Thought provoking site

http://www.spaceship-earth.de/PoS/Index_PoS.htm

Big shops, big names or the small local ones

What is the difference between a big shop (e.g. Excite/Croma/Vijay Sales etc) and the local across the street computer dealer?

- Big shops have more products on display
- Big shops have better ambiance
- Big shops are more customer friendly
- Big shops offer better product support
- Big shops are hassle free one stop shop for your needs

Really?

I think its the exact opposite. I don't just 'think' that, but I have experienced that many times in many different 'big' shops.

Big shops have more products:
Few days back, the customer likes an LG LCD TV on display, wants to buy it so ordered it from Excite. 'Big' shop says we don't have it in stock but we 'can' get it for you.
Now, how is it that a 'big' shop have such a paltry stock of items? If they are having products in display then why not in stock?

Moving on, 'big' shop says they will get it ... 'if customer pays 75% of the price in advance'! wow!
The customer has to pay the price of bad stock keeping!.. OK..

Customer pays the advance, big shops says 'the piece will come in 1-2 days'. Customer waits for 2 weeks! Customer eventually wants his money back. 'Big' shop says, if will take 1 month to reverse the Credit Card payment! Amazing! ... Customer cannot even get back the money for something he did not purchase!

So, products on display, big shops win,
but
they do not win at delivering the final product.

Better ambiance & customer friendliness:
You enter you local dealer, he says 'Hi Sid, how's your kid .. etc'.
You enter 'big shop', 2 ladies come rushing at you with 'welcome to ... Sir!'. You cover your face and say 'thanks, I'm just taking a look at stuff, please don't kill me!'. After that you have one person rushing at you with a leaflet saying 'you must fill up this form to become a member to avail 'great' discounts, 'free' gift' and whatnot.
As you browse through the neatly arranged products, a security person keeps moving behind and to make sure you're not a thief.
As all this is happening, you being to sweat. You wonder why... the 'big' shop attendants have probably been ordered NOT to turn on the A/C when number of customers are low by the owner.
Finally when your trying to make the payment, you ask how much points will you get for the 'big purchase' you are about to make. He says 'No points for this Sir!, you are buying it at a sale'!
Why do they even take the trouble to make us members?

So as you see, everything that is happening is against the customer. Customer satisfaction is LEAST important.

So, a small shop with just a 'hi sir, how are you?' is MUCH more friendly than big shops who have so many things which are useless for the customer.

Big shops offer better product support:
Most people will have different experience around this. For me, I somehow feel so intimidated by 'big' shops, I usually don't phone them. I personally take the item (if it is small) and try to get it replaced. On the other hand, the local shops are more than happy to send 'Ramu' with a replacement piece.
So, I'd say, smaller shops still have better customer support which is a result of better customer relation.

Big shops are hassle free one stop shop for your needs:
They are hassle free for finding out which product you want to buy.
But to actually buy the product it looks like the smaller shop is better for all the above reasons.

What could be the reason for the failure of these big retailers?
- I think the problem is that they (owners) have too much money already so they could not care less about their customers.
- The owners are no longer personally involved with the shops and customers.
- Human beings are basically greedy and ungrateful.
- The employees of the big shops in turn don't care about customers since they anyway are getting their salaries customers or not. Even if they get chucked out, working in a shop is anyway not such a big deal, they can get equivalent jobs elsewhere.

Does all this seem familiar?

Which SQL Jobs are currently executing

Following script lists currently executing SQL jobs.

select
j.job_id, j.name
from
msdb..sysjobactivity a (NOLOCK)
inner join
msdb..sysjobs j (NOLOCK)
on
j.job_id=a.job_id
where
a.start_execution_date is not null
and
a.job_history_id is null

Horror of installing XP on ASUS M3N78-EM

After trying to get comfortable with Vista x64 on my new machine (ASUS M3N78-EM, Phenom Triple Core, 4 GB RAM), I decided that it's just not gonna happen. I couldn't connect my Sony HandyCam as drivers were not present, my plain old HP Deskjet 64bit drivers weren't working..basically the whole experience was pretty miserable.

