precious little things going to people who will need them, rely on them, depend on their proper functioning. Powerful trust.

Makes sense? Perhaps it was just the musings of a sleepy Saturday morning on the way to and from the bagel shop, but let it be noted that I do respect people’s computers as precious.

Secret Sauce

On the way to Italy, then on to Israel, I worked a bit on my presentation. I had offered several different topic ideas to the LUG organizer and he chose the most technical one. The topic: Building Linux Hardware. As a how-to, it seemed appropriate to share my company’s favorite suppliers, the best-of-the-best OEMs and where we find the juiciest information on building Linux hardware.

As  I looked at my presentation, it made me worry that maybe I was giving away the proprietary recipe to my company’s Secret Sauce, the thing that makes my company unique.

I went ahead with my Secret Sauce talk (although I didn’t call it that — who knows how that would translate in Hebrew? It might have a different meaning). Happily, bizarrely, unexpectedly, I didn’t give anyway anything they didn’t already know. Instead, it was an exchange of equally informed hardware builders.

See, in Israel, there are no stores. At least, no stores like we’re accustomed to in the US. There’s no Costco, no Best Buy, no Fry’s. They have a different type of consumer activity level and to be honest, I found it a bit refreshing to not be surrounded by stores.

As the wonderfully supportive LUG attendees informed me, in Israel, when you need a computer you go to the little computer shop that’s tucked away in some little spot inbetween buildings. When you need your computer fixed, you ask the kid down the street to take a look at it. I chuckled. This is so much easier than how I have seen many people do it in the US. It goes like this: Drive 30 min to large chain store; stand in line; endure salesmanship; stand in another line; endure the cashier’s “Are you sure you don’t want to give us another $200, er, I mean purchase extended warranty coverage?”; leave; drive another 30 minutes; set up box at home and spend the next two days on the phone to tech support because the box was poorly built in the first place.

In the little shops in Jerusalem in Haifa, you tell the computer shop owner what you want. He builds it for you in front of you. You tell him what parts you want. You know the names of the manufacturers. The builders use mostly whitebox towers. You don’t necessarily care about the big name brands because, after all, you are buying this computer from Omar or Rami, not Best Buy. You know the names of the components and you hear from your friends which ones they like. It all works out. In the process, you get to know what’s what.

I really shouldn’t worry about any Secret Sauce leaks, especially when there are other great cooks in the kitchen.

Spunky and oh-so sticky

Every now and then you meet someone who is utterly unforgettable. Their name instantly sticks in your memory and you know that 10, even 20 years from now, the memory of this person will still be lodged in your mushy cranial memory logs. If you have read Made to Stick, then you know what I mean about how someone or something can duct tape itself to your memory.

One of these people is Carla Schroder, now with LinuxToday. The first piece I read by her was posted elsewhere, but it was spunky, feisty, and so dead-on point that my mind made a note to pay attention to her work when it popped up. Now that she is with LinuxToday, now we all have more opportunities to hear from her.

It was with a giddy yelp of joy that I read her recent article about us: “ZaReason (and other independents) Outshine the Big Boys”. Here is a clip:

“There are a number of excellent independent Linux OEM vendors, and my personal favorite is ZaReason.

“ZaReason shows how powerful individuals with a little focus and a lot of “getting it” can be… The folks at ZaReason figured this out long ago, and replaced the Windows key with an Ubuntu key. Such a simple thing, and yet so cool- and so completely outside the vision of the big shops, because they don’t “get it.”

“ZaReason offers Ubuntu PCs in a wide number of form factors: laptop, desktop, Shuttle, and now their brand-new Atom-based Breeze 3110….”

What makes Carla Schroder so sticky? If you start following her work like I have, you will see how her wicked sharp humor makes the messages highly memorable as in: “Linux is making me fat and lazy.” Ha!

Traffic spike

Every now and then we wind up on Slashdot. A recent /.ing went as follows:

“Lenovo has stopped selling laptops pre-installed with Linux on its web site, only 8 months after starting the trial program… For those looking to buy full-sized laptops and desktops with Linux pre-loaded Dell, System76, ZaReason and Everex all still offer such products.”

The first time we were slashdotted it was fun to see the traffic spike, but now it is not that important. We just want to keep working with the core customer base we have already built. We love the people we work with. We almost wish we had more tech support issues so we could work with them more. But, unfortunately tech support issues are rare.

Sigh.

I have no idea why Lenovo stopped their Linux line. It surely could not have been tech support issues. You have to be a bit careless with the hardware to mess up a Linux product line these days.

Consumer psychology and the keyboard

There is no part of the computer that we humans work with more intimately than the keyboard. It is the only part of the computer that we actively touch.

It is no stroke of fate that Microsoft rebranded the Start key as the “Win key” in 1995. The message, ingrained on an emotional, psychological, even kinesthetic level is that you “Start” with Windows.

Well, not necessarily.

You do have options.

These were the thoughts circulating through our company psyche at the time when we were working to build a keyboard with an Ubuntu key. It seemed so wrong to ship laptops and desktops with the Windows logo flying on the keyboard.

The Ubuntu Keyboard

Note to companies that are considering whether or not to take this level of care with their keyboards, please remember this: Perception is important. It shapes everything we do. Properly labelling the keyboard is not that difficult to do. So what if it costs a teensy bit more per system. Cut costs elsewhere. Cut out the pop machines, just don’t overlook this embarrassing lack of attention to detail.

Whenever we are at conferences or trade shows and see Linux laptops and desktops giving “free advertising space to someone else” we point it out. Inevitably, the flabbergasted representative will blush and look around frantically for a small sticker. Any small sticker. A penguin, the Ubuntu logo, a piece of tape, it doesn’t matter.