Recently, I have had occasion to speak with three different web designers who were trying to impress me with their abilities vis-à-vis designing and building web sites. The first one went on at great length impressing me with his ‘philosophy’ of web design: how a web site had to be both a work of art, and a place where people could be educated. His emphasis on a site as a ‘work-of-art’ likely stems from his own background as an artist and photographer. He was each of those…before being drawn to web design, an area where it appears he could actually make a living. The second one, self-employed in web design for five years, gave me an in-depth evaluation of an existing site and how it needed to be ‘revised’ to look much better. His concept was to build the infrastructure of the site, which he referred to as the ‘skeleton’, then he would proceed to put all the muscles on and build the ‘look’ of the site.

His entire approach began and ended with what he felt the site should ‘look’ like (to him, of course). Finally, the third person I interviewed, with a degree in computer science, understandably tried to influence me with all the graphics, flashy software he knew how to operate; all the super-duper special effects he could put on a site to gain attention (he didn’t specify whose attention that was).

This Most Exasperating Sound

Now let me segue to a quiet, lazy afternoon with a couple of hours to kill in an unfamiliar small town. I had an appointment two hours out, but had arrived in the town early. I decided to have some lunch, and spend those two hours doing some paperwork; maybe even some planning-thinking in the large dining room of this well known quick service restaurant. Let me tell you up front, that it was NOT a McDonalds, Wendy’s, A&W, or Burger King. I was waiting for my order when I had no choice but to notice this high pitched noise emanating from a bank of frozen food self-service upright freezers, where the operator stored frozen delights for sale. It was obvious to me that one or more of the refrigeration compressors was on its last legs; the machines were making an irritating noise that, once you were aware of it – and how could you not be? – It was impossible to block out. It was so loud in fact; the playing of the old style 50s juke box just a dozen feet from my table was not able to drown out this most exasperating sound.

I noticed a person who had the look of “owner” written all over him; I introduced myself and asked him if he knew he had a blown compressor. “What?” he said. “Oh yeah, that went on the fritz a few months ago.” I said: “how come you haven’t gotten it fixed? It’s really very irritating for your customers.” “Oh yeah?” he said. “I hadn’t really noticed it again until you just mentioned it….I’m here every day so I guess I’m used to it. ‘Doesn’t seem bad to me.”

Feeling, Needs Or Wants

I looked him square in the eye and said: “Look at the number of customers you have in your dining room right now, during your peak lunch hour period. Do you think this might be a reflection of many people in your small town know about this irritation and have told others that it is no longer pleasant to eat here?” He stared at me blankly and said: “Do you have any idea of how much it will cost me to fix those compressors?” I said: “yes, I do. I used to be in the business too. Do you know how much Solar Produkte  this is and will continue to cost you in lost business in a small, highly competitive market…if you DON’T fix them?”What’s missing in each of these scenarios? You guessed it: the customer’s viewpoint, opinion, input, feeling, needs or wants.

Each of these web designers is caught up in his own area of expertise or his need to earn awards of some kind. (If you would like to see a short video with more detail of what I couldn’t put in print about this experience, click on the live link in the bio box area below). The owner of this fast food outlet is missing the boat because he doesn’t want to spend the money. The customer be damned. It’s his business that’s being damned, not the customer. The customer will quietly vote with his feet. Years ago, the founder of Leo Burnett, the famous Chicago ad agency, said:” We want the consumer to say, “That’s a hell of a product,” instead of, “That’s a hell of an ad.”” Even back then, marketing was about the customer first, the marketer last. It’s a lesson we can never afford to forget.

Upgrading to Windows 10? My Experience

Have you received that notice from Microsoft: “Windows 7 has reached its End-of-Life… ” or something similar?

That prompted me to reluctantly upgrade my HP Elite desktop from Windows 7 to Windows 10.

You may find my experience amusing.

While we’re admonished to “Please Back up ALL of your files before proceeding.’, not only do I do just that, using a program like Acronis True Image, but I also do one other thing: I buy a replacement HDD or SDD, and clone the original mass storage device before upgrading.

In other words, I clone my HDD, then upgrade the cloned disk, saving the pristine original as the ultimate backup.

I had previously upgraded my computer from a 1Tb HDD (Toshiba) to a 1Tb SDD (SanDisk Plus). Using my BYTECC cloning machine, the process was easy, no problems. Went smooth as glass.

Then when I went to use my cloning machine to clone that 1 Tb SanDisk Plus SDD to another 1Tb HDD, I got the error message, “Source is larger than Target.”

Unfazed, I tried a pristine-out-of-the-box 1Tb WD drive. Got the same error message.

Concerned that my duplicator was on the fritz, I bought another SanDisk Plus 1Tb and inserted it in my duplicator.

Alas, got the same error message.

Bummer.                     

So I went back in my HP Elite archives, found a previously cloned HDD Win 7 disk for my P Elite from last April and successfully cloned it onto that fresh SanDisk.

• The cloned disk installed and worked without any problems.
• The upgrade from Win 7 to Win 10 was accomplished successfully.
• My HP Elite desktop is now at Win 10 and all’s well with the world!
• But now, I have an older version of my desktop.

Well, perhaps that’s not a problem: I have a secure storage of all installed programs, and also all of my work: I use an external WD MyCloud storage device on my LAN. Any missing applications, I can just re-install.

Theoretically, the ‘original’ HP Elite SDD only has copies of downloaded stuff (in its “Download file”), and nothing of any real consequence on the desktop or in local memory.

But there’s still that niggling fear that somehow, somewhere, there’s something on that original SDD that I just might need.

What to do?

I have a KingWin EZ-Connect device that connects a SATA disk to my computer’s USB port.

Perhaps that could be used to look at and then copy over files and such that are on that original SDD Win 7 installation to the HP Elite’s current Win 10.

Hooking up the SanDisk SDD to the EZ-Connect, and then hooking the EZ-Connect to the computer,!Viola! I can see all of the files on the SanDisk!

Then it was an easy thing to search and poke and prod to find whatever I wanted to transfer to the new installation!

Fortunately, nothing of any real consequence had ben left behind. Now my new Win 10 installation is fully up and running and my ‘lost’ files are restored!