Huh? How come? Hear me out, matey! During today’s lunch I went to both J & R and Staples – they are right across from each other in this part of town. There are plenty of sales representatives on the floor. However, whenever I enter J & R the most I get is a little longer then usual eye contact from one of the sales reps. As if he’s saying “Are you sure you don’t need any help? No? Okay, I’ll leave you alone”. Having a professional PC tech background I really appreciate such behavior. Besides, sometimes I just need to dive into the store and look around, touch things. Something I have been missing with the increasing role of web stores in my life.

When I enter Staples the picture gets totally different. Whenever in Staples I always get followed by one or another floor sales reps. They pretend to be adjusting things on the shelves and just pass by me (constantly) avoiding any eye contact whatsoever. Sometimes (probably) the bravest ones approach and ask if there’s anything I might need a help with. When they get my polite decline they still stick around like bad spies from the bad spy movie.

So, today, when I got into Staples, I was immediately followed by yet another sales person. He wasn’t afraid to make eye contact, so I rewarded him with couple of requests of things I was looking for (namely Microsoft Explorer Mouse and specific Fellowes CD tray/shelf that seem to be discontinued). Given that Staples didn’t have neither of things, I thanked and walked out. Perhaps if I wasn’t annoyed that much, I might have spent a little more time in the store and actually bought something (I’ve been known for spontaneous purchases of wired Logitech mice and blank CDs).

Such an experience at Staples has generally made it very undesireable for me to visit their stores. There are still some things that I prefer to buy “live” instead of just ordering them online, but Staples increasingly have made it difficult to indulge.

Given that my supply of stationary hasn’t changed much for last year and half, by the time I will need to visit Staples again – they might be already out of business.

Last Friday I have signed up for Amazon’s FPS (no, not First Person Shooter), but Flexible Payment Service. That’s about all the news I have for now, but we’re working on an e-commerce web site that probably will be using AFPS for payments. Stay tuned.

Yes, someone up there must love me, here’s the HTC Advantage that is large enough to read/view/game away plus it acts as a GSM cell phone. Just the answer to my yesterday’s rant. Well, at least to the first part.

The only two noticed problems are the weight/size (damn, with 5 inches of screen real estate the thing weights around one pound) and the price – Amazon has them for $849.99. CompUSA all sold out, unfortunately, as I was going to try to hold the thing in my hands. Obviously, it will be quite hard to hold it during a lengthy conversation, so bluetooth (or wired) headset is a must. I got two of bluetooth headsets plus one wired, so recharging shouldn’t be an issue here. Judging by reviews the PDA is large enough not to fit in small pockets and I hadn’t noticed the option to carry it on the belt.

My contract with Verizon expires on August 18th, so if by that time Verizon will not come up with something decent (and judging by some leaked information – it will not) – I’m switching my main Zealus phone from Verizon to (most likely) Cingular – it’s the only company I haven’t been a customer of yet.

While moving tons of my ex-IT stuff from old apartment to new (and losing some ISA network cards on the way) I realized what is it that I ultimately need while most of my stuff is unavailable (like when I am moving, traveling, vacationing and so on). So think of this as of unofficial wish list:

• PDA/cell phone. Not a smartphone, it’s a poor excuse at being a decent organizer having a screen size of a matchbox and no keyboard. Something like an iPhone, but runs Windows Mobile and doesn’t look like a proletariat’s weapon of choice. With hundreds of software titles already available, seamless sync with Outlook and (again!) large screen size, so I can actually read documents/books/emails without hurting my eyes, watch stand-up shows or documentaries in the gym or on the road such device would win me over any fancy useless gadget. Oh, and add regular headphones jack (instead of smaller non-compatible one) and no-cradle sync/recharge cable for easy packing to that.
• Small cheap laptop. I currently own IBM/Lenovo T60p, T42 and T40p. None of them qualifies neither as cheap nor as small. Something with screen size of 10 – 12 inches (1024×768), solid-state disk and price tag below $600 – $700 with decent battery life (at least 4 – 5 hours) should suffice. Every time some teenager or poor old lady entering backwards into subway car smashes into my backpack with my $3000 T60p with two hard drives in it, or my car hits the bump on the road, or airport security kicks a basket with my laptop out of scanner – I think of solid-state disks and cheap (read – replaceable without busting my budget) laptop.
• Personal Media Player with removable storage. It’s amazing to see all those gazillion-gigabyte iPods, Zens, Zunes, iRivers and other misspelled words to try to host all owner’s music collection in a single place to make it easier to loose all in one take. I owned Creative Zen 20GB – thrown away as their web site is total mess and no drivers I downloaded would work with my player after attempt to hook it up to a new PC; had Toshiba Gigabeat 30GB – stolen, but I didn’t like it anyway – their sync software tries to act as DRM-police and extremely slow, player just won’t play directly uploaded mp3 files, sync via cradle didn’t work as expected plus none of my girlfriends in the passenger seat could figure out how to navigate “that cross thingy”. So all I want for now is a media player that will accept SD or Flash (or both) cards of any denomination and just play whatever is on them. With simple buttons like Play, Stop, Skip, Rewind not arranged in a puzzle or some other cryptic combination.

Re-read all of the above. Why do I need office, again?

I was ranting about BestBuy in my other, more personal, blog. Today, however, I found out that I am not the only one. Looks like it’s a good idea to shop at other places, before you-know-what hits the fan.