Anyway, decided that XP 32bit is still the way to go. Installed slipstreamed version of XP SP3. Everthing worked except ... THE SOUND! Searched google and found lots of forums where people had similar problems with the RealTek Hi definition audio drivers. I tried ALL solutions I came across including installing XP UAA drivers (available with HP), installing latest drivers from ASUS for my MOBO, drivers from RealTek, nothing worked. Finally there was a post which suggested installing only SP2 of XP and then installing the Realtek Drivers and guess what? THIS WORKED!

Hope this helps anyone else having similar problems.

Guns n' Roses still rock

Went to Landmarks, MG Road, Pune on Christmas day and say big posters of Chinese Democracy but could not locate the CDs. After asking the staff turns out that they are all sold out. Sure I was sad I could not get my copy but I was also quite happy, after all these years Gn'R (my favorite band since school days) still kicks ass and manages to sell out 100%.

Setting up a wireless network with DLink DER 300 and Airtel broadband

Setting up home networks can be either a total pleasure or a total pain; there are no in-betweens.

Here is an east step by step instruction so you have a ‘total pleasure’able experience.

I am assuming:
The Airtel DSL router has it’s IP set to 192.168.1.1
The DLINK router’s IP is set to 192.168.0.1

Step1:
While still connected to the airtel DSL directly, log into the Airtel DSL router’s administration website using your favorite browser: http://192.168.1.1
- Enter the user-id and password. The default one is ‘admin’ for login and ‘password’ for password.
- Now click the ‘LAN’ link on the left side of the web-page.
- Select the ‘Disable DHCP Server’ as shown below:

Click Save.

Step 2:
Remove the network cable which connects the Airtel DSL router to your PC from your PC and connect it to the socket marked ‘Internet’ on the DLink router.

Step 3:
Connect your PC to one of the LAN ports of the DLink router using the supplied LAN cable (supplied with the DLink router).

Bring up the Command Prompt in Windows by typing cmd in the Programs…Run menu. Now type: ping 192.168.0.1
Your screen should look something like this:
C:\Documents and Settings\Siddharth.PIXIE.000>ping 192.168.0.1
Pinging 192.168.1.2 with 32 bytes of data:
Reply from 192.168.0.1: bytes=32 time=20ms TTL=64
Reply from 192.168.0.1: bytes=32 time=20ms TTL=64
Reply from 192.168.0.1: bytes=32 time=20ms TTL=64

This means that your DLink router is connect properly to the PC.

Step 4:
Now to setup the PC’s network properties:


You can specify an IP address starting from 192.168.1.3 to 192.168.1.255.
Just make sure you don’t give 192.168.1.1 or 192.168.1.2 as these will be used by the routers.

Step 5:
Configure the DLink router Open the following URL in your favorite browser: http://192.168.0.1
Enter the user name as admin. The default password is blank so just leave it empty.

Disable DHCP:
In the next screen, click the “LAN Setup” from the left side of the website. I usually disable DHCP so that is what I am going to suggest here. In the “Enable DHCP Server” checkbox is checked, uncheck it.

Router Settings:
In the Router settings section specify the following details:

Click ‘Save Settings’.

Internet connection:
Click the “Internet Setup” link from the left side of the web-page.
Click the “Manual Internet Connection Setup” button.

In the next screen, set the ‘My Internet Connection is’ as ‘Static IP’. The properties should look like this:

Click ‘Save Settings’. If everything has worked fine, you should see the following icon on the left side of the web-page:

You should now be able to connect to the Internet through your wireless router.

Set of useful command line utilities

Fresh from the factory, a set of useful command line utilities from your's truly:

whereis
This program allows you to locate a file on the machine using standard windows module locating logic.
For example if you are looking for a file notepad.exe and it is present in a particular known folder or in the PATH, the program will display where notepad.exe will be located by Windows.

paths
Prints paths which are set in your system.

winver
Prints the Windows version.

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