By bfwebster on Feb 21, 2011 in Maintenance, Quality assurance, Risk management | 3 Comments
Well, first, apologies to all you who have been waiting for me to resume posting here. Your wait is over; I will be a bit more frequent in the future. Second, I have chronicled here my problems with two HP systems — a desktop and a laptop — that I each purchased new, with Windows [...]
By bfwebster on Jul 21, 2010 in Maintenance, Risk management | 1 Comment
[UPDATE: Read this post, which seems to be having trouble actually appearing here on the blog.] Since last November, I have bought three new, out-of-the-box systems preinstalled with Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit (and upgraded to Windows 7 Professional 64-bit at the end of May): an HP Pavilion e9237c desktop (quad-core 64-bit processor, 8 GB [...]
By bfwebster on Jul 9, 2010 in Art of 'Ware, Competition, Development, Main, Management, Marketing, Product development, Project Failure | 0 Comments
The KIN debacle (product canceled after five weeks; reports of actual phones sold range from 8,000 all the way down to 500), followed by Microsoft’s announcement of layoffs, has triggered on-line discussion among Microsoft employees, past and present. Even recognizing the self-selecting and inevitably self-serving nature of those comments, they still reflect serious, serious problems [...]
By bfwebster on Jun 7, 2010 in Complex systems, Maintenance, Quality assurance | 0 Comments
My dad, John Webster, got involved in electronics nearly 70 years ago. He enlisted in the Navy in 1941 and after surviving both Pearl Harbor and the Naval Battle of Guadalcanal, he was sent stateside, where he received initial training in radio communications. During his 29 years in the Navy, he worked largely in electronics, [...]
By bfwebster on Jun 2, 2010 in Business, Competition, Main | 1 Comment
When the iPad was announced, a major aspect of that announcement was the $30/month unlimited data plan from AT&T for the iPad. Now, only two months after the iPad actually started shipping, AT&T is ending that plan as of June 7th, and I find it very hard to believe that Apple didn’t know this would [...]