An update on Windows Vista - last weekend I gave up and reinstalled Windows XP on my new home machine. I installed Google Desktop and TaskSwitch XP, and am essentially back to the same feature set as under Windows - except that the computer runs faster and doesn’t crash. And I can print multiple copies of documents.

Indivo Jobs

Great working environment, close proximity to me, etc.

I’ve been using it for a few weeks now, and have developed opinions. My initial impression was positive - cautiously so, but positive. The new operating system was peppy enough, but my new workstation has a top-of-the-line, quad-core processor and four gigabytes of RAM, plus the graphics card that ate Manhattan. To put things in some kind of perspective, the graphics board in this system has more raw computing power than my first five computers combined, and that’s without springing for the really fancy ones that the games use. And I didn’t have any of the installation issues people have reported, but then again, I bought the thing entirely preconfigured. It’s a Systemax from Tiger Direct, incidentally, and I’m actually quite happy with it - nice machine, well integrated, quick shipping, and not loaded down with demoware. They even tossed in a one year subscription to CA Antivirus, rather than the 30 day trial you usually get, and the whole package was well under $2,000, including a terabyte of storage, dual DVD drives and sundry other extras.

No, the problem is Vista. The new user interface is fine, and didn’t take that long to figure out. And the new windows are very pretty. The periodic crashes are not as pretty. It doesn’t happen that often while I’m working, but I frequently come back to discover my computer has reset itself. Others report similar experiences. Configuring external devices was also a challenge - my home printer is attached to a Windows XP system, and while I was able to get it working with the new Vista machine, it took several arcane networking moves to do it, including some driver updates (easy) and NetBIOS reconfigurations (not entirely obviously).

Then mom tried to print multiple copies on her Vista machine. It didn’t work. One copy came out. She needed about 150. This was not good. She clicked a lot, and asked me why, again, I had burdened her with this loathsome operating system? Subsequent research showed that many drivers for Vista don’t implement the full feature set for some older printers - like the four year old HP Laserjet 2200D she had. “Full feature set” apparently includes printing multiple copies. No solution has yet presented itself. I just tried printing multiple copies on my trusty Samsung - and no success.

So what do I like about Windows Vista? Precious little. To be fair, the design of the Windows Explorer interface has improved somewhat, and having search implemented in the operating system (albeit just like what I used to get from Google Desktop) is a nice touch. But they had better get that service pack out soon.

I’ve been relatively fortunate with my health, but there have been a few incidents over the years, and that’s one reason I’ve always tried have regular checkups and good doctors. I was lucky to get into Dr. Bernstein’s practice at all - I only found him on the recommendation of one of my own mentors, who had been a student of Dr. Bernstein’s years earlier, and Dr. Bernstein took me into his practice (which, given his age at the time, he had closed to new patients) as a favor. Apparently that was fairly common - he always wanted to help, and, as his obituary in the Boston Globe points out, was still inquiring after his patients from his own hospital bed.

I’m not looking forward to finding a new doctor, because I doubt that I’ll be so fortunate in the future. Primary Care is in crisis; there isn’t a single open slot in any of the hospital affiliated primary care practices at the major teaching hospitals in Harvard Medical Center. Younger doctors don’t seem to have the opportunity to practice the kind of medicine that Dr. Bernstein did. Of course, Dr. Bernstein’s personality was a bit exceptional - he was clearly more than a product of his era! - but I can’t help but see an important policy question here. How can we create a system that will make more doctors like him?

HealthAffairs: The Difficult but Critical Step of Adding Cost

I’ve been thinking a lot over the last few weeks about the evolving transformation of consumer mentalities. Tools are changing. Will younger consumers expect a more transparent business environment?

InformationWeek: Doctors Debate Giving Patients’ Online Access To Health Data

It got sliced down to one quote. There was some really good stuff there, too. The whole feature is a nice layman’s overview of current progress in health information exchange and electronic health record adoption.

This week ten entries made the cut, about a third of the total submissions. The last time I did this, I marked a few posts as Editor’s Choice. Under the new, stricter editing rules, I have a few favorites, but they’re all worth reading, and unlike last time you won’t need to spend all morning doing it. Without further ado:

Hiring and Firing

Wally Bock at Three Star Leadership explores how A “War for Talent” mindset can be hazardous to your company. Just because some consultants wrote a book about something doesn’t mean that it’s a good idea. Culture matters, a lot.

Communications & Branding

Aloys Hosman debunks “brand value” in Google most valuable brand. So what?. For what it’s worth, I think he’s right about Google’s brand - but I’m not ready to write off the idea of independent brand value just yet. But brand equity is way too easy to overstate. Almost as easy as it is to destroy.

I enjoyed Josh Dorkin’s description of his logo design process at Time For Blogging. Logos are not the most important part of a business, and we’d all prefer to be judged by the content of our offerings rather than the color of our web sites (with deep apologies to Dr. Martin Luther King). But customers, floating in a sea of options, need all the help they can get.

If I hadn’t been hosting this week, I’d have submitted Good Healthcare CEO Blogs, Bad Healthcare CEO Blogs, in which I compared the blogs of three healthcare industry executives, all of whom have recently adopted blogging. I liked two of the blogs; the third blogger left a comment which triggered Healthcare CEO Blogs, Revisited. So please enjoy my take on what makes a CEO blog, and also an example of a healthy, effective response to criticism.

Entrepreneurship

Silicon Valley Blogger presents 6 Ways We’re Managing Our Finances and Our Emotions While Starting A Business at The Digerati Life. Starting a company is stressful, risky and time consuming, and it’s important to make sure the whole family understands what it means, and is ready to sign on.

Wayne Hurlbert talks about The value of mistakes at Blog Business World. This isn’t new advice, but it’s worth repeating, and Wayne does a nice job presenting the message. If you aren’t willing to make mistakes, you’re unlikely to get everywhere. The plan never survives contact with the enemy, and the business plan (almost) never survives contact with the customers.

You have to love a blog about laundromats, and you have to respect somebody who spends his vacation time touring other people’s laundromats. And some pricing lessons are universal. The Laundry Capitalist contributes Price Wise - Is your Laundromat Keeping Up with the Times? Hint for readers: it doesn’t have to be a laundromat.

Politics and Economics

Jack Yoest sat down with the Administrator of the US Government’s General Services Administration, and the result is a great post entitled How To Cut The Federal Budget at a Government Agency by Lurita Alexis Doan at Reasoned Audacity. A warning: the preamble is a little political, and I include the post without endorsement either way. The meat of the post is insightful and - speaking as a former employee of the Federal Government - spot on. I’ll likely comment on this post further later this week.

For Earth Day, Sean Hackbarth presents The Environment’s Best Friend: Economic Growth at The American Mind.

And the rest…

Tongue firmly in cheek, Ironman presents The Coming Global Trade Superstorm at Political Calculations. Those pesky polynomial expansion models. Actually, you can read this one two ways.

David Aron submitted Gliese 581c and Interstellar Capitalism at The Capitalist League. I had to include this one because of the line “alien societies may be genetically predisposed to socialism.”

That’s it for this week; thanks for visiting, and remember to tip your server. Next week’s edition will be at Race in the Workplace, and you can sign up for email announcements at The CoTC Home Page.

In this case, disappointment was a function of expectations. I heard Hillary Clinton speak at Yale shortly after she was elected to the Senate. I know she has interesting things to say - on the dynamics of Washington, if nothing else - but she was playing things safe and her speech was boring. My reaction to Case’s blog was similar. Here’s a very smart guy, who built one of the iconic late 20th century companies and is now taking on a very complex healthcare industry. That’s a recipe for interesting discussions, provided one has the time and inclination to go ahead with actually producing the content.

I was up in Boston for meetings much of this week, and when I finally got back to Washington yesterday morning I was somewhat surprised to see a comment from Steve Case. Even more surprising was that he concurred that the blog had been a little dull of late. He also confirmed that he did, in fact, write it himself, and fair’s fair, so I apologize for the insinuation that he didn’t. Reading my RSS feed this morning, I saw not one but two new entries in the blog–and they’re increasingly interesting. I’m not so hubristic as to actually take any credit for this, since with the launch of the Revolution Health web site I suspect he has some more time on his hands.

So what’s the wrap-up here? I’m not entirely sure. The response to my post was spot on, if not necessarily economically efficient given that I’m the definition of micro market media. I’m looking forward to reading Case’s blog over the next few months, and hopefully learning something. And my advice is to follow Levy and Baker’s examples: write about whatever is interesting, wherever you have a unique insight, and without obvious spin - better to admit you can’t write about something than to write about it disingenuously (not that I’ve observed such in this case). The combination builds traffic, but it also builds trust, and trust is a vital corporate asset, especially in healthcare.

Are Levy and Baker using their blogs to drive business to their respective organizations? Not really. Levy seems to be using his as much to drive change within his own hospital (and, perhaps incidentally, the wider Boston healthcare environment). I suspect the staff members appreciate his candor. Baker’s blog is newer, but people don’t make health insurance decisions based on the CEO of the health plan; it seems that what he’s trying to do is engage constructively with the larger healthcare policy debate.

I’ve learned a lot from reading those two blogs. I’ve learned nothing from Steve Case, who is trying to lead a “Revolution” at Revolution Health. He has a blog called “The Revolution Manifesto”, which contains the occasional announcement of new features and expressions of his pride in the team that’s built the web site. I’ve learned nothing from it in the several months that I’ve subscribed to the RSS feed. I’m by no means convinced that he’s actually writing it, and I certainly haven’t come away with any new insight into the healthcare industry or his company itself. If that’s your CEO blog - let alone your Manifesto - perhaps it’s better not to bother.

To start with, on Monday I’ll be hosting The Carnival of the Capitalists. For a sneak peak, check out this week’s CoTC at The Geek Practioners Blog, then come back Monday for the finest in business blogging, as selected by me. And there’s more to come.


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Wherease in Japan:

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