Nicolai Wadstrom on Tech & Entrepreneurship

So finally after many years with Windows, and lately with Windows Vista, I decided to switch my main work machine to a Mac. I already have a Mac Mini, but that’s just for fun, and I use it more as a PVR than anything else and I still do most of my actual work my Thinkpad Notebook.

I am not getting a Mac because they make better laptops than Lenovo, they don’t. They make good laptops, but Lenovo Thinkpads still are better laptops in terms of performance, durability, battery time etc and more suited for my needs. Windows Vista however is not suited for my needs, so that is my primary reason for switching to Mac.

Also I hope that Steve Jobs statements about “nobody is using Java anymore” was a mistake; with a few billion devices (many of them are mobile phones) that support Java, a lot more people use Java than Macs… Besides personally it’s a must, even though I don’t normally do any development work; I need to test things that comes from the development (which a lot of it is Java based server applications) in the various startups I work with and some of the most common productivity applications that I use everyday are written in Java, so when choosing Mac; Java support is a must for me.

So now that I got my new MacBook Pro yesterday, and started installing all the stuff I work with (including VMWare Fusion, to use my Windows artifacts during the transition), all in all I am happy with the 15.4″ 2.4GHz MacBook Pro that I bought, it is really fast, and even Windows XP inside VMWare Fusion boots in a matter of seconds (Windows Vista on my old Thinkpad, although the fastest available when I got it, 2GB RAM, High-speed disk, 2.0GHz Laptop takes almost a minute).

My first impression and thoughts about the machine (and ideas for improvement):

• Higher resolution display for the 15.4″, my 4.5 year old Thinkpad, has 1400×1050 on 14″ display, which is actually a quite good resolution, 1440×900 is a bit low, a higher DPI gives much crisper graphics and text (even new mobiles like the new Nokia Communicator has a higher DPI than 15.4″ MacBook Pro).
• Optional Trackpoint, I think I will get used to the Mac Trackpad, it’s quite good for Trackpad, but it do not have the precision and ergonomics of a Trackpoint (the latter, quite a good aspect of, you do not need to move your hand going between typing and moving the mousepointer).
• Disk encryption like the Thinkpads have.
• Built-in WWAN (but don’t do it like Lenovo, thery were the first in the world to launch this in 2005, but the models were only sold with SIM-locked subscriptions, which means these models where not sold i most parts of Europe, due to hard do agreements with all different small Telco’s). There are many
• Longer Battery life, although it is quite acceptable, the Thinkpad X series is quite unbeatable (7 - 9 hours of actual usage, not fictive hours).

Overall I am happy with my Switch to Mac, and I think that both the hardware and the new environment will serve me well for my work needs. But I am hoping that now that Apple have a momentum (Apple grows faster than PC) they will keep it up and get some of the features needed to make Mac a fully-featured Business laptop as well.

I am in Stockholm today, and decided that although working mostly with UK companies, and most things in my (professional) life are in English, I do have been accustomed to one simple thing… Swedish keyboard layout, and I decided to switch to Mac today, and went to look for a Mac this afternoon (with EU VAT papers etc from the company I work with/for). It seems that everything that don’t fit the norm, is too much work you just ask your customer to come back later, call your Economy department, or something to get rid of your customer. In Sweden a sale or customer is not always very valued. And if the Economy department (or the one that handles or knows sales EU companies) go home after Lunch on Friday; Sorry we can not sell you that laptop. There are over 450 million people in the EU, Sweden is less than 2% of them; maybe one should make sure that the staff in the stores knows how to handle these matters? One could argue that EU sales are such a small percentage of the sales in the stores in Stockholm; well, no wonder..

So first lesson for successful sales (and just about anything you want to make happen); if you have somebody that is willing to buy or act, do not put them in a position where you are not able to respond to any changes in that, do not leave them alone to go somewhere else or decide not to act, cease the opportunity right there. If they have decided to act and you can not respond to that right away, make sure that you keep being in control of the interaction or conversation, so you can remove any of the obstacles or react to any changes that come along the way. Do not tell you customers to call you back, try to make it happen right now or take their number and call them back! Keep yourself in charge of the conversation!

Longing to be back in the UK and the international cosmopolitan London, where people actually know there is a world outside the borders…

PS I did find one store that was very helpful and obviously more EU-friendly (www.inlife.se), but they were out of stock for the MacBook Pro I wanted (perhaps because they are more forthcoming they move them more quickly?), but I have made a reservation so hopefully I will have it shipped or pick it up next week!

Yesterday Skype had it’s first major outage. Although a massively distributed architecture, some points of the Skype architecture seems to be centralized like login and authentication (a few steps behind super-nodes and super-supernodes), which might and seem to be the cause of the failure. There is one thing that the old Telco’s has been very successful in archiving; and it’s the reliability of the centralized PSTN network. Although the phone has remained almost the same for a 100 years, and then mobile phones came along, and now IP based Voice communication and things are suddenly moving very rapidly?

A question for all of you; the inhibition of innovation in Telco space (by being very restrictive in letting 3rd parties provide services in their networks) is due to their strive of high availability or their strive to protect their revenues?

I would believe the latter and that the Telco’s would acclaim the former. What do you think?

At the end of the day, the users won’t care about what technology you use, until it breaks…

 VoIP as a means for cheap calls is a well established phenomenon, but the benefits of VoIP is not cheap calls, but the number of integrated services that can be built around it. With VoIP voice communication can be a well integrated part of almost any other applications just as e-mail has become. It also allows your phone to behave in the context of where you are, “how you are” or what you are doing (I am Busy, with family, kayaking etc). In the regulated and locked in world of telco operators, most innovation is stopped by either the operators or the operators. One good example is VoiceMail, which IMHO is broken today (I even turned of VoiceMail for my mobile phones).  So go innovate new Voice services!

Some links:

• GlocalReach.
• Computer Sweden (Swedish